Blackberries

What I Made – Week 14

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The most visually impressive meal of the week is these blackberry almond sweet rolls. I recommend straining the blackberry filling after cooking it down to keep out the seeds. It’s an extra step but makes the outcome much less crunchy!
Even though it looks like green peppers in this shrimp quinoa pilau, that’s just the color the purple peppers turned when cooked!
A quick no-recipe meal made from leftover roast chicken, purple peppers cooked with seasoning, and a fresh tomato-onion-cilantro salsa is wonderful for a hot summer evening.
Cheesesteak stuffed peppers are a very fast meal – just layer a slice of cheese, some deli roast beef slices (and I added sautéed onions) and top with another slice of cheese, and bake 20 minutes. I used about a half pound of deli meat here.

This zucchini oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe was a new one for me. The oats help absorb some extra moisture from the zucchini, but it’s still definitely soft, even if the edges looked crispy. Next time I would refrigerate it per the directions instead of a quick dip in my freezer!

I STILL have some zucchini to use up, as well as lots of watermelon and cantaloupe to eat, but the cucumbers are slowly becoming dill pickles as we speak!

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What I’ve Planned – Week 11

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I try to make a mix of quick, small meals we will finish in one sitting and larger meals that make plenty of leftovers and space them throughout the week. Salad on repeat gets old fast. The ingredients this week help me mix and match flavors for many different styles and tastes. Here’s what I have planned.

The peaches we got are pretty hard and will take a while to ripen. I also see a cucumber a day as snack in my future!

What I Made – Week 11

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This is the week of the year when it’s almost too hot to stand over the stove, but we’re no longer getting much lettuce for salads! Only one salad this week, everything else I tried to make quick and easy or in the crock pot!

This sheet pan dinner simply includes sliced kielbasa, potatoes, and wax peppers, tossed with oil and whatever seasoning you like. I wish I had quick-pickled the peppers, because I missed the tang of vinegar in this.
Blackberries and blue cheese are combined with toasted pecans and a balsamic vinaigrette for this black and blue salad. I added quinoa to make it a full meal.
The cherry tomatoes add a colorful salsa to these zucchini quesadillas.
When I don’t know what to do with chard, I look for a recipe with spinach that also calls for sautéed onions. I toss the chopped stems in with the onions and use the leaves as the recipe directs you to use spinach. This lamb curry gets nice and tender in the crock pot after most of the ingredients are seared in a skillet. I added the chard leaves with about an hour left in the cook time.
This wax beans with chorizo dish would make a great side, but we add some extra chorizo and eat it as a main dish. (This is the Spanish dried chorizo, not the fresh sausage links you might see at the butcher counter.)
This tandoori chicken casserole has two whole zucchini shredded and mixed into the sauce! I usually use hot curry powder to give it a little kick, but I forgot this time, and missed the extra spice.

We ate the peaches plain, and are still up to our eyeballs in cucumbers with plenty of onions still on hand, but we did a pretty good job using up the rest of our veggies this week.

What I Made – Week 10

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  • Another week where I think I made a pretty good effort at using all my veggies. I still have a few zucchini left as well as half a cabbage, and I didn’t use the carrots yet, but they don’t look nearly as sad hanging out in my crisper as two heads of lettuce might have earlier this year. Here’s what I was able to use up and how:
  • This recipe takes a bit of time since the dough has to rise, but is I serve this Stromboli with Banana Peppers with some marinara sauce on the side for dipping. I couldn’t use up the whole bag I got, so I pickled the rest of the banana peppers.
  • This wasn’t my first time making a baked zucchini casserole but it was my first time making Zucchini and Chicken Enchilada Casserole. I’ve found enchilada sauce sometimes hides wheat ingredients, so this recipe that amps up a can of plain tomato sauce until it tastes like the pre-made stuff was a great find. To keep my zucchini from getting the casserole too watery. I threw the sliced rounds on a baking sheet and broiled them until they were slightly browned in spots, a trick I’d learned making zucchini lasagna.
  • I was pleasantly surprised by the flavors in this Lightened Up Pad Thai with Cabbage. The real key was the lime juice, the flavor was definitely missing something when I first left it out.
  • These Wax beans and chorizo are one of my favorite easy recipes. Crisp tender beans, crunchy salty chorizo (the Spanish dried kind, not the hearty links more typical in Mexico or El Salvador), and the tangy vinegar all go so well together.
  • I guess I’d been missing salads, because I was absolutely craving this chicken caesar kale salad. It was actually much better the next day, as the kale had time to soften and the dressing flavors came together.

    • My trick for recipes like these Thai drunken Zoodles is to let the ground pork in this case cook a bit longer than you think it should, so that it gets really crispy. It’s tough to wait that long when dinner time is coming fast, but the texture contrast is needed in a dish where everything else tends to be a little mushy. I loved the flavor of the sauce in the recipe, it would be good on real noodles too!

  • I also made Fridge dills but haven’t tried them yet because I don’t like pickles!

    • When I have time later this weekend, I’m going to try making these amazing looking almond blackberry sweet rolls.

    What I Got – Week 10 2019

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    Back row: Hyssop (note: the official list said “anise hyssop” but I got that last year, and it looked and smelled nothing like this, so I’m pretty sure this is Hyssopus officinalis), Orange Carrots, Green Cabbage, Green Kale

    Middle row: Banana Peppers, Green Zucchini (seven of them!), Blackberries, Yellow Wax Beans

    Front row: Pickling Cucumbers, Yellow Peaches