Grilled Green Beans with Garlic Scape Pesto and Parm (side dish and appetizer)

 Fresh green beans, grilled until nicely browned, tossed with a garlic scape pesto dressing and buried under a dusting of Parmesan cheese. Use the leftovers for an appetizer wrapped in salami.

I have been all up in my grill for the past two months. Ever since my spouse assembled the monster, the grill became an never-ending source of inspiration for side dishes and planned overs aka repurposed leftovers. Now that I type it out, my farm share box is often the same sort of inspiration, albeit perishable inspiration.

I started a Grill Life List with a slip of paper, documenting all of the vegetables and meats I've grilled so far. Then I misplaced the slip of paper. I'm switching to notebooks. Speaking of, although I have not tried this system, I know a few folks who use it and it looks cool: Bullet Journal.

Today's recipe was made in that window of time after I've used up all the winter farm share stores, emptied the freezer of bulk frozen vegetables [Garlic Scape Pesto and Green Tomato Bacon Jam remain at the ready] and have to actually shop for vegetables in the store until the farm share starts. I asked my spouse what veggies he felt like eating and he wanted green beans. Green beans can give me something to work with, are good blog fodder, so I picked up a massive bag of the tender fresh ones at Costco.

I'm sharing this recipe both as YET ANOTHER NUDGE to make and freeze garlic scape pesto [my previous nudge is Grilled Garlic Scape Pesto Smashed Potatoes] but also because it fits in with my summer eating plan [more about that in the future when I have space to sit and write]. In a nutshell, though, when you're cooking, cook extra to use on nights when you don't have time/it's too hot to cook. This is not rocket science. I mean, I can come up with plenty of reasons not to cook--it's too hot, too rainy, I get home too late, I'm out of ______ (insert name of key ingredient). This reminds me of Matt Scott's Nike commercial. Point is, when I do cook I may as well cook as many things as I can, and figure out ways to use them later.

After enjoying these beans as a side dish I turned the leftovers into a savory appetizer. I wrapped 3 to 4 beans in a slice of thin salami and served the bundles alongside other leftover vegetables, cheese, and crackers. The pairing of crunchy grilled green beans with salty salami is a good one, and way too easy to make.

For more recipes using green beans, please see my Green Bean Recipes Collection. For more recipes using garlic scapes, please see my Garlic Scape Recipes Collection. These are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. You can find more vegetable appetizers on my Pinterest board, Awesome Veggie Apps and Snacks. Want to know how to Use This Blog? Click here.

CSA Recipe Index Revamped, and Garlic Scape Pesto Pizza with Mushroom, Artichoke, Pepper and Red Onion

A loaded vegetarian pizza with mushrooms, artichokes, yellow peppers and red onions on a garlic scape pesto-slathered crust. Plus--an expanded Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, now with recipes from all sorts of bloggers!

I had a "duh" moment the other day. My goal of making my blog a resource for people like me looking for recipe ideas for their Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, farmer's market, or garden abundance would be closer if I included recipes from other bloggers in my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient.

I sure don't have the lock on the best recipes using farm share ingredients, with the possible exception of my Sautéed Beet Greens and Spring Onions with Egg breakfast/brunch, which I happen to think is the world's best way to enjoy beet greens.

Everyone's tastes are different, so having a central location to see a wide variety of recipe ideas for whatever ingredient you're dealing with can only help. I hope the bigger and better Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient will enable more people to have a successful farm share season and keep coming back to their chosen farmers for more. Why is my family embarking on our 10th CSA season? Fresh food tastes good!

Now, I am one person with kids at home for the summer and dogs who require a lot of attention. I'd share a video of Robert Barker and I trying to teach Simon and Vincent how to howl, with mixed success, but I can't figure out how to get it off my son's iPad and onto my laptop. Scroll down for a .gif instead.

I won't have a whizbang revamped recipe index overnight. I've paid a chunk of money [gasp, go buy something on Amazon using my link please] to the good folks at Inlinkz and I'll slowly add to it in a seasonal manner, focusing on produce that is more unique to the farm share/farmer's market. That means garlic scapes right now.

If you check out my Garlic, Garlic Scapes and Green Garlic Recipes Collection you'll find a wide variety of omnivore, gluten free, vegan and paleo recipes contributed by many bloggers. [Every link has been obtained by permission of the blogger.] I've pinned all the links to my Garlic Scapes Pinterest Board, if you like to organize recipe ideas that way. There are many recipes for Garlic Scape Pesto, sure, because that is an excellent way to put up a garlic scape crop for the year--but I've included everyone who contributed because I'm not going to be the one to test and pronounce which is The Best Garlic Scape Pesto Recipe Ever. Taste is subjective.

I have two requests:

1. If you have, or know of, additional recipes I can add to the index, please shoot me an email and tell me about them. My info is on my About page.
2. I'd like to know how the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient works for you on your device. We are a Mac family, and Luddites to boot, so I have no idea how this looks on an Android product or on Chrome or stuff like that. I can't make it better if I don't know what's not working.

I have been sharing pizza recipes, and it's a Friday--the day I traditionally fix pizzas for my family--so since I have a food blog [I almost typed I am a food blog] I will uphold tradition and stop babbling about the new direction for the recipe index and instead share a pizza. 

Keeping it short and sweet, because I've written enough already.

Garlic Scape Pesto Pizza with Mushrooms, Artichokes, Peppers and Red Onion

1 pound pizza dough of your choice

2 to 3 Tablespoons of Garlic Scape Pesto (here's my recipe)

¾ cup chopped fresh mushrooms

½ cup chopped marinated artichoke hearts

½ cup chopped bell peppers

¼ cup diced red onion

1½ cups shredded cheese (I used a blend of fontina, mozzarella, and asiago)

For baking directions, please refer to my Pizza Primer, or my 7 Tips for Making Pizza at Home posts. I'd rather show you dogs running past garlic scapes. I'm sorry I didn't get a shot of Vincent. He's too fast.

Mustard Greens Kheema (Ground Beef and Mustard Greens Curry)

Ground beef and a whole bunch of mustard greens magically transformed into an Indian-spiced main dish the whole family enjoyed.

I've been calling myself a seasonal eater for many years now, since I embraced the concept of eating locally from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. I've recently realized that's not entirely true. A more accurate label would be I am a weather-dependent eater.

While I do eat locally [as in, you won't find fresh tomatoes or fresh berries in my house unless they came from the garden, the farm share or the farmer's market because I like food that tastes good] I don't care what season we're supposed to be in. What matters more is what it feels like when I step outside with the dogs each day. Menu plans get tossed out the window if the weather is not as expected.

Let's take the other day, the first of June, as a prime example. According to the guy on public radio it's the 37th Week of Middle Spring or something and I planned to use up the rest of my son's birthday dinner--steak, potatoes and Bernaise sauce--in an omelette with a side salad from the farm share. Sounds like a lovely Spring meal, no? Except June dawned cold and rainy, not omelette and salad weather. We turned the steak into beef stroganoff instead. I am a weather-dependent eater.

This recipe works for a wide climate range which makes sense because we eat Indian food year round. Last Fall I asked my friend Laura, author of The Spiced Life, for a recipe to use both ground beef [from the cow in the freezer] and mustard greens from the farm share. She sent me to her Kheema with Springtime Greens. My spice cabinet is not as extensive as Laura's and I wanted to just throw everything in the skillet, so I had to modify.

It looks like a giant skillet of mustard greens--but cover and wait!

Last week I posted an easy vegetarian recipe for using your farm share greens--Artichoke & Arugula Pesto Burrata Pasta. A year or so ago I posted an even easier vegetarian recipe--Squash, Mustard Greens and Chick Pea Masala.  I'm ready to share a more involved recipe. While it does have the extensive spice list of Indian food at home, it's also a one pot meal (ok, rice cooker = second pot). My kids liked both the near uniform texture of the meat + greens as well as the familiar flavors of their favorite Indian foods. I liked getting rid of an entire bag of mustard greens in one swoop.

Do you see how much this cooks down? Shown before adding yogurt.

For more recipes using Mustard Greens, please see my Mustard Greens Recipe Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. For more recipes using ground beef, please check out my round up of 106 Food Blogger Recipes Using Ground Beef. I've got a Greens board on Pinterest where I'm pinning interesting recipes I find around the web, and I also share some on my FB page.