6 posts tagged “tomato”

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!

Sunday we had to go pick up our new CSA basket for the week, but we still had a lot of stuff left from the previous basket! Since we liked the sauteed salad we made last week, we decided to have it with dinner to make use of the beets, fava beans and swiss chard. While at the farmer's market, we also spied some squash leaves at one of the flower vendors, in with the herbs they sell. We had these a few years ago and it's been hard to find ever since. It seems nobody thinks people will like them, but they are like eating the squash version of pea vines: very tender with a mild flavor. So, we got some to add to the sauteed greens. All in all, it was just ok. I just think we are done with sauteed greens for a while. They are getting tiresome. And the largest fava beans were mealy, which was a disappointment.

Sunday morning's CSA leftovers meal, however, was much tastier! I made home fries with the rest of the cooked yukon gold potatoes and some peppers from the market. I chopped up and pan-fried a couple slices of bacon, then removed the bacon bits and fried the potatoes and peppers in the bacon fat. Mmmmm, bacon grease..... Then I just crumbled the bacon bits on top when I served it. We were out of ketchup, so we ate it with some of the pepper sauce, which was awesome!

After the lard-fest of the weekend, Monday called for some lighter fare. We got broccoli and green beans as part of our CSA this week, but not a lot of either one. Leah got a big cauliflower to try pickling, but wasn't going to be able to use it all, so we added the rest to our dinner. We also got a couple HUGE heirloom tomatoes, one of which was getting smashed on the bottom because it was so heavy, and a large cucumber, so I made a salad of tomatoes, cucumbers and dill, with a light balsamic vinagrette. Leah tossed the broccoli, cauliflower and green beans with olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon zest and roasted them in the oven with a couple chicken breasts, and finished them with a squeeze of lemon juice at the end. It was delicious and filling and there wasn't a starch in sight!  So of course, we had rootbeer floats for dessert to make up for that :P

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

Time to clean out the fridge to make room for the new CSA basket! We had some spring onions and a few carrots left, along with some asparagus and cabbage that we had bought early in the week and kind of forgot about. We also picked up the most gorgeous yellow-orange "Lemon Boy" tomato at the farmer's market. It was begging to be thickly sliced and put on a burger. The weather was perfect for grilling, and since we watch way too much Food Network, we got a crazy idea: "Jucy Lucy" burgers. We watched Man Vs Food in Minneapolis, which is where the Jucy Lucy burger originates. It's a cheeseburger with the cheese inside the patty and it is delicious! We made a quick slaw from the cabbage, carrots and one small onion to go with it. Since we had the grill going already, we threw the asparagus on as well and then sauteed the rest of the onions. It was "healthy" since we used 9-grain buns and had 3 veggie sides, right???

I made a peach blueberry tart earlier in the day (before it got hot), and we ate that with a dollop of whipped cream for dessert. They were the nicest peaches I have ever used! They were super ripe, but didn't get bruised or squished when sliced in half to remove the pit. The skin came off by just peeling it, not using a knife and losing half the flesh as well. I really need to find out what kind they are so I can remember. Freestone peaches are the best!

Salad Nicoise is one of our old standby dinners. It's both delicious and super easy to make. A typical nicoise salad has boiled new potatoes, steamed green beans, hard-boiled eggs, olives, tomatoes, tuna and a dijon vinagrette. We generally substitute kalamata olives for the Nicoise oilves, because they are easier to find and are only a little bit saltier. We also usually use the pre-packaged lemon-pepper tuna steaks (either StarKist or Bumblebee brand) instead of the canned tuna. We just like it better :) This time we used some yellow wax beans in place of the green beans and some fingerling potatoes, both of which we got at the farmer's market when we picked up the CSA basket, with this recipe in mind. Leah made a nice vinagrette with some of the herbs from our garden too!

For dessert, I made a rustic tart with nectarines and some gorgeous raspberries from the farmer's market. I did it the lazy way, with store-bought Pillsbury pie dough. All you need to do is lay out the dough, pile some fruit on it, fold over the edges so they overlap, sprinkle a little sugar on top and bake for about 30 minutes at 425 degrees. Couldn't be easier! This is what it looked like before it went into the oven:

We had a salad planned for Sunday night's dinner because we needed to use up some lettuce and veggies from the previous week and also knew we would be getting more lettuce and greens this week. So, Leah made a chimichurri marinade for the gulf prawns, avocados and romaine hearts, all of which she grilled. I tossed romaine, mizuna and  flashy trout's back lettuce (the speckled one, from last week's CSA) with a citrus vinaigrette as the salad base. We layered some tomatoes, Korean cucumber, grilled avocado and grilled gulf prawns on top of the lettuces. We also added a few of the pickled turnips that we made the other day. Those turned out nice, kind of sweet and spicy. The trout's back was similar to romaine, but a little more earthy and delicate. The mizuna was very nice and tasted like a really mild sorrel, without the sourness. The mix of the three lettuces, with one being grilled, made for a surprisingly good salad blend!

Dessert was farmer's market strawberries on top of some semi-stale poundcake that we splashed with amaretto to make it moist again, with whipped cream on top. I am not a huge fan of almond flavoring, but the amaretto paired suprisingly nice with the strawberries.