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Recipes

Pan Roasted Cauliflower with Cannellini Beans and Kale

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Anisa

Last week we made a tasty side dish with our garden and CSA goodies.  Rick thought it was good enough for me to share.

Pan Roasted Cauliflower with Cannellini Beans and Kale

2 TBS butter
1 TBS olive oil
1 head cauliflower, trimmed and cut into bite size florets
coarse salt and red pepper flakes
1/4 water
1 bunch of kale leaves from the garden, tough stems trimmed, washed, dried, and cut or torn into pieces
2 large cloves of garlic, minced
1 can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
parmesan cheese

In a 12 inch skillet, heat butter and olive oil over medium-high heat.  Add cauliflower to pan and season with red pepper flakes and salt to taste.  Let the cauliflower brown well before turning and continuing to “toast” on all sides.  When the cauliflower is getting nicely browned, add water to the pan and scrape up any browned bits.  Add kale, cover the pan with a lid and let cauliflower steam until most of the water is absorbed or evaporated, about 5 minutes.  Remove cover and stir in garlic and beans.  Stir until beans are heated through and the rest garlic is fragrant.  Serve topped with grated parmesan cheese.

I wish I had gotten a picture, but it was so good that we ate it before I could grab the camera.  Let me know if you give it a try and you like it.

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Lazy Peach Cobbler

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Anisa

MMMmmmm… Monday!  I thought I’d share one of my favorite, easy dessert recipes this morning. Peach Cobbler!

You can make this recipe in a cake or brownie pan, but I like it in my cast iron skillet.  Preheat your oven to 325°.  Add 6 tablespoons of butter to your pan and stick it in the oven to melt.

Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, stir together 1 cup of flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon.  You can use any kind of flour.  In these pictures I used white, but have used whole wheat and even corn flour before.  Basically, whatever is on hand.  Keeps it easy.

To this add your liquid – I use 1/2 cup milk and 1/4 cup half and half or cream.  But any combo will do, cream making it a bit richer.  I’ve used buttermilk before and it’s delish.

Once that is all mixed up (about the consistency of pancake batter), remove your pan of melted butter from the oven and dump it in.  Don’t stir it in the pan.  You can see that the butter sort-of goes to the edge of the pan, and that’s ok, don’t mix it up – this is the lazy way, remember.

To this add about three cups sliced fresh or defrosted, unsweetened peaches.  We get lots of peaches in the late summer, and a great many go into the freezer for us to use throughout the year.  We defrost them and add them, with their juice.  Just dump them on top.  Again, don’t stir, but if there’s a big pile, I’ll move some over to an empty space.

  

If you want, you can sprinkle a bit of granulated sugar on top at this point, but I usually don’t since we eat this so often, we’d be fat, fat, fat if I did!  Put the pan in the oven and leave it there for an hour.

When your done, it’ll be delicious, peach cobbler – the easiest you’ve ever made!

Categories: Recipes | Tags: , | 2 Comments

Spinach-Black Bean Enchiladas

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Anisa

Last week, after all the rain we’ve had, we collected an abundance of spinach.  It’s been so  yummy.  I decided to spinach up a few of our regular recipes.  I came up with this gem, and had to share with you!

Spinach-Black Bean Enchiladas

2 cups cottage cheese
A big, giant bowl full of spinach
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
18 corn tortillas, cut in half
1 recipe Garlicky Enchilada Sauce (recipe below)
1/2 cup shredded Monterey jack cheese
coarse salt, ground black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400.  In a food processor, combine cottage cheese and spinach and process until smooth.  Transfer to a bowl with garlic and black beans.  Stir to combine and season with salt and pepper.

In a 2 quart baking dish layer 6 tortilla halves.  Spread with half the spinach-black bean mixture.  Add 1/2 cup enchilada sauce.  Layer 6 more tortilla halves and the remaining spinach-black bean mixture.  Top with remaining tortilla halves and cover with 1 cup of enchilada sauce.  Save remaining sauce for another use.  Sprinkle Monterey jack cheese over the top.

Cover baking dish with foil and bake for 15 minutes.  Remove foil and bake another 5 minutes until cheese is melted and casserole is bubbling.

Homemade enchilada sauce is easy to make and much more flavorful than prepackaged.  Usually I use onions as a base, but one day when we were unexpectedly out, I used garlic instead.

Garlicky Enchilada Sauce
In a medium sauce pan, heat 3 Tablespoons olive oil over medium-high.  Saute 6 minced cloves of garlic and 4 teaspoons of ground New Mexico chili powder until fragrant, about 1 minute.  Stir in 2 Tablespoons white vinegar and 2 cups tomato sauce (I use tomatoes from the freezer, put through the food processor, but a 15 oz can is fine).  Stir in 2 cups chicken or vegetable broth.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 5-7 minutes until slightly thickened.  Salt to taste (perhaps 1/2 teaspoon?).

Categories: Food, Recipes | Tags: | 3 Comments

Green and Good!

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Anisa

Since at this time of year, everyone seems to have an abundance of greens coming from the garden, I thought I’d share my favorite green smoothie recipe.  I shared it a couple weeks ago on my birth blog, but that you might appreciate it too.

This recipe was given to me by my midwife, Jen Anderson-Tarver, but I’ve played with it a bit to suit my personal tastes and moods.

To a blender add:

1/2 pound kale, tough stems removed
1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup sliced frozen peaches, or approx. 1 frozen peach, unsweetened
And 1 of the following of your choice:  either 1 whole carrot, 1/2 a banana, OR 1/2 cup frozen blueberries

Blend until smooth, pour into glasses and enjoy!

The original recipe calls for the half a banana, but I don’t really care for bananas in smoothies.  They are a bit too sweet for me.  I like to substitute the carrot, which is a little sweet, but not too much, and since I don’t otherwise like carrots much, it’s a good way for me to sneak them into my diet.  The blueberries are a good choice if you don’t want your smoothie to actually be green… great for those with an aversion to green foods.  We’ve also substituted spinach for kale, though I prefer the kale if we have it.

This is the smoothie Henry and Emmett ask for over and over.  Rick usually makes it with a carrot for me, and they like it just fine.  They’ve even bragged to the neighborhood kids about how good it is.  Of course, Emmett has been known to run from me stuffing handfuls of spinach into his mouth before I can make him come back inside.  So fun having kids that like to eat their greens.  How lucky are we!

Categories: Recipes | Tags: | 4 Comments

Independence Days: Spring Fever

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Anisa

So this week, I’ve been bustin’ out projects left and right.  We built the chickens the new nest box on Saturday.  Rick cut another big limb off the tree Sunday morning, but the weather quickly turned too cold and snowy to do anything else outdoors.  Instead we did some decluttering in the former office, and started some major basement reorganization.

Rick picked up more stone for our future patio, and I’ve sort of been on a baking kick too.  Not to mention the serious, and much needed hose-down Rick gave the high chair (I don’t remember Henry getting it so dirty?), the copious amounts of laundry he got off my plate this weekend, and the serious scrub down in the kitchen.  What would I do without him??

Rick says I’m nesting, but I think it’s a bit of spring fever.  I am just so happy that warmer weather is here, to get a little vitamin D, to get some dirt under my fingernails again.  It was a long winter for me.

This week’s report…

Plant something – more spinach, more leeks

Harvest something –  24 eggs, spinach enough for a couple omelets.

Preserve something – some pork gravy Rick couldn’t bear to throw out.  ;)

Waste Not – compost, scraps to chickens, etc.  Lots of recycling this week.  ;)   Listed three chairs on craigslist to make more room in the little house.  We sold one on Monday.  I hope the others sell, we could use the money and the room!  Also still haven’t missed a week of meal planning (yay me!).  That’s 12 weeks straight now.

Want Not – Built the chickens a new nest box, got more stone, been scouring craigslist for everything lately, including a new camera and a picnic basket.  Haha.

Build Community Food Systems – nothing major or even interesting here this week.  Do you hear the crickets chirping yet?

Eat the Food – The usual – stuff from the freezer, another jar of jam, elk, etc.  Made some really yummy potato soup-turned corn chowder from frozen corn this week.  Recipe from my head:

3 slices of bacon
1/2 onion, diced
1/4 cup flour
4 cups milk
4 large potatoes, peeled and chopped (I cut mine into various sizes so some break-down and some don’t)
corn from 4-5 ears
salt and pepper
shredded cheddar and/or pepper jack cheese

In a large pot, cook the bacon until crispy over med-high heat.  Remove the bacon to drain, and reserve 3ish tablespoons of the grease in the pot.  Add the onion and saute for a few minutes until the onion begins to soften.  Add the flour and whisk until there are no lumps and the flour is cooked but not browning.  Add the milk, whisking, a cup at a time until all the milk is added and there are no lumps of flour.  Add the potatoes and corn.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Bring to a boil, stirring constantly so the milk doesn’t scorch, the reduce heat to a simmer.  Continue cooking about 20-25 minutes until the potatoes are soft and the smaller pieces begin to break down.  Meanwhile, crumble the bacon and shred the cheese.  When the small potatoes are broken down, serve with cheese and bacon pieces on top.  Serves 6 (ish).

Categories: Food, Independence Days, Recipes | 4 Comments

Three Cheers for Volunteers!

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Anisa

Last week we went out to the garden and found THIS!  Volunteer spinach!  Hooray!

We decided to take advantage of the nice weather by getting a bit of garden prep done and putting a few seeds into the ground.  Rick also helped the neighbor get more ready on his garden by digging out three tree stumps and getting some major tilling and composting into the beds.

Our neighbor is cracking me up.  When he first wanted to do the garden he gave me free license for garden design as long as it included corn and potatoes.  Now he’s got definite ideas about what he wants and doesn’t want, so we are modifying the plans I made all winter a bit.  I’m actually really glad, since it tells me he’s a lot more excited about his space than he is letting on.  We’re adding carrots and onions.  He’s from Indiana and missed the corn fields, so we are planting four long rows for him to walk through.  I talked him into beans with the corn, though he thinks he “won’t like how it looks,” he’s willing to let me try it since I keep telling him the beans will help feed the corn.  But corn and beans are still a few month off.  This is what we actually planted this weekend:

Plant something – spinach, lettuce (four kinds), radishes, and peas.

Harvest something – eggs, compost and a leaf or two of that volunteer spinach.

Preserve something – Ah – TAMALES!  My friend, Jen, came over on Saturday and while Rick and the boys kept busy digging out tree stumps, we made a triple batch of corn and poblano tamales.  We ended up with 90!  Jen took about 30 of them home and let me keep the rest.  She was super generous and I’m very grateful!  We put away enough for five meals in the freezer, and kept out enough for Saturday’s dinner and lunch on Sunday.  And – OH were they delicious.

We also learned about making lard – we rendered pork fat both last year and this year.  But we learned a bit more this time around.  We ended up coming up short, so we added bacon grease.  I knew I was keeping that around for something!

Waste Not – compost and recycling

Want Not – Sunday we bought a few new baby chicks.  I really want a hen that will go broody so we can have her raise future chicken generations, so we’re hoping the Buff Orpington will provide on that front.  We added another Araucana, because I really love getting colored eggs,  and I’ve been thinking of actually, finally, selling some eggs, just to recover the cost of the feed, so we added a third – a Black Star.  Wouldn’t it be great if one of them liked to lay double-yolked eggs?  We had one pullet in the last batch that laid them nearly every day like a champ, but she was killed by a fox attack.

Build Community Food Systems – Well – already mentioned the tamales and the neighbor’s garden.  That’s it for this week.

Eat the Food – lots of items from the pantry.  Nothing special.

Categories: Chickens, Food, Garden, Independence Days, Recipes, Urban Homesteading | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments

Happy Chickens Lay the Best Eggs

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Anisa

LOOK what we got this week!

Plant something – not yet… this weekend if it doesn’t snow though!

Harvest something – eggs! Even old Mayzie girl laid eggs and she’s four this year!  We’re so happy to be back in eggs from out own girls.

Preserve something – two quiches and a bag of soup went into the freezer – I’m trying to get some meals frozen for when the baby comes.

Waste Not – compost and recycling, scraps to chickens, etc.  And I’m seven weeks straight on planning meals!

Want Not – We scored some twin beds for the boys from craigslist.  They are a really nice set that can be bunked or not.  We’ve already set up Henry’s and he LOVES it.  We’ll be saving his other bed for the new baby when they are older.

Build Community Food Systems – shared some frozen green chiles and grape jam with my sis & bro-in-law.

Eat the Food – Duck was on the menu this week.  I usually have a harder time using our game birds than the elk or venison, but I am making a point to do it.  And I LOVE duck!  Served up two zucchini-green chile quiches using veggies from the freezer at brunch.

This is my favorite duck recipe: Doug’s Grilled Duck Breasts from Field and Stream Magazine.  So yum!

Categories: Chickens, Garden, Independence Days, Recipes | Tags: , | 1 Comment

Independence Days: Week 31

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Anisa

Plant something – nothing

Harvest something – eggs, tomatoes, kohlrabi, zucchini, eggplant (!), pumpkins.  The chickens are really slowing down with their eggs.  In fact we had to buy some this past week.  :(   I harvested three of our eggplants.  They were a bit on the small side, but I didn’t want to take the chance of them getting a frost without us even getting one.  They were delicious.  There are a few more still out there.  We’re going to let them grow as long as the weather holds out.

Preserve something – dried more tomatoes on the dehydrator, froze some winter squash puree.

Waste Not – compost and recycling, scraps to chickens, etc.

Want Not – nothing.

Build Community Food Systems – started working up a plan for my neighbor’s garden.  After six years of watching us, he’s announced that he’d like a space in his yard (next to our garden) where he’d like to grow corn and potatoes.  He asked for help and we are HAPPY to give it!  Yay!

Eat the Food – made a couple yummy things this week.

Orecchiette with Butternut Squash Cream Sauce

Cook 2 cups orecchiette pasta in salted water until al dente.  In the mean time, saute 1/2 a diced onion in olive oil until soft.  Add 1 tsp dried sage and saute until fragrant.  Drain pasta reserving 2 TBS of the cooking water.  Return the pasta to pot.  Add the onions and 1/2 a butternut squash that has been roasted until tender and smashed slightly to the pot.  Stir in reserved pasta water and about 1/4 cup half and half.  When all is well combined stir in 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese.  Serves 2.

Double Chocolate Jalapeno Muffins (pictured above)

So I took the original recipe found here, and substituted three fresh jalapenos that had turned red (therefore a bit sweeter than the green ones).  So delicious!

Categories: Food, Garden, Independence Days, Recipes | Tags: | 3 Comments

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