CSA Pics Week 4 and Some Seasonal Recipe Ideas

While this week's CSA share contained many greens, we started to see more vegetables too. This week we got a bunch of chard, a bunch of lacinato kale (my favorite kind of kale!!), 3 garlic scapes, a bunch of beautiful Japanese turnips, three beautiful bright yellow summer squashes, a head of lettuce (I chose butter lettuce over romaine), a nice bag of the best snow peas ever and a little pot of purple basil mixed with lemongrass.

So far this week I have made that kohlrabi slaw I mentioned Tuesday, beautiful squash and snow peas sauteed in pesto with eggs on top and swiss chard, squash and garlic scape pizza topped with goat cheese and basil. I have been on veggie cloud nine this week and it should only continue! The house is stocked with greens galore. I can't even decide which meal was my favorite. They were all so delicious and fresh.

The kids however, they have not been thrilled with the turn of events. After Block Island I can't say that the kids are eating much of anything except milk and bread. I don't know what it is about traveling that makes my kids go on hunger strikes. But while I have been making slight alterations to the kids' meals to keep the peace, by and large I am just serving them things like swiss chard and summer squash pizza because there is no guarantee that they will eat hot dogs either. Aaaahhh. Both Things picked absolutely everything off the pizza. They ate crusts for dinner. I am such a good mommy, aren't I?

Asparagus and Spinach Pizza

I am stuck in a food rut. I am hoping that the burgeoning vegetable season will inspire me to cook new foods.

Case in point, pizza. I make homemade pizza probably two to three times a month. I have fallen into a comforting routine of meaty spaghetti sauce, spinach, pepperoni (more on that later) and chevre style cheese with parmesan. The kids like it and usually eat it.

But last week I couldn’t. I was so sick of it. The kids were hungry. I knew a new concoction could backfire. But the air was balmy and blowing into my galley kitchen from the eastern side. And I said screw it. Enter pizza with olive oil, spinach, onions, asparagus, olives, chevre style cheese and parmesan cheese. Not that it is a massive difference from the original, but no sauce or meat made this pie feel very very light. Yet it was totally satisfying.

All I did was to start with my homemade whole wheat pizza crust, and add olive oil. I brushed it around so that the coating was even and went right to the end, not just where the toppings were. I then piled up the veggies, spinach first so that it cooked down followed by finely chopped asparagus, thinly sliced onions, olives and then finally the cheeses and some fresh black pepper. Everyone ate everything. I didn’t even tell Thing 1 that he had eaten asparagus. Who cares. He ate it!

If you are stuck in a rut, change it up

More Clever Time Saving Tricks!

This is a busy time of year for me at work. Couple that with Holiday Cheer and Holiday Chores and that makes for one tired Mama. But I don't want to throw all my hard work out the window. In the last week I have discovered two things that make my life a little easier.

First off, I have trouble making my pizza crust on a week night because the crust needs to rise for an hour before baking the pizza. I have tried refrigerating it, and the result was kind of gummy and gross. This really gets me because pizza could be such a great weeknight meal. I could chop up all the veggies in the morning, and that night I could crumble the cheese (I have been using a chevre style cheese rather than mozzarella), dust with veggies and olives and voila! It would be dinner on the table in 20 minutes. But with no easy crust, how am I supposed to accomplish that??

So last Friday I tried making my Whole Wheat Pizza Crust (Haha-That was like post number 5 and I am STILL making that recipe!) before I walked out the door in the morning. I mixed up all the flour, yeast, honey oil and water and......I just let it sit on the counter. Anticlimactic, no?

Well, before now I was pretty scared to let food sit out all day. But now that I am more comfortable with cultured food, I know that letting the dough rise all day, rather than the hour called for by the recipe, will just make the yeast flavor more pronounced. DH asked me if the dough was twice the size as normal (he was working late and didn't get to eat it). It worked and I came home to a lovely pizza dough. Thing 1 helped me punch it down and roll it out. I am now getting them in the kitchen about three days a week to help with dinner, instead of just turning the TV on while I cook. Let's hope I can keep up with that. But long story short, the crust was good. It was easy and I will now include homemade pizza among my other weeknight meals.

And secondly, I made homemade beef bone broth in my crock pot. A while back when I made beef broth I did it on a week that our babysitter called out from work. I labored over the pot on the stove all day. I left it running, but fortunately it was a rainy day, so it was no problem to be inside with the kids. What would I do on a normal week?

This time I put my bones, veggies, herbs and vinegar in the crock pot before I went to bed and put it on a low 10-hour setting. The following morning before I left for work I unplugged the pot, then plugged it back in and started it on another 10 hour setting. That night after the kids went to bed I strained all the veggies, squeezed out every last drop of stock that I could get and refrigerated it overnight. The following morning I took the tallow off the top and boiled it down, froze it into cubes. Looking back at the week, I don't feel that I worked especially hard for this bone broth. I didn't wake up extra early to do it. I had the time to get it done. It wasn't especially hard.

I am thrilled that both of these things worked. I am always happy to find neat clean and orderly ways that I can pay attention to my health without having my life revolve around food preparation. It already does to a certain extent, so as I add each new thing, I need to find more balance. I never though I would be the kind of person that makes their own stock, and yet here I am. I don't buy bouillon anymore. Not to mention the fact that half the reson I make the broth is for the tallow, which I fry alot of things in now. Using the tallow is so much better for anything beef, plus I know it can handle high heat frying. I feel like I am getting it for free!

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust, Take 2

Fridays have turned into Pizza Fridays here at my house. It always seems that we have friends over or we just feel like having pizza on Fridays. It has been this way for 5 weeks or so!

Well this week our CSA recommended a pizza recipe of spinach, feta and garlic scapes and that sounded amazing. So I made it but also added parmesean cheese, olives and onions. I simply cannot eat pizza without onions. And we had some lovely friends over to share it! Our friends have also recently had their second child so the decibal level in the house definitely went higher than normal.


I would like to take this time to revamp the whole wheat pizza crust recipe previously posted. Since the weather has been so hot and humid, my pizza dough has been too sticky and has needed almost a cup of additional flour. Since that actually creates more dough that then doesn't fit on my pan I decided to adjust the recipe for all to see,


Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

1 cup all purpose flour 1 cup whole wheat flour
1 pkg instant yeast (.25 oz)
1/2 tsp salt
6-7 oz water, warmed to 110 degrees (i used the hottest tap water I could get out of my tap and it was fine)
2 tbsp Olive Oil
1-2 tablespoons of honey (use sugar if you are feeding a baby under one year, like I am)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Prepare pizza pan by spraying with non-stick cooking spray (i just lined the pan in foil) Combine all dry ingredients, except whole wheat flour, into a large mixing bowl. Next, add liquid ingredients and gradually add whole wheat flour, until dough mixture becomes stiff and hard to stir. You may not have to use all the whole wheat flour. However if the dough mixture is still too moist, feel free to add more all purpose flour to stiffen the dough. Cover the bowl with a clean towel and set aside for 20-25 minutes, allowing the dough to rise. Empty dough out onto a clean, floured surface. Knead by had 6-8 times, it may be necessary to add additional flour to the surface to keep the dough from sticking. Roll into desired shape and thickness. Place rolled dough onto prepared pizza pan, add favorite sauce and toppings. Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes, depending on crust thickness.


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Some highlights of the evening? Thing 1 dancing in his underwear and rainboots to Thing 2 hitting the piano to make "music". We ran out of paper towels and I had to use a nearby clean diaper to clean up a spill (way more pricey than paper towels!) Both Things passing out ahead of schedule due to extreme exhaustion. *Sigh*

I thought I would also include a final picture of what our kitchen looked like AFTER everyone had eaten and went home. For all you folks out there who wonder how we can cook all these meals, well, our house is a wreck most of the time! Enjoy!

Sick

I called in sick to work today. Which I rarely do for myself. I will take time off if the kids are sick, but usually if I am not feeling well, I'll usually push through and still manage to get everything done. But today I woke feeling pretty crummy.
The best thing in all of this? DH had the kids in the morning and our baby sitter had them in the afternoon, so I had the entire day to rest and feel better. I have not gotten so much time for myself during the day (sick or not) since I had my first child. I admit it was kind of glorious to not be responsible for someone (or some work) for a few hours. I think by tomorrow morning this will be behind me.
It was hard getting dinner on the table tonight because I still felt run down. DH suggested that we order in. But we bought all this food over the weekend so I pushed through and made the whole wheat pizza crust. And boy am I glad that I did. I was starving for carbs, probably my body's attempt at trying to feel better. I ate my entire half. Which I couldn't even manage to do the first time I made it.
Here's to making it myself!