6 posts tagged “green beans”
This meal didn't actually use anything from the CSA, but that's ok, because it was so darn good! Friday and Saturday, there was entirely too much BBQ stuff on Food Network making us hungry, and Seattle has a lack of "good" BBQ joints, so Leah decided to "make her own damn ribs!" She got recipes and tips from amazingribs.com and she spent parts of Saturday and Sunday making the ribs. She used the Memphis Dust rub for overnight and a Lexington Dip for the sauce. It was a perfectly balanced sauce of spicy, sweet and vinegary. The ribs themselves took about 5 hours to cook in the oven, basting every 30 minutes. While they were cooking, I spent the day cleaning off the deck so we could eat outside and converting the old rusted-out gas grill to a charcoal grill and she made potato salad. It turned out so good, we are planning to try some more recipes soon!
On Sunday, we picked up some King salmon at the farmer's market, so we used some of the leftover Memphis Dust rub on it and grilled it with some CSA zucchini. Leah made a mash from some CSA potatoes and about half a head of cauliflower, with a little cream cheese in it, since we were inexplicably out of butter! The salmon turned out perfect! The seasonings from the rub wasn't overpowering at all, it was just the right amount and sweet and salty to go with the fish.
Ah green beans, we can never get enough of them! I am sure someday they will become like broccoli to me (which I am just tired of eating for the most part), but for now, I still love em and order them in the CSA every week. My favorite way to prepare them is to toss them with olive oil and S&P and garlic, roast them in the oven on really high heat on a pre-heated pan for about 15 mins, so they get browned on both sides at the same time, then squeeze lemon juice over them at the end. It's super easy and so delicious. This time, Leah added a little hot pepper flakes, to make it more like szechuan green beans, since she made another chinese dish: white peppered pork slices.
We got tomatillos in our basket last week, so of course we had to make another easy sauce. First, boil 6-8
tomatillos, 1 jalapeno, 3-4 garlic cloves and a small onion. Remove the
seeds from the jalapeno (leave a few if you like it spicier) and rough
chop the tomatillos. Blend them all together with a little bit of the
cooking water, cumin, salt, pepper, lime juice, a whole bunch of
cilantro and an avocado. The avocado cuts a bit of the spiciness and
adds some creaminess. We cooked the shrimp in the sauce and served with
tortillas, rice, beans and avocados. Leah aslo made a dill sour cream
sauce that was great too.
Grilling is the best! I love it, it even makes summer squash somewhat appetizing! There's nothing fancy here, just grilled the steaks and the squash with simple seasonings and roasted the green beans in the oven with oil, S&P and lemon and made a quickie salad from the mizuna and HUGE head of butter lettuce, tossed with a vinaigrette and some cherry tomatoes. The butter lettuce has made 3 salads so far!
What better way to use up a whole bunch of carrots than to make a carrot cake? I used up about 2/3 of the carrots from the CSA just for this cake, which I made on Saturday. We just finished off the last pieces on Thursday night. So, this cake has carrots, walnuts, pineapple and giant golden raisins. I also replaced half the oil with applesauce. The frosting is just a standard cream cheese icing recipe (cream cheese + butter + sugar). It turned out pretty good, but I think next time, I'll use crushed pineapple instead of just tidbits to give it a tad bit more moisture. And maybe soak the raisins first too.
Super simple dinner, nothing fancy. We made some easy chicken marsala, steamed some couscous with chopped zucchini and tomato and oven roasted some broccoli and green beans with olive oil, garlic and lemon.
Leah made a little meatloaf using up some of the green onions and garlic from the CSA, paired with beluga lentils and a salad of spicy greens mix, tomatoes and raw zucchini, all from the CSA. The salad mix has some nasturtium flowers in it as well, which are also a little peppery! Leah made the lentils with leftover CSA carrots, green onions, garlic and beef bullion.
We used up the rest of the zucchini for this homemade pizza, which also has garlic, red onions and tomatoes and a mix of mozzarella and goat cheese. The dough was just pre-made from Trader Joes, so it was super easy to just assemble the pizza and bake it. I can honestly say that it was my favorite veggie pizza so far, even with my least favorite of vegetables. I think zucchini is growing on me. I certainly like it better than cucumbers in salads!
We're almost to "clean out the fridge" stage to see what we've got to use as sides for dishes. We didn't pick out our basket this week and got a nice variety of items, but we almost used them all up early in the week already. The eggs and the garlic also last longer than 1 week, so we haven't used them yet. Leah made turkey burgers by mixing in some grated pear, garlic, scallions and breadcrumbs to make the very low-fat ground turkey more moist and flavorful. We grilled the burgers along with some leftover mushrooms and a few of the scallions and served it on some 9-grain buns with thick slices of yellow tomato. We also steamed the rest of the green beans and some sugar snap peas as a side dish, tossed with a little butter and salt & pepper.
We also got a TON of fruit from the CSA this week: 9 small peaches, 20 apricots, 1 pint of blueberries and 1 lb of rainier cherries. We also had 2 pears leftover from last week and I wanted to use up some of the fruit before it went bad, so we made a fruit salad and served it over some vanilla yogurt for dessert. We used 1 whole pear, 1/2 the blueberries, 2 peaches, 4 apricots and most of the cherries. We had already eaten 5 peaches earlier in the week with yogurt for breakfast, so we still have a couple left. I think I am going to try to make apricot dumplings this weekend!
We also got a TON of fruit from the CSA this week: 9 small peaches, 20 apricots, 1 pint of blueberries and 1 lb of rainier cherries. We also had 2 pears leftover from last week and I wanted to use up some of the fruit before it went bad, so we made a fruit salad and served it over some vanilla yogurt for dessert. We used 1 whole pear, 1/2 the blueberries, 2 peaches, 4 apricots and most of the cherries. We had already eaten 5 peaches earlier in the week with yogurt for breakfast, so we still have a couple left. I think I am going to try to make apricot dumplings this weekend!
We have a LOT of catching up to do for this week! It was so hot during the week that we couldn't cook and ended up going out pretty much half the week. Most of the stuff we had from the CSA requires cooking, so by Friday we still had potatoes, fava beans, beets (and greens), turnips (and greens), green/purple/yellow wax beans, mixed greens and chard. That's a lot of stuff to try to figure out what to do with in only a couple days. Plus we got our first fruit box from the CSA as well. I don't think we'll be counting the fruit as part of the weekly challenge, since the pears we got are just now ripe enough to eat.
So, Friday cooled down a ton by comparison to the rest of the week and we took advantage of that to boil some veggies to make our favorite nicoise salad. The baby yukon gold potatoes were so good in this dish! Leah really did a great job with the lemon vinagrette and all the veggies were so perfect. Unfortunately, the purple beans turn green almost as soon as you start to cook them, so that was a bummer. The yellow wax beans were incredibly tender, must be because they are so fresh and new this time of year. We also used the other Lemon Boy tomato that we got at the Farmer's Market and it was really delicious. We'll have to grow some next year!
Leah had also cut up all the fruit that was getting a little overripe and decided to make waffles for breakfast to use them up. We found a super simple waffle recipe that turned out great: 2 cups Bisquick, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup oil, 1 cup club soda. It made a perfectly light and crispy waffle and was easier to make and tasted as good as the buttermilk waffles I made from scratch before.
We needed to decide what to do with the bag of mixed spicy greens. Leah's mom used to make a hot bacon dressing to go with dandelion greens, and I have never had that before, so we gave it a shot. The mixed greens were a little bitter, like dandelion greens, so it seemed like they would be a good match for the sweet bacon vinagrette. We also sauteed the turnips and added the greens to the salad mix to beef it up a little and tossed in the rest of the green and yellow wax beans. We were a little worried about the dressing, because it was REALLY sweet. We added more red wine vinegar and some dijon mustard and a liitle salt to cut some of the sweetness, but kind of resigned ourselves to the fact that it just might not be very good. You win some and lose some, right? So we tossed the greens with the dressing, added the turnips and beans and crumbled the bacon on top. And guess what? It was actually really good! I think the bacon bits helped a lot, but the greens were just bitter/spicy enough that the sweetness was nicely balanced. Oh, and the steaks turned out perfectly, too :P
So, Friday cooled down a ton by comparison to the rest of the week and we took advantage of that to boil some veggies to make our favorite nicoise salad. The baby yukon gold potatoes were so good in this dish! Leah really did a great job with the lemon vinagrette and all the veggies were so perfect. Unfortunately, the purple beans turn green almost as soon as you start to cook them, so that was a bummer. The yellow wax beans were incredibly tender, must be because they are so fresh and new this time of year. We also used the other Lemon Boy tomato that we got at the Farmer's Market and it was really delicious. We'll have to grow some next year!
Now that we're back from vacation, we can resume our CSA Challenge! We missed 2 full weeks of fresh veggies, so I was happy to go pick up our basket this week. This week we got fava beans, flashy trout's back lettuce, mizuna, swiss chard, spring walla walla onions, baby red lasoda potatoes, yellowstone carrots and chioggia beets.
For dinner, we made a spice rub for a couple of pork loin chops that we had cut from a full pork loin roast and grilled them. It was much cheaper to have pork chops this way: less than $5 for the whole roast, which makes about six 1-inch thick pork chops, as opposed to $5 for only 2 chops that are pre-packaged. We had some leftover green beans from last week that were starting to get a little limp, so we decided to roast those with some of the baby potatoes and yellowstone carrots from the CSA. We just tossed them in a little oil, salt and pepper and roasted them for about 30 mins at about 425. We timed it so that when we started the charcoal for the grill, we put the veggies in the oven so the meat and veggies were done at the same time. We finished them both with a lime and garlic butter, which was fantastic, especially on the potatoes!
For dessert, Leah grilled some apricots and then simmered them in a syrup made from balsamic vinegar and honey. She served it over vanilla ice cream and it was one of the best desserts I have eaten in a long time! The sweet and tart balanced each other perfectly and the warm sauce and fruit made the ice cream melty and creamy and just perfect.
For dinner, we made a spice rub for a couple of pork loin chops that we had cut from a full pork loin roast and grilled them. It was much cheaper to have pork chops this way: less than $5 for the whole roast, which makes about six 1-inch thick pork chops, as opposed to $5 for only 2 chops that are pre-packaged. We had some leftover green beans from last week that were starting to get a little limp, so we decided to roast those with some of the baby potatoes and yellowstone carrots from the CSA. We just tossed them in a little oil, salt and pepper and roasted them for about 30 mins at about 425. We timed it so that when we started the charcoal for the grill, we put the veggies in the oven so the meat and veggies were done at the same time. We finished them both with a lime and garlic butter, which was fantastic, especially on the potatoes!
For dessert, Leah grilled some apricots and then simmered them in a syrup made from balsamic vinegar and honey. She served it over vanilla ice cream and it was one of the best desserts I have eaten in a long time! The sweet and tart balanced each other perfectly and the warm sauce and fruit made the ice cream melty and creamy and just perfect.
