Week 12 Summary

Boy oh boy, I am pretty behind with my Week 12 summary (it wrapped up on August 15th, almost two weeks ago!). I kept a copy of our meal-plan on hand so I could remember how we ended up using everything that week! Here's the gist:

Baby Eggplant: gone! We used most of them to make ratatouille (recipe in this cookbook), which was a new dish for us. I had never had ratatouille before, and frankly had no idea what it even was until we made it. But we both really enjoyed it!

Heirloom Tomatoes: they are gone, but I think we used them both in our Week 13 meal plan. They were really good.

Garlic: we still have it, and have used a little bit at a time.

Hungarian Hot Wax Peppers: gone! We picked these and made most of them into the yummy grilled cheese I posted about last week. There were a few leftovers which I munched on and shared with my coworkers. They got a pretty mixed range of reactions, from instant love all the way to smoke coming out of ears - ha!

Mixed Yummy Peppers: these are gone too! The chevre stuffed peppers were such a hit that I made them again this past weekend for my in-laws (luckily they stayed fresh that whole time).

Red Tomatoes: gone! We made bruschetta with one and the other was used in the ratatouille. 

Green Zucchini: not gone. No, it feels like the zucchini will never be gone. We are still working our way through what we've accumulated this summer. But, we made good use of a few in Week 12: the zucchini spaghetti and ratatouille helped with that. We also made up these zucchini fries one night. They were awesome, but we were extra naughty and fried them up in oil instead of baking them. We needed an excuse to try out the new cast iron skillet.

zucchini fries with some honey-ginger wings

Gold Beets: still sitting in the fridge, untouched... I know, I'm getting predictable.

Peaches: gone! We keep getting peaches, but it seems they get tastier each week. Yes!

Cantaloupe: gone! It was perfectly delicious.

Whole Chicken: we haven't used it yet, but made two other meals this week with some previous cuts of chicken that were in the freezer. Some honey-ginger wings (pictured above), and lemon pepper seasoned legs (below, we ate them with the grilled cheese). When it comes to cooking any part of a chicken besides the breast, Steve has been the point guy so far this year. I need to get some serious practice in this category.

Week 12 Links
Chevre Stuffed Sweet Peppers
Zucchini Pasta with Creamy Lemon Chive Dressing 
Grilled Cheese with Pickled Hot Wax Peppers 


Truth be told, I feel like I've been in a bit of a culinary rut for the past couple of weeks. I can't complain because we are still eating good fresh stuff all the time, but I've been less inclined in the past few weeks to branch out and try new recipes. A lot of meals have been on repeat in our kitchen, but so has much of our produce (zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, rinse, repeat). And I'm sure our busyness also contributes to the lack of creativity, since finding and trying new recipes definitely takes more time and focus than returning an old standby.

I'm hopeful that inspiration will strike again soon, and I'm also getting eager for the pending transition into more fall fruits and veggies. Squash! Apples! I think they will bring with them a new wave of excitement. In the meantime, what dishes have been inspiring you these days? Share your thoughts in the comments, because I need a nudge!

Grilled Cheese With Pickled Hot Wax Peppers

This ended up being the healthiest most fun dinner we've made in a while. Hungarian hot wax peppers for the win! One of my favorite things in the world is eating food as soon as it comes out of the frying pan and is piping hot. So digging into this grilled cheese while it was still all melty and super crispy was awesome in itself. The extra kick that came from the layer of peppers in there took this whole sandwich up to top-notch status. Not to mention that it is the easiest thing in the world to make - all signs are pointing toward the need for more fancy grilled cheese in my life.

These sandwiches were a slight variation of this Jalapeno Popper Grilled Cheese on Simply Scratch

Used From Our CSA
Hungarian hot wax peppers

Thoughts on the Recipe

The grilled cheese was part of our dinner last Friday night. But preparing for the meal started on Thursday evening, because we had decided to pickle our peppers. To do that, we followed the instructions on this page. However, since we only had six peppers, Steve cut the ingredients way down while keeping the ratios intact (1 part salt, 4 parts vinegar, and 12 parts water, by volume). We also skipped the corn oil part of the instructions, and just left them in the vinegar solution for the few days it took to work our way through them. Aside from the fact that I neglected to wear gloves while slicing these up (which trust me, I definitely regretted for about the next 16 or so hours), it was a quick and easy process and we stuck the whole bowl in the fridge to sit overnight.

As far as the sandwich recipe goes, grilled cheese is a hard thing to screw up. So the recipe was a perfect catalyst to helping us use our peppers, even though we didn't follow it exactly. For example, no jalapenos were involved, and we didn't grill the peppers that we did use. Also, I don't usually do the "stir the minced scallions into the cream cheese" thing, when I could just as easily sprinkle the onions over a smear of cream cheese and thereby not have extra or make up too little of the mixture. I'm in favor of keeping it simple wherever possible.

But speaking of cream cheese - adding it to grilled cheese is a genius move. I never would have thought of that.

It took me almost a week to write this post, and I've craved another one of these grilled cheeses every day that I've worked on it - torture! We are all out of peppers, so I think I need some other delicious grilled sandwich ideas to help distract me. Any suggestions?

Zucchini Pasta with Creamy Lemon Chive Dressing

Our plans for dinner last night started out with this dish from Martha Stewart's website, but I quickly realized two crucial things: 1) there is no actual spaghetti in this zucchini spaghetti and 2) there is no way we are going to get our zucchini sliced that thin without a mandolin at our disposal. I love the idea of a dish comprised entirely of julienned zucchini, but it just was not going to happen without that important piece of equipment. Still, since I thought it looked so yummy, and was intrigued by the dressing, I decided to improvise.

True zucchini pasta will have to go into the someday file for us. For last night though, I stuck with the lemon-chive dressing and combined a half-pound of fettuccine with a half-pound of coarsely grated zucchini. Yum yum! More about the recipe modification below.

Creamy Lemon-Chive Dressing from Martha Stewart
 

Don't mind that over-toasted baguette in the picture - we had some build-your-own bruschetta with dinner last night too.

Used From Our CSA
zucchini

Steve mincing chives (and doing so quite precisely, I might add)

Thoughts on the Recipe
-We prepared the dressing recipe as it was written, and cooked up a 1/2 lb. of fettuccine.
- This step is modified from the original zucchini spaghetti recipe: I grated a zucchini, enough to get 1/2 lb., and tossed it in a strainer with some salt. I let that sit for about 15 minutes and then squeezed the zucchini against the sides of the strainer to try to get out as much water as I could. Since it was grated instead of julienned, I didn't have to be so gentle (I'm sure Martha would be disappointed).
- The pasta, zucchini and dressing (we used it all) were tossed together in a bowl. Done!
- In the end, I think this could have done with more zucchini - why not? Since we have no shortage of it right now, grating another one would not have been a bad idea, and would have stretched this dish farther.

This was a wonderfully simple dish to pull off on a weeknight. I love the lightness that the zucchini brings to it. And I've said before that Steve & I don't normally gravitate toward pasta, but I would definitely make this one again. Hooray for finding another way to work through that zucchini!

Week 12 Delivery

Hey there, it's CSA Week 12! Here's what we got in our latest delivery. If you can't tell from the picture, it was an exceptionally heavy box (quite a change from the early weeks of leafy greens and scallions!).

Vegetables
baby eggplant
heirloom tomatoes
garlic
Hungarian hot wax peppers
mixed yummy peppers
red tomatoes
green zucchini
gold beets 

Fruit
peaches
cantaloupe

Chicken
whole chicken

Some initial thoughts about this delivery :
- More tiny eggplants, and now these cute, colorful peppers? I don't know whose idea it is to grow all these mini-versions of vegetables, but they are adorable, so just keep them coming! Not to mention that they taste great; it's like Christmas come early over here.
- I'm jazzed about the melon. Getting something new that you've been waiting on all season is always exciting. It's really yummy too.
- Hungarian hot wax peppers: say what?! I've never had one before. It seems that they are often pickled, and I think we will aim to do that with ours too. There is a grilled cheese sandwich in our plans this week that may or may not bring them into play. 

Has anyone else ever had a Hungarian hot wax pepper before? Also, tell me I'm not alone in my love of tiny vegetables...