Chard and Bacon Pasta

We've been getting a lot of chard in the CSA lately, so I'm always on the lookout for new chard recipes. I tried a new one last night that was easy and delicious.

Bacon and Swiss Chard Pasta

The only change I made was that I didn't have fettucine so I used some whole wheat radiatore and some regular fusilli.

Chicken and White Bean Soup

I saw this recipe in an old Bon Appetit magazine, and it sounded great and easy. It's fairly similar to another soup I like to make from Cooking Light, involving Great Northern Beans and turkey sausage.

So, tonight I made this recipe for Chicken and White Bean Soup and it was quite good. I didn't make it exactly as written, mostly because I'm lazy and cheap. I skipped the herbed oil part entirely and instead put some Italian spice blend (from the Giant Eagle with the grinder on top) into the soup as it cooked. I also used up all my onions the other day, so instead I chopped up a few garlic cloves and 1 1/2 large shallots. I used tomato paste (not sure if that's the same as puree or not) and I also never use as much oil as the recipes call for. I also skipped the parsley and bay leaf, as my spice cabinet has not been restocked since my move yet. I used two goods-sized chicken breasts (halves) which were over a pound.

Anyway, I highly recommend this. It had a lot more flavor than I was expecting and is very easy to adjust to your own personal taste. It was very filling and I just ate it with a piece of whole wheat sourdough toast.

That was my new recipe for the week! :)

I'm baaaack

So, it's been quite a while. I'm sure no one is even reading this blog anymore, but that's ok! Mr. T and I just broke up and I moved into a new apartment in Grandview, so my adventures in cooking and eating are either about to get a lot more exciting or a lot more boring. :)

In an attempt to stick to the latter, I'm going to pledge to try one (or more!) new recipe every week, and blog about it here. I probably won't get to this week's until the weekend, but that's ok.

I also joined a different CSA this year. I liked Sippel a lot last year, but I just thought it would be fun to try a different one. Plus, Wayward Seed is most likely going to have a pickup location at my place of employment. Pretty hard to beat that! So look for CSA updates starting in May (I think).

My new yard does have some gardening space, so I'll be planting some no-yet-determined goodies and will keep you updated on that as well. Definitely some herbs and tomatoes, not sure what else. I don't know yet how much sun it gets, so that will affect my choices. I did buy some little starting pots so I can even do some from seed! (um, good luck with that!)

So, exciting things on tap for this year! Hopefully we'll have some good eating ahead!

Coconut Vanilla Cupcakes

I know I am woefully behind on this blog, but I need to post this recipe. It is SO good. I made them for a baby shower I'm throwing with some co-workers tomorrow night and I brought 2 in for Jill, who LOVES coconut cake, so she could try them. She gave them lots of praise, so I feel like I'm right about how good they are.

Here is the recipe, from Epicurious:
Vanilla Bean Coconut Cupcakes

I used vanilla paste in the cupcakes instead of beans or extract, and I think I put in more than I was supposed to. I think I used the equivalent of 1 1/2 beans. Whatever, they taste awesome.

Some other tips:
-The reduced coconut milk gets a skin on it when you chill it in the fridge. Skim this off before you use it, otherwise everything will be lumpy or you'll have to put it through a mesh strainer like I did.
-If you pipe the frosting on top, don't put too much on. I realized I was about to run out with 6 left, so those just got frosting smeared on top. I actually think this works fine since you sprinkle coconut on top anyway.
-I made 19 cucpakes and think I could have gone to 20. The batter is very thick but it does rise.
-I didn't bother toasting the coconut for the top.

Seriously, try these. I don't even really care for coconut all that much and these are delicious.

Roasting tomatoes

In an effort to eat all these tomatoes, I found recipes for tomato tarts. One of them suggested drying them in the oven before you make the tart and lots of the reviews raved about the tomatoes, so I've been making those. They are SO good. I cut them into wedges and scoop out the seeds. I put them on a baking sheet with some olive oil, garlic, fresh thyme and salt. I cook at 350 for about an hour and half. I start checking them and removing the ones that look done and keep cooking the bigger ones. Seriously, these are awesome. I eat them plain but they'd be great in dishes, on sandwiches, in salads, etc.

Here's a link to the original recipe:
Oven-Dried Tomato Tart with Goat Cheese and Black Olives

I've never actually made the whole recipe. :)

VERY yummy pasta

Since we've been getting so many veggies, we've been trying to put them to use. I was feeling a little overwhelmed with squash and zucchini, so I decided to look for a good recipe for them. I just randomly happened to get an email from Jeni's ice cream that day about their recipes being in Food & Wine, so I decided to look there instead of my usual Epicurious. I picked three recipes and sent them to Mr. T. He chose the first one and we were both thrilled he did because we LOVED it. Both of us. It was pretty healthy and we thought it would be a great base recipe, easy to adapt to just about anything.

Farfalle with Yogurt and Zucchini

I sauteed some delicious shrimp in olive oil and garlic to go with it and they turned out great and rounded out the meal. We both thought it was a great meal. I will certainly be making that again. Also, I used 2% Greek yogurt instead of whole milk (all I could find at Weiland's), and it was fine.

More recipes to come soon!

Recipe

We did end up making the frittata with the kale we got. Here is the recipe for Frittata with Bacon, Fresh Ricotta, and Greens.

We used a mix of greens - I think kale, chard and beet tops, but I'm not positive. It turned out pretty well, although we burnt the bottom a bit. Perhaps most exciting was the bacon. There's a place at the Clintonville Farmers' Market (I think it's called Oink Cluck Moo, although I might have the order wrong) that sells lots of meats. I'm not a huge meat eater, so although Mr. T sometimes gets stuff there, I never do. We had bought some bacon there which we used in the frittata, and it was freaking delicious. SO good.

Recipes

To make good use of some of the great greens we've been getting, we made a delicious Potato Soup with Kale and Chorizo. We threw in about a pound of greens - kale, chard, and kohlrabi tops. The soup was great and is very filling. Pretty healthy too!

Since we were backing up on green onions, we made these incredible green onions biscuits.

They were so good! And to top it all off, I made homemade butter to go with it! I used cream from Snowville Creamery and basically just threw it in the Kitchenaid. Wow, was that ever good. It was so creamy and tasty. The combo of the fresh butter and the still-warm biscuits was wonderful.

I also bought some delicious looking sugar snap peas at the Farmers Market last weekend which we finally tonight made into a stir fry with shrimp. We based it on a grilled shrimp recipe but didn't actually grill anything.

I thought it needed a bit of salt but it was otherwise great. And we also made a roasted beet salad to try to eat up some of the delicious beets. That was just a simple salad of lettuce, roasted beets, goat cheese and a basic vinaigrette.