Spicy Peruvian Veggie Stew...

Week Nineteen (Fall Share)...

Sweet & Sour Noodles...

Return of the Refrigerator Pie - Chard and 'Shrooms...

It's all about Alton. And his egg pie. Actually, better know as Refrigerator Pie. Seriously, this may be the single easiest/handiest recipe I lean on when entertaining guests or trying to impress people with a substantial breakfast.

You can check out the recipe here - on this page, he lists out a number of different topping/filling combinations... I've tried both meat and meat-free variations, and all have turned out well - swiss cheese and softer cheese such as provolone seem to work the best. Cheddar is also good if not a little oily. Even goat cheese tastes good with some sun-dried tomatoes and/or spinach, but actually comes out a little bit chalky I have found.

If anybody has any ideas and/or suggestions on how to get that to work, I'd love to hear them.

Turkey and Black Bean Chili...

Week Eighteen (Fall Share)

Afghan Carrots and Sweet Potatoes...

Red Bean Masa Boats...

Mixed Italian-Style Salad w/ White Beans

In order to use up as much of the CSA share as possible, I decided to make a salad of sorts to serve with some grilled chicken breasts I picked up on sale... Pretty much the only thing I added outside of the CSA material was a can of white beans. The additional ingredients were the parsley, basil, diced tomatoes and onions, and the two red peppers that were roasted under the broiler and peeled...

The dressing, as it were, was quite simple - extra virgin olive oil, some sherry vinegar, a bit of minced garlic, sugar, salt and pepper.

Week Seventeen (Fall Share)...

Week 17 was the first week of our fall share, but I am not sure if the produce really screams out "fall" yet - I'm sure that will happen in weeks to come. In week #17, we have carrots, raspberries, two green bell peppers, another "salsa" kit (tomatoes, onions, peppers), basil, and a head of arugula.

Kamut and Quinoa Pasta in Basil Sauce...

Trader Joe had this interesting-looking (and presumably healthy) fusili pasta made out of kamut and quinoa, so I thought I would grab a package and throw it together with some of the vegetables. Specifically, I wanted to get ahead of the basil going bad, so I pureed it with some olive oil, parsley, a touch of lemon juice, and some salt in order to make a sauce...

The vegetables I used were onions and some of the red peppers (both from the CSA) and some shitake mushrooms and sugar snap peas. I roasted the peppers and peeled/diced them (pictured behind the sauce), and then decided to roast the shitakes as well. Shitakes, and mushrooms in general, can soak up a fair amount of oil, so seeing as there was already a fair amount in the sauce, I decided to roast them off in the oven to try and save some additional oil/fat...

The assembly was pretty straight-forward - I sauteed the vegetables (the snow peas were slightly blanched first) along with a bit of garlic in my cast-iron pan with some olive oil, tossed in the cooked pasta, and then stirred in a few ladles of the sauce, adding in some salt, pepper and a bit of the pasta cooking water. The noodles held up quite well - I would definitely buy them again.

Additional Goodies...

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Southwest Vegetable "Stew"...

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Week Sixteen...

The final summer share from Potomac Vegetable Farm...

But never fear. I'm a sucker. I can't resist, and thus - I'll soon be detailing PVF's fall share program. It sounds like there will eventually be a shift in focus away from the traditional leafy vegetables and summer fare (tomatoes, corn) to root vegetables and more hearty greens.

So - on to this week's share. Tomatoes, peppers (red), raspberries, escarole, parsley, basil, potatoes, onions, and two small eggplants. I'm thinking stew of some sort - one big freaking pot of something, because my week's a bit cramped. Stay tuned...

Away on Vacation - Summer Vegetable Soup

Part 3:3 - Gwenne's final creation...

Summer Vegetable Soup

• Sauteed chopped garlic, lg. shallot and baby spinach in olive oil.
• Added reserved sauces from chick peas/chard and simmered a few minutes.
• Cut corn off cob (CSA), chopped zucchini (CSA), pole beans (CSA), several hot house tomatoes chopped, handful of CSA parsley and about 4 peeled carrots.
• Added fresh veggies to sauteed mixture, poured over about 4 C veggie broth and added an additional cup of tomato chipotle pepper broth.
  Added fresh ground black pepper, sea salt.
• Served with shredded Parmigiano.

Away on Vacation - Stir Fry

Part 2:3 - Gwenne's second creation...

Stir Fry

• Sauteed up chopped onions, jalapeno pepper, fresh garlic, yellow zucchini, handful of chard (CSA), mushrooms and spicy "chicken" (from GrandMart).
• Added in the sauce you gave me (black bean garlic sauce with some sweet chili condiment, some sesame oil, and some mirin), plus 2 heaping spoonfuls of chili garlic sauce and a bit of soy sauce.

Away on Vacation - Armenian Roasted Chickpeas

Sorry for the delay - I went home to Chicago on vacation, and good friend Gwenne stepped up to fire away and take pictures of week 15 creations... Part 1:3 -

Armenian Roasted Chickpeas

• Combined chopped garlic (CSA), 1 lg sliced shallot, can of chickpeas (drained), fresh chopped tomatoes and a purple pepper (from courthouse market-though you can't tell it's purple in the pics...it was fairly small), fresh ground black pepper, some sea salt and some dried fennel in glass baking dish. Poured over 3/4 C olive oil, covered w/foil and roasted in oven at 350 deg. for about 45 minutes.
• Drained chickpeas after cooling ("juices" from tomatoes, oil, and peppers saved for soup).
• Sauteed several lg. cloves of garlic & 2 lg. shallots until tender.
• Added in remaining CSA chard plus several handfuls baby spinach.
• Sauteed until chard & spinach were wilted then poured about 1 C veggie broth over mixture, covered and simmered about 10 min.
• Drained chard/spinach mixture (saved broth to add to veggie soup) and tossed together with chick pea mixture and some more olive oil - just until warmed through.

(no pics-but served with whole wheat couscous)

Week Fifteen...

Sadly, I'll be passing this week's share on to friends, as I am on the road to Chicago for an extended weekend of PTO/vacation time. Well, most of it, anyways (I had to eat some of the melon and the raspberries). Week fifteen included: two ears of corn, a handful of pole beans, two yellow squash, a head of parsley, more tomatoes, a head of garlic, and the cutest little watermelon. If any of the recipients take pictures, I'll look to post them upon my return...

Asian Greens...

I keep coming back to it, but we have gotten a lot of chard from this year's CSA, and it really stands up to just about anything, especially stir-fry. I thought I would mix things up a little bit by adding some Vietnamese-style sausage (I was already going to use oyster sauce, so I figured why not)...

Another difference - I decided to mix up the choice of noodles - GrandMart (where I also found the sausage) sold these refrigerated packages of these noodle cakes or "whole-wheat ovalettes" - they have a nice chew to them, but I have to say, they were a bit unwieldy in that they threw out a whole lot of flour/paste into the boiling water, and made the cooking liquid practically chewy, it was so thick... Even trying to rinse and drain the noodles wasn't helping much - they thickened up the sauce so much as soon as they were added, there was no need at all for corn starch or any other thickener.

Other than that, everything else was pretty standard. The sausage had to be steamed first, then I sliced it into rounds, and stir-fried it with some chard, onions, and some aromatics. The sauce was a combination of oyster sauce, chili sauce, sesame oil and mirin.

Mexican Tortilla Casserole

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More Pasta Caprese...

This is a bit of a re-run from an earlier week, but the recipe turned out pretty well... That, and I still had a ton of tomatoes.

I'm pasting in from a previous post - flip back a page or two for further details: I had a variety of fresh/heirloom tomatoes and rough-chopped them, tossed them with some olive oil and some salt, and broiled them briefly. I then tossed a pound of linguini with tomatoes (call it a pound and a half to two pounds), diced mozzarella, and a dressing of sorts that is heavy on the basil, a bit of garlic, a dash of sugar, and some lemon juice...

I froze the mozzarella, but seeing as how I was taking it to work for a lot of lunches, I found that as long as you only warmed up the pasta and did not heat it through on full-blast, the cheese did not get too gummy. I also added parsley from the CSA, some green onions, and the onions (diced) from the CSA. When broiled, the tomatoes let off a lot of juice - this basically becomes the sauce.

Week Fourteen...

In week fourteen, we got two heads of chard, one pint of blackberries, a couple of ripe red tomatoes, one bell pepper (the rust-colored object nestled into the middle there), some small onions, two ears of corn, and a small eggplant.

Full disclosure - I had to junk one of the ears of corn. Upon peeling back the husk, the end of one ear had gone south, and a little creepy-looking worm had been setting up shop. It spooked me out.