Pork Chops & Apple Sauce

Remember that episode of "The Brady Bunch" where Sam and Alice joke about having "pork chops and apple sauce" for dinner? Well, they were really onto something...it's a great combo! Personally though, I think pork chops and cranberry sauce is an even better combo. For months, in my freezer I've had two pork chops from my meat share at Simmons Farm, and I really really REALLY wanted to eat them. Well, it's the end of February, but all week last week the high temperatures were in the 50s, so I decided that it would be fun to defrost the pork chops and grill them. I already had a can of cranberry sauce (with whole berries), so I just needed a veggie. I've wanted to try smashed cauliflower for a long time, so I looked up some recipes and bought a head of cauliflower. So, it turns out that making smashed cauliflower is one of the easiest things to do ever!

Step one: Cook the cauliflower.

My method of choice is to steam it in my grandmother's fancy veggie steamer that looks like a double-boiler.

Step two: Smash the cooked cauliflower.

I've been dying to use my Blendtec for whatever I can, so instead of employing the potato smasher, I used the blender.

Step three: Add butter, salt, pepper, milk/cream, cheese, etc. to enhance the flavor of the smashed cauliflower.

Step four: Enjoy!

Ok, so using the Blendtec resulted in smashed cauliflower with the texture of thick yogurt or creamy frosting, but it tasted delicious!

So, the next time I do this I will either consult the user's manual for the Blendtec, or I will just use the potato smasher and some serious elbow grease...LOL It was very tasty, despite its creamy consistency!

Summer Squash Enchiladas

This week in my CSA drop, I got two of the cutest zucchini you've ever seen! Zucchini is one type of summer squash (see how much I'm learning from being a CSA member?). Last week, I got two yellow summer squash - so there I was...with four summer squash and a million ways of cooking them. Luckily, I have a cookbook called "The Classic Zucchini Cookbook: 225 Recipes for All Kinds of Squash," and on page 78, there is a recipe for "Summer Squash Enchiladas."The link is to the recipe, but the site credits it to the "Joy of Gardening Cookbook." The only difference I noticed between the one I used and the one online is that the online version calls for vegetable oil (mine used olive oil) and calls for the squash to be steamed before it is added to the onions and garlic (mine just called for it to be added to the onion/garlic mixture).

I just love a shot of the ingredients!

Yes, that's half & half...I don't normally use milk for anything, and the half & half at my market comes in the perfect sized containers, so I went with that. :) If I ever make this again though, I will probably just use milk, because the sauce was too thick. The sautéd squash mixture was delicious by itself, then adding the scrumptious cheese mixture added dimensions of taste and texture.

The sautéd squash

I planned to take pictures of the sautéed squash, the cheese sauce, and then the two mixed together, but in my excitement to get everything together I forgot to shoot them before I mixed them! :(

The baked enchiladas

 I used lavash instead of tortillas (there's a story here, but I won't bore you with it), so rolling the enchiladas was a bit challenging, but it worked ok. There was enough of the squash and cheese mixture left over for my dinner, so I will have to wait until tomorrow to have an enchilada. I'm excited to put tomatoes and sour cream on one and enjoy it! These enchiladas look deeeeeeelicious!

Cabbage Kielbasa (Organic Turkey Sausage) Supper

Ok, so I said I got a head of cabbage with my CSA drop this week, and what better way to eat it than with Kielbasa? I found an easy slow cooker recipe for cabbage Kielbasa supper, so I'm giving it a try. Believe it or not, I've never cooked with cabbage before. Growing up, I associated it with things like sauerkraut and horseradish, and I didn't want to have anything to do with it if I could help it. Funny thing - I love coleslaw, but I didn't know it was made of cabbage when I was younger! As an adult, I never thought you could do much with cabbage other than coleslaw, and that always sounded like a lot of work!

A few weeks ago, I had cabbage and Kielbasa soup for the first time. Tentatively, I dug in, and before you could say "cabbage and Kielbasa," my bowl was empty! I loved it, and it was the first thing I thought of when I chose my head of cabbage on Thursday. Add the bonus of finding a slow cooker recipe, and I'm one very happy girl!

I wasn't about to ruin the organic amazingness of my locally grown cabbage with some random, pre-cooked conventional cow/pork parts ground up and shoved into casings...oh NO! Instead of Kielbasa, I got organic turkey sausage. :) AND...instead of frying it on the stove, I GRILLED it! Since cabbage and potatoes are pretty bland, I figured grilling it would add a really nice taste dimension to the dish (take that, Gordon Ramsay!).

Grilled organic turkey sausage is WAY better than pre-cooked conventional sausage.

Step one: cut the cabbage. Well, um...I figured there's got to be a "best" way of doing this, and thanks to the magic of the interweb, I found this handy tutorial.

I LOVE the step-by-step directions + photos!

Step two: peel and cut the potatoes, chop the onion, and throw everything into the slow cooker!

Um...well...this was JUST the cabbage. See step three.

Step three: take out some of the extra cabbage and replace as the mixture cooks down.

Here is the finished dish - DELICIOUS!

Step four: ENJOY!

Simmons Farm CSA

It wasn't until about a year ago that I first heard the term CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). It's a brilliant concept where (non-farmer-like) people from the community pay a local farmer (up-front) for a share in her/his harvest throughout the growing season. Yes, it can be a little pricey, but I believe it is totally worth every penny (and more!). This year, I'm a member of the Simmons Farm CSA - let me list the reasons why I'm happy to be participating:

• The farm is less than 5 miles from my house (4.6, to be exact);
• The farm has been around since about 1643, and it has stayed in the same family that entire time;
• In 2004, the livestock and the 102 acre farm were certified organic;
• I know my farmer, Karla, on a first-name basis, and she knows me, too;
• I can see where the fruits and veggies are grown;
• I can get organic eggs, cheese, and meat from the farm, too;
• I can meet the animals and see how they are treated;
• I'm exposed to veggies I probably wouldn't eat otherwise;
• I'm learning how to eat what's in season;
• It feels good to support a local, organic, family-run farm!

There are plenty more reasons why I'm so grateful to be participating in the CSA at Simmons Farm this year. Here are some of them:

The week 6 bounty - it's too much to list!

As you may or may not be able to see from the picture, I've got cabbage and zucchini to use this week. I think I will make cabbage Kielbasa supper with the cabbage, but can you believe I've never cooked with cabbage? There will definitely be a blog post about that. :) I thought about baking with the zucchini, roasting it, or even grilling it, but I've got an awesome cookbook called "The Classic Zucchini Cookbook," so I decided to poke around in there to see if anything sounded good. I found a recipe in it for summer squash enchiladas that sounds to die for (maaaaaybe it's all the cheese in the recipe, but who knows!), so watch for that post, too!

A closer look at the AMAZING pork chop that was my meat share this week.

As an add-on to my veggie share, I chose to participate in the meat share, too. Simmons farm also offers egg and cheese share add-ons, but I decided to stick with just veggies and meat. I've already gotten and enjoyed some breakfast sausage (seriously, the BEST sausage I've ever tasted EVER) and some hamburger (oh. my. gawd. best. burgers. ever!). I'm currently hoarding another package of ground beef and a package of sweet Italian sausage in the freezer! I already know what I'm going to do with the sausage...stuffed eggplant...YUMMY!

Gotta run...I've got some cooking to do!

Raw Soup

In addition to introducing me to the Master Cleanse, J Word also introduced me to the most AMAZING raw soup recipe ever! It's all over the internet, and the best place I have found it is on a a woman's website called Heart at Home where she has a bunch of "raw" soup recipes. Well, my blender is a piece of $#@!^, and I bought all the ingredients for this raw soup a couple of weeks ago, then I got home and tried to use my blender, but it wouldn't work!

Well, I put the blade and the pitcher in the dishwasher, and it magically started working again! So, I re-bought all the ingredients again tonight, and I made the soup to take for my lunches this week. I love this soup because it's so good and so easy. If you have a decent blender, there is actually very little chopping involved. :D Don't get me wrong though, my next purchase for the FGF kitchen is a Blendtec Blender!!

This recipe is fun to make because you blend some of the ingredients and chop others then mix the chopped veggies with the blended soup. It makes a lot of soup, and if you put colloidal silver in it, it will help it last almost twice as long!!

The chopped ingredients

The final product...mmmm!

April Fool's Food Fest!

I was home sick 3 days this week, and thank goodness I still had a few dinners in my freezer from the cooking/freezing fest M and I had New Year's Weekend! I ate them all though, so it was time for another cooking fest. Fortunately, M told me about this awesome blog called Skinnytaste (Gina's Skinny Recipes). I found four recipes I wanted to try that provide a nice variety, and I'm excited to get going. Actually, I just started the first one, Crock Pot Chicken Taco Chili, because it cooks on low in the slow cooker for 10 hours (while I SLEEP!). I also needed to plan my lunches for the week, and since I'm tired of turkey wraps and don't want to have to use the microwave, I decided to make my tried and true raw soup. I found a great recipe for squash soup on the same site, so I decided to make both and take the squash soup with a little side of salad + raw soup "dressing" for my lunches this week. Soooo....that means I've got 6 (that's SIX) things to make!!!

There are several steps in this massive process:

1. clean the kitchen - it's very important to start with a clean slate (note: this also serves as a productive procrastination tool)
2. make a thorough grocery list - it's good to note the exact amounts of the ingredients you'll need, because often a recipe calls for an amount that is different than the amount that comes in a can or package
3. get fresh, local, organic ingredients
4. have supportive, reliable company - because this is gonna take awhile...
5. don't start cooking at 10:00 pm (oops...I forgot to create this list BEFORE I started...)
6. if you feel a little overwhelmed at the thought of cooking 6 pretty involved things, start with the slow cooker recipe! :)

The grocery list for this project was SERIOUS...and double-sided! I was not playing around here, people!!!

My "take no prisoners" grocery list! (step 2)

I had an absolute BLAST arranging all of my ingredients and then doing a photo shoot of them. It all felt so professional!

Start with fresh, local, organic ingredients (step 3)

I was fortunate to have some really supportive help, too:

Supportive company (step 4)

And now...THE FOOD!!!!

Crock Pot Chicken Taco Chili: This was by far the easiest thing to make, and it is honestly my favorite thing as far as taste and overall enjoyment go. It is good to eat with some Kashi fire roasted veggie crackers. :) I was AMAZED at how much chicken it seems there is once you shred it. And - I learned something very important when cooking this: the reason the chicken in my crock pot recipes sometimes dries out and overcooks so easily is because I cut it into such small pieces (DUH!)! I loved that this recipe has you lay the whole breasts on top during almost the entire cooking process, because that keeps the chicken from drying out. I'm totally using that trick for all my other crock pot recipes that use chicken!

Cooking the chicken breasts on top, whole - GENIUS!

The finished product - SOOO GOOD!

Beef, potato, and quinoa soup: This was one of the more complex recipes, but it still wasn't difficult. The flavor of this soup is PHENOMENAL! The fresh cilantro really adds complexity to the taste. Even after thawing and heating it, this soup still tastes fresh. I've never cooked with quinoa before, and that was really exciting. I did a little research before starting this recipe, and it's a good thing I did, because I found out that uncooked quinoa cooks to 4x its size! That means, 1/2 cup uncooked quinoa bulks up to 2 cups of cooked quinoa - so make sure you're clear about whether the amount of quinoa in your recipe is cooked or uncooked - it will make a BIG difference!!

This is a horrendous picture. The bluish haze is steam.

Tuna noodle casserole: A Midwestern favorite, casseroles of all kinds were a huge part of my childhood. Although tuna noodle wasn't a casserole my mom made often, she made plenty of others like chicken & broccoli and beef & vegetable. This recipe was ok, but it was rather bland. I had some whole wheat penne, so I decided to use that rather than buying noodles. Well, I think the noodles probably make a difference, because this casserole was just a little weird with penne - the taste was fine, but penne needs to be covered in red sauce, not tuna. :) I also didn't want to buy milk just for this recipe, so I used some 1/2 and 1/2 that I already had. I also used more peas than the recipe calls for - because I had a 16 oz. bag and just wanted to use them all. So - my modifications to the recipe may have led to its blandness...but it was still good, and it froze well, too.

Noodles, penne...whatever!

Another mini ingredients shoot...

This doesn't do it justice - it was pretty!

Spinach lasagna rolls: If these were people, they'd be super popular! Not only are they absolutely gorgeous, but they were a TON of fun to make! (NOTE: If you enjoy using your hands to cook, then you will consider this fun, but if you do not like doing things such as kneading bread or hand-rolling cookies, then this would probably not be fun for you.) These also froze well, and my only suggestion is to have some extra tomato sauce on hand when you thaw and heat them, as the amount of sauce used in the recipe ends up being rather sparse. (NOTE: My definition of "sparse" may be a little skewed, because I could drink tomato sauce by the glass, so keep that in mind!) Also, my cheese/spinach mixture seems rather bland, so next time I will add more salt/garlic salt. These are very tasty, and two rolls with a nice salad makes a tasty and healthy dinner.

It was so much fun to mix the cheese filling!

Pardon me while I execute an "artistic" shot...

The filling spread really well onto the lasagna noodles.

A lasagna roll ready to be bathed in sauce.

The final product - which was AMAZING!

Raw soup: Due to circumstances beyond my control (i.e., my blender being a total piece of $#!^@*%), I was unable to actually make the raw soup. This was a complete and utter shame, because then most of those ingredients went to waste (which makes me ill to even think about).

Squash soup: Since this soup also depended upon use of the blender, it also went unmade, and I'm ashamed to say that the beautiful squash I bought also went to waste. And, to quote the cashier at Clements', "that's the biggest butternut squash I've ever seen!" On a positive note, I put the blade through the dishwasher a couple of weeks after my cook fest, and the blender started working again. The blade had been getting stuck and not turning, so it must've gotten cleaned and loosened in the dishwasher. I'm still getting a Blendtec though... :)

The prize-winning butternut squash that never got to be soup... :'(

For dinner the night of the cook fest: lasagna roll, chicken chili, and tuna noodle casserole - YUM!

Breakfast Skillet (from "leftovers")

Since all three of us (me, Kim, & Jen) have eyes bigger than our stomachs, we ended up with plenty of grilled veggies and steak left over from the fajitas last night. Our original plan was to make Belgian waffles for breakfast this morning (I told you it was a marathon hangout!), but Kim and I were both craving a hearty breakfast, so we switched gears (sorry, Jen!). K had the brilliant idea of making "breakfast skillets" like what you can get at Denny's or IHOP - only WAY better since we use high quality food and cook with love (an ingredient I'm pretty sure neither Denny's nor IHOP has ever heard of before...).

So - I fried some potatoes & onions (with salt, pepper, basil, garlic powder, and cayenne), and we layered the potatoes with cheese, grilled steak & veggies, and two fried eggs. Top it off with a garnish of pico de gallo, and voilà! - a breakfast that would quite easily put Denny's and IHOP out of business! :) Take a look...

Complimented by a slice of organic 12-grain toast & a mango nectar spritzer.

New Year's Cooking / Freezing Fest

M and I spent the first weekend of 2011 together celebrating and cooking dinners that we divided up to freeze and eat over the next few weeks. This was a pretty big production...choosing recipes, going to the grocery store, cooking, dividing, freezing...it took all day, but it was totally worth it! M even used pictures to document my freezer filling up as we cooked more and more.

M made something in the crock pot that was basically like the insides of a chicken pot pie without the crust. Served with warm biscuits - what's not to love about that?!

I was a chopping ninja for the sweet potato soup I made.

This picture isn't great...but the food was! This was coconut soup with Indonesian chicken (chicken rubbed with a bunch of amazing spices).

Ever the organizer, M kept us on track...

I had to start the sweet potato soup in a skillet, then I finished it in a pot.

My freezer the way I love to see it - nice and FULL!

Ham & Egg Sandwich (for dinner)

Breakfast Scramble

Grilled Chicken + Grilled Eggplant

Kabobs

It was the first day of spring and almost 70 degrees outside, so it seemed like a great idea to fire up the grill! Kim & Jen (and Sam) came over, and they suggested shrimp & steak kabobs. With a little arm twisting I agreed (ha!), and we went shopping!

The kabobs had onion, mushroom, yellow pepper, cherry tomatoes, and of course the shrimp and steak, and they...were...delish! :) We also got giant sweet potatoes and cooked those on the grill. Oh, and since Kim's gluten free, Jen made this killer chocolate pudding and coconut pudding, and we topped it with her homemade whipped cream. YUM! It's gonna be a fantastic summer! ;)

Homemade Mashed Potatoes

When I was little, my grandmother and my mother always made mashed potatoes from scratch. It always looked really complicated to me, and as much as I love them, I've always been intimidated by the idea of making my own mashed potatoes. I realize now how absolutely ridiculous that is, because I've done it successfully twice in the last 6 weeks. :)

Heidi came over for Christmas dinner. She brought a salad and a rack of lamb from Trader Joe's, and I made homemade mashed potatoes and a carrot cake (well, I provided the ingredients, but Heidi did most of the work for the cake). Anyway - I followed a recipe the first time, and the mashed potatoes were, well, blah.

The second time, I looked at the recipe and then did what I wanted, and they turned out soooo much better! It helps to add about 3x the amount of butter and 10x the amount of cream/milk/half + half the recipe calls for. Oh, and I added dill - that was the key ingredient. :)

Sausage Stuffed Zucchini Eggplant

I found this recipe after my dear friend Azalia gave me a 4 foot long zucchini this summer, and I had no idea what to do with it beyond making zucchini bread and muffins. :) I found this recipe for sausage stuffed zucchini, and I made some serious mods! I will have to post a picture (and reviews) on Monday. :)

UPDATE: Ok, so I knew the zucchini part of the sausage stuffed zucchini might be a challenge, and boy, was I right! To be fair, I only tried one store, but the "zucchini" they had were not only imported from Mexico, but they were literally 6 inches long and about 2 - 3 inches in diameter - in other words - not suitable for STUFFING. :) So...I stood in the produce section for a minute to mourn the loss of my zucchini fantasy and think of a way to salvage the situation (kind of like the engineers at NASA did when they had to manage all those problems with the Apollo 13 spacecraft...). My first instinct was to scrap this plan and just make a pizza, then I decided to make like Julia Childs and get creative! So...I took a moment to contemplate vegetables that are similar to zucchini...and then I had a vague recollection of hearing about "stuffed eggplant" once. So, I picked out what I thought were the three best-looking eggplants (is that right???) and continued my shopping trip.

Long story short - the eggplant worked beautifully. AND according to my Italian friend, stuffing it with Italian sausage stuffing is apparently one of the most loving things one can do to an eggplant. So, I was happy - I mean, this meal was INSANELY good! Add a salad and homemade mashed potatoes (I wasn't really sure what side went best with this, but it just seemed like a starch was a good plan) to the plate, and you're good to go! Oh, and three really important things about the recipe: 1) the ingredient list doesn't mention grated parmesan cheese, yet the recipe instructions call for it twice, and 2) IMHO, this recipe only serves 2. I routinely double, triple, or quadruple the recipe for 4-6 people...usually about 1/2 meat for each person, and 3) the recipe instructs you to remove part of the zucchini/eggplant to make room for stuffing, then never tells you what to do with it! You can add it back to the meat, but I sincerely believe that ruins the flavor. I leave it out (after trying at least 3 different times to add it back in). I say cook it up separately or just discard it. Bon apetit!