This time we took some chicken from our roast chicken the other night and added pasta, some broccolini, a few herbs, smash some galic and voila – dinner is served.  This is a good college kid meal, you can change up the pasta, the veggies, substitute the oil with broth to make it a little lighter.  Swap the lemon with white or red wine vinegar for a little different.  We stood side by side at the stove cooking this dish.  When we were done, I asked my son if he thought he could do it all over again, and he assured me that he could.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been eating brussels sprouts every other night.  Rhoads Farm still had brussels sprouts at North Market this week, and we bought another quart.  The vendor told me that they get their seeds from Europe, that give them a less bitter brussels sprout.  I can tell you that ours are delicious and not bitter at all. My kids aren’t fans because I traumatized them with frozen and then boiled brussels sprouts.  I think there’s no competition – now is the time to get brussels sprouts and cook them up the best way from fresh.

For a brighter brussels sprout, give it a quick blanch, really quick so they don’t get soggy.  You can skip that step, but it does brighten up the plate. I like the pancetta, sliced thinly and less grease than the thick cut bacon. I also add pine nuts because I think they go well, and some garlic.  The white wine vinegar lightens it up a little and will get all the carmelized bits from the bottom of the pan. This is pretty darn tasty.  My husband and I eat brussel sprouts as a dinner snack on those nights we are looking for something quick and not so heavy.  Now’s the time to go out and get those fresh brussel sprouts right off the stalk from your local farmer.  (Excuse the photo – it’s from my IPhone).

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of brussels sprouts – stem removed and sliced in half
• 3 slices of pancetta
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/8 cup pine nuts
• 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

In a simmering pot of water, blanch the brussel sprouts very quickly. It should just turn a little brighter and take it out and drain in a colander.

Meanwhile fry the pancetta in a dutch oven on the stovetop.  When the pancetta is crisp, remove to a paper towel, add in olive oil (if you use bacon and have enough fat, you may not need more oil) to heat.  Toss in chopped garlic, and pine nuts.  Stir until lightly browned and add in drained brussels sprouts.  Splash the white wine vinegar over the pan and with a wooden spatula, scrape at the bits carmelized on the bottom and toss the ingredients.  Place in the oven at 400 for about ten to fifteen minutes until browned.

There are a lot of nice late fall veggies in this potato soup hopefully making it nutritionally filling as well as warming you up on a cold day.  I cut the broccolini into thirds.  The bottom third of the stalk, I put away in the freezer for when I am making vegetable broth.  The middle third I used for the soup and the top third I stir into the pot after steaming in white whine vinegar.  I love having the whole veggie to bite into a nice morsel in the mostly smashed potatoes and celeriac broth. The celeriac I peeled and diced into bite size pieces to fill about 2 cups.  I rough peeled the potatoes – because I’m a fan of skin and had both yellow and redskins – diced to make two cups.

The soup starts with bacon and ends with bacon crumbled over top along with a swish of chopped rosemary.  The bacon came from my favorite butcher, and doesn’t have the nitrate thing going on. The rosemary is part of a present I am giving away for Christmas.  The plants are shaped like a Christmas tree, but they are growing out, so I trim them back and hold on to the leaves and try to find ways to use them.  Throwing rosemary bits into the soup was a wonderful way to do that.

Ingredients:

• 3 slices bacon
• 2 cups diced celeriac (peeled first)
• 2 cups diced potatoes (rough peeled)
• 1 small onion diced
• 6 cups vegetable broth
• 2 tbs white wine vinegar
• 1 bunch broccolini
• 1 cup half and half
• rosemary (chopped)

Directions:

1. In the bottom of a stock pot, cook bacon until crisp.  Remove to paper towel and let drain.
2. Add 2 tbs olive oil to pan.  Throw in onions, potatoes, celery root and the middle third of the broccolini until onions are translucent.
3.   Add in the vegetable broth.  Simmer until the vegetables are soft.
4. While the veggies are simmering in a separate pan – heat up 1 tbs of oil and saute the top third of the broccolini.
5. Splash the white wine vinegar over the broccolini and toss until steamed.
6. When the potato mixture is soft, use an immersion stick to blend the vegetables together into a rough mash.
7. Add in the cream and rosemary.  Toss in the broccolini and serve with bacon crumbled over top.

Oh No Bad Spots!

I buy a good amount of fresh winter squash and small pumpkins in the fall and put it on shelves in the basement.  The basement is unheated and offers a great winter storage most years.  This year however, the temperatures keep rising and so my cold storage hasn’t been great.  Every year though, we lose some of the squash because it gets soft or develops bad spots.  If you see a small bad spot developing, then you need to do something with the squash right now!

Getting Ready For The Holidays.

The holiday season is another time you might want to make a puree from your winter squash.  You can use this puree in your pies, cakes, cookies, etc just as you would your canned puree that you get from the store.  If you have time after work, you can do the puree in the evening, and put it into containers in the fridge to use a couple of days later, shortening your cooking time when you are feeling overwhelmed with preparations.

The squash I used for this post had little spots I had to remove.  I also had some butternut squash that we grew in our garden, but it had areas where it grew too fast and started to split.  Those need to be processed, and not kept in cold storage because they won’t last. It’s also Thanksgiving week, so the right time to use up this winter squash.

Prep the Squash

• You will need a sharp knife.  Remove the stem, then slice the squash down from the top through to the bottom.  Most squash won’t need more than one slice through the center, top to bottom.  Larger squash will need more pieces.

• Using a spoon, scoop out the seeds.  If you like pumpkin seeds, put them aside for toasting later.

• Because the squash was being pureed plain, I placed a silicon sheet on the cookie sheet without any oil or butter.  If you don’t have a non-stick cookie sheet, or a silicon sheet, you may need to lightly oil the cookie sheet to keep the squash from carmelizing on the pan and sticking.

Bake It.

• Place in the oven @ 400 degrees.  Test the squash every so often to see if it’s soft.  When all of the pieces are soft, pull the cookie sheet out of the oven and let cool.

Puree the Pulp.

• Peel the skin off the back of the squash. I found that rather than use a spoon, I used my fingers sliding it along between the skin and the squash pulp.  I placed all of the pulp into a bowl.
• Using a food processor, or blender, puree the pulp in batches putting the processed puree into a separate bowl.  As you are pouring the puree from the processor into the bowl, run your fingers through the pulp to make sure you don’t have any bigger unprocessed bits.
• After all of the pumpkin is pureed, separate into 1 cup, 2 cup, 1/2 cup portions in plastic bowls.  You can put in the fridge to be used within 5 days, or freeze to use at a later time.
• You can also try freezing in batches in a cup cake pan and then when you have frozen cupcake portions, you can freeze in a freezer bag that you suction the air out of.

You can use the puree in all different ways, cakes, pies, breads, soups and if you are clever crow pizza – in pizza.  Yum!

For pumpkin seeds – Clean the seeds and dry them on a tea towel. Toss with oil and salt and toast in oven turning over seeds part way.  My husband loves this part of the processing.

• Cauliflower is in season.

I get overwhelmed with all of the seasonal produce at the farm market and I want it all.  My real problem is having enough time to cook it up before it goes bad.  When we were at the farm market last I bought heads of cauliflower that I used right away. I love cauliflower, but I think it can get over cooked and soggy easily, to me the flavor diminishes, and it’s not as tasty.  Here’s a way to cook fresh cauliflower and make it the center of the dish.  I like roasting, but this uses steaming on the stove top to start off.  Then a saute in a pan with some olive oil and some herbs.  I served it with some Sweet Italian sausage and grated parmesan.  Really tasty, my son, my husband and I finished it up quickly.

• Roasting instead?

I added the sausage, to make it a one dish meal, but you can serve this as a side for any meal. I used the stove top, but you could roast it in the oven in a casserole dish.  I don’t like to heat up the oven for one casserole dish because it takes a lot longer and uses a lot of energy, but if you are cooking whole meal in the oven, roasting would be little work and delicious.

• Prepping the Cauliflower.

To prepare the cauliflower, I cored it by turning it upside down and cutting it out.  Then I sliced the florets off very close to the top so that all the buds fell off. I chopped the rest into smaller pieces, rinsed and drained.

Ingredients:

• Cauliflower
• Water
• Olive oil
• small onion
• garlic
• parsley
• salt
• pepper
• grated parmesan

In a saucepan put about a quarter inch of water and heat.  Place the cauliflower in the saucepan and put the lid on.  When the cauliflower is almost soft, drain.

In a saute pan, heat up a couple of tbs of olive oil.  Chop onion and garlic and saute.  Add drained cauliflower and toss with onion, garlic and oil in the hot pan. Chop parsley, add parsley, salt and pepper to the pan.  Grate parmesan over top of the cauliflower and heat until melted.

Mom made my college son this soup (contributed by Kellie Loudin) and since there were enough leftovers, my husband and I had a bowl when we arrived home.  The soup was delicious but the best part was my son.  He told us his grandmother made this soup that was easy – just cook up the ground beef, dump it and the vegetables into a pot and let it cook. 

So last week, I wanted him to make dinner, but I wanted it done crockpot style.  He had to leave for school, and this was a better solution.  I had to bribe him with a take out dinner the next night if he made the soup because he isn’t thrilled with cooking.  He made the soup again this week, but without the bribe.  I think now he knows how to make two meals and now we’ve doubled his cooking repetoire.  This recipe is perfect for college kids just learning to cook.  Try it out, it’s very good.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 lbs ground beef
• 1 T Worcestershire sauce
• 1 bay leaf
• 16 oz can tomatoes
• 2 – 4 carrots chopped
• 1 med onion chopped
• 1 -2 green pepper chopped
• 2 stalks celery
• 4 med potatoes peeled and chopped
• 3 cups beef or chicken broth
• your favorite herbs

Brown beef and drain fat.  Add broth and the rest of the ingredients.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Simmer 25 to 30 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

For the crockpot version – after you brown the beef and drain the fat, then place into crockpot on low until the vegetables are tender.  Sprinkle in your favorite herbs.

Don’t be afraid to add more veggies – peas go well.  Kale, Chard or fresh spinach can be added in the last half hour.

Mom can’t eat onions or tomatoes; acidic vegetables and fruit upset her tummy.  If you feel it could use a few more vegetables, feel free to go ahead and add them.  Mushrooms might be nice added to this also.

Ingredients:

• Olive Oil
• 3 stalks of celery diced
• 2 large chicken breasts
• Small Butternut Squash – scooped out and peeled
• 4 carrots peeled
• 1 quart of chicken stock or broth
• 1 can of chick peas, drained and rinsed
• 1 bunch of kale leaves stripped off stems
• ground thyme
• ground sage

Directions:

In a stock pot heat up 2 tablespoons of olive oil.  Saute diced celery and whole chicken breasts.  Pull the chicken out of the stock pot, and add in the quart of chicken broth and heat.  Dice carrots and butternut squash and add to stock.  Tear chicken into bite size pieces.  When the carrots have softened but are still firm, add the chicken back in along with the chickpeas. Tear kale leaves and stir it into the stock along with ground sage, thyme, salt and pepper to taste.  Serve in bowl over warm wild rice.

I made a tasty quick dish, with some of her favorite foods.  Shrimp, garlic and asparagus are on that list as well as seeds and nuts.  My ingredients were limited.  I did stop at Whole Foods, but I didn’t want to load up her fridge with fruit and vegetables that would go bad after I left for home. I also wanted leftovers.  I froze a couple of individual meals for my mom to reheat for dinner once I’m back in Ohio.  I think if you reheat with a little chicken broth it will be very tasty.   This meal was made in 30 minutes or less, with very little mess, and I reused the saute pan over for the ingredients so as to cut down on the cleaning.

Enjoy!

• Olive Oil
• 1 lb Fettuccine
• 1 lb peeled and deveined raw shrimp
• 1 lb asparagus
• 2 tbs sunflower seeds
• handful fresh parsley

Cook up Fettuccine in water according to directions, drain and set aside.

In a saute pan.  dry toast the sunflower seeds, then set aside on a plate or bowl.

Add one or two tablespoons of olive oil to the pan heat and then throw in half the minced garlic and the shrimp, and saute the shrimp until pink and firm.Set aside with the sunflower seeds.

Add another tablespoon of oil, the other half of the minced garlic, heat, throw in the asparagus and cook until it’s al dente.

Chop Parsley and toss all of the ingredients together with some salt and pepper.

Serve with grated percorino romano cheese over top.

Yum!

Grilled Summer Vegetables & Bulgur

Tonight’s dinner – had a side of grilled veggies and bulgur.  This side dish is a really fast and easy side that packs in a good deal of nutrients.  This side can also be served as a vegetarian main and can be eaten cold or hot.  So double up and bring it to lunch the next day or a repeat dinner.  It’s a little scorched on the edges, but still very tasty.  A quick grill with olive oil and then after you combine the veggies and bulgur, give it a quick toss with some chopped fresh basil and a little bit of olive oil.

I have a  grill grate that I place over the grill top because I worry that the vegetables will fall through.  I sprayed the grate with a little oil first to make sure the veggies wouldn’t stick and I used a sweet onion along with some summer squash, and red peppers.

Ingredients:

• 1 red pepper
• 1 sweet onion
• 1 small to med zucchini
• 1 similar sized yellow squash
• 1 cup dried bulgur cooked according to directions
• 2 tbs olive oil
• olive oil spray

Core, de-stem and slice pepper lengthwise. Slice onions into similar size.  Slice zucchini down lengthwise into fourths, and divide into thirds so that you end up with rectangles of squash.  Do the same with the yellow squash.  Spray grill grate with oil, and also the vegetables.  Sprinkle with dried basil, salt and pepper. Place on the grill and if you can flip – a couple of minutes on each side.

Cook the bulgur according to directions.  Chop fresh basil up and toss in a serving bowl along with some olive oil, salt, pepper, the bulgur and the grilled veggies.  That’s it, on the table in twenty minutes at the most.