Put Up or Shut Up: Episode 1 - Greens

My CSA box this week contained:

Lettuce, basil, snap peas, squash, zucchini, kale, cucumbers, radishes, broccoli, spinach, bok choy, and eggs.

So many leafy greens!

Here is a riddle that I have heard:

Q: What is the only fruit or vegetable that is not frozen, dried, pickled, or preserved in any way?
A: Lettuce

This riddle is false per my kitchen this year.

I know last year I was trying to figure out what to do with additional lettuce.  I wilted some of it like a bitter green.  It was pretty bad.

But lettuce is one of those things that just keeps coming.  And it starts far before the rest of your salad ingredients are ready to pick.  And if you don't keep up with it, it turns bitter and gross.  I know that my CSA box has recently been packed with it in all it's forms, coming faster than I can use it.  And that doesn't include the lettuce that's quickly turning bitter in my garden.  Lettuce, beet greens, Swiss chard, bok choy, spinach, arugula, not to mention the mint and oregano that is quickly taking over by back yard...

So what do you do with it all?  I hate waste.

I have tried blanching and freezing spinach.  It's an option, but frankly I don't feel like it thaws out well enough that I ever really want to eat it.  It's good for stuff that frozen spinach goes in to, like a spinach  dip (and who doesn't love a good spinach dip), but that's really about it.  It's certainly not something that I would just eat as a side dish for dinner - especially when some of the vendors at the winter farmer's market have spinach growing in their greenhouses almost all year long.

I was watching the Cooking Channel, and Alton Brown was making Pistachio and Mixed Herb Pesto.  This got me thinking about spinach pesto, and arugula pesto, both of which I have eaten and which taste good.  Which was a light bulb moment for me: you can make pesto out of any leafy green.

Even lettuce.

(I talked about and provided my lettuce pesto recipe here.)

And once pesto is made, it is easily frozen and lasts up to a year.  Meaning lettuce can be frozen and saved for later!

My basic pesto recipe is:

• 2 tbsp toasted nuts
• 2 tbsp garlic
• 2 cups green stuff
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 tbsp shredded cheese

Process nuts, garlic, and greens in a food processor until combined into a thick paste, but not past the point where you can still see flecks of individual ingredients.  Slowly add the olive oil while continuing to process.  Add the cheese when ready to serve.

It should look kind of like this

The good thing about this recipe is that two cups of any leafy green is not really a lot.  This is basically the tops of any bunch of veggies you might pick up.  No, those tops are not garbage!  If you're paying by the pound, you paid for those tops!  So you might as well get as much as you can out of them.  If they're fresh and you're in the mood, saute them up and serve them for dinner.  But, if you don't have time, why not take 5 minutes (that's really all this recipe takes) and turn them into some pesto that you can use later.

Here are a few examples:

I thinned my carrots and turned the carrot greens into pesto.  I used walnuts instead of pine nuts because walnuts go into carrot cake.  I wish that I had planted more carrots so I had more greens to thin.  If you've never had carrot greens, they're definitely lightly carrot flavored, but also have a serious grass/clover flavor to them.  Like good grass.  Like when you're a kid and you chew on a long stalk of grass.  Combined with the walnuts which are a little sweet, I felt this was done without the cheese.  I also did not add any garlic (I know, shocking, right?!?)  I got only one serving, which I have not made into a meal yet, but I am waiting to pair it with something with a strong flavor like beef.  I'm thinking this would be a great topping to a steak sandwich.  Last summer (after scouring the internet and deciding they were not poisonous), I put  my carrot tops into my chicken stock.  In retrospect, I think that was a waste.   This is how I'm using my carrot tops from now on.

Next came beet greens.  I again used the walnuts, because I bought too many for the carrots and I didn't want to hang on to them.  I also found a fair number of beet and walnut salad recipes on the internet, so I figured they had to be a good pairing.  When I tasted it, I wanted it to be just a little sweeter.  The beets are sweet, but I didn't think this carried through in the beet green pesto.  It was confusing.  Are you sweet?  Are you not sweet?  Pick one and go with it!  So I ran to the store and picked up some maple candied macadamia nuts.  Pricy?  Yes.  Amazing?  Also yes.  These are sold in bulk at my local natural foods store and they are absolutely my favorite snack that I cannot afford.  So I used you good readers as my excuse to purchase far more than I needed which I will be taking to work to eat there.  Taste wise, the first was fair, the second amazing.  Appearance wise, both were a little lacking.  Beets bleed.  They make a mess of my hands and cutting board and counter every time I cook them.  The greens, while mostly green, contain some of the color and all of the bleeding in their stems.  When this was split in the food processor, the red color went everywhere, combined with the green leaves, and mostly looked brown.  Still delicious, but I wouldn't recommend this for your fancy food party.

Then arugula with pine nuts, and spinach with almonds.  Spinach/almond is my favorite, because it just feels so healthy!

Last but not least, mint pesto.  I used the traditional pine nuts, but any of the other options would work too.  This is some serious stuff, and I wouldn't recommend using it straight up in a pasta.  A better choice again would be a spread on a sandwich, or maybe an accompaniment to some fish or lamb.

For a quick dinner, I made some beef, zucchini, mushroom, and potato shish kabobs.  I boiled the potatoes first so they were almost completely cooked, seasoned everything with salt and pepper, then threw the skewers on the grill for about 3 minutes per side.  I was lucky enough to receive some tenderloin tips for kabobs along with my beef purchase, but you could really make these with any kind of beef.  Or lamb.  Or chicken.  Or shrimp...

The finished product. You can still see the individual little bits

Mint Pesto DipMakes enough to freeze for later

• 2 tablespoons pine nuts
• 2-3 large garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 2 cups mint leaves, washed
• 1/4 cup olive oil

 Heat a large, heavy skillet over medium high heat (no oil).  Add pine nuts, and toast,stirring frequently, until pine nuts start to smell extra nutty and get just a little brown.  Be careful, when they go they go fast.  If you burn them, throw them away and start over!

Remove the toasted pine nuts from the pan immediately (if you leave them in there, they will keep cooking!), and add to the bowl of a food processor.  Add garlic cloves, and process for 4 to 5 short pulses, until the nuts and garlic are just broken up.

Add the mint, and continue to process, until you have a mixture that resembles a flecked counter top - it's consistent in it's appearance, but you can still see the individual pieces that make up the pesto.  Add the olive oil and process for two or three more short pulses to combine.

Dip your kabob meat and vegetables into the pesto.  It is also excellent as a spread on some good crusty bread.


Lettuce Pesto
(Reprinting, just to have them all together)

• 2 tbsp pine nuts
• 2 tbsp garlic scapes,
• 2 large hand-fulls of lettuce, washed and dried
• 1 tbsp finely grated Parmesan cheese 
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup olive oil

Toast the pine nuts as above.

Meanwhile, coarsely chop the garlic scapes.  Add the garlic to the pine nuts in the food processor, and process as above

Add the lettuce (I needed to add lettuce in two batches, because it didn't fit in my food processor bowl.  This is perfectly fine.) and process until the lettuce is just broken down into small pieces. should still be able to see individual bis of lettuce, nut, and garlic.  Continue to process, adding olive oil in a slow stream.  How much you use will depend on what you are using your pesto for - a spread will get less oil, while a pasta sauce will need more.

I recommend serving this on a cold pasta salad, because when warm it tastes a little like warm lettuce, which is weird.

Beet Green Pesto
(The ratios are changed up a little here to emphasize the sweet flavor of the beets)

• 2-3 tbsp maple macadamia nuts
• 1 tbsp garlic scapes
• 1/4 cup sweet Italian basil
• 2 cups beet greens, stems removed
• 1/2 cup olive oil

Combine nuts and garlic in a food processor, and process as above (no toasting this time).

Add basil and beet greens, and process as above.

Slowly add in olive oil, and continue to process until combined.

While not particularly pretty, this was a delicious, light, and sweet pesto.  I would recommend it with pasta and seafood.  I'm thinking along the lines of some angel hair pasta mixed with the pesto, topped with grilled beet slices and maple bacon wrapped scallops.

That will have to be dinner very soon!

Gardening 201: Advanced Container Gardening

Well, the garden is in and going strong.  The tomatoes are still small, but the rain and heat over the weekend has helped them shoot up dramatically from where they were just a week ago.  The squashes are taking over everything, as squashes do.

I'm fortunate to have some garden, but I certainly don't have as much room as I would like.  This is especially the case because I prefer big, viney plants that take up a lot of room like squash and melons.  So I also do a good deal of container gardening. 

As discussed previously, container gardening is a good choice for people with no room, or people like me who need to make more room because they're garden greedy.  It is also, in my opinion, a little easier than regular gardening if you're just getting started.  You don't have to build a garden, for one.  You don't have to turn over the garden, for two.  And third, it really cuts down on weeding.  Weeds grow in the spaces between the plants.  If your plants are in containers, it doesn't leave much room for weeds!

I tried a few new things for my container garden this year.  In the past, I've done beans and peas in pots just sitting on the stone edge of the main garden.  I especially like beans this way, because then I can just stick a tomato cage in the center of the pot and the beans will climb it.  This saves the time and hassle of building something for the beans to climb.

The rabbits appreciate some good non-GMO soy!

This year, I replaced my regular beans in a pot with edamame (soy) beans.  I haven't ever grown these before, and they were doing pretty well in their pot, but this morning I noticed a good chunk of them *update, make that all of them* had been bitten off.  I guess they're just as tasty to the rabbits as they are to me.  Side note, if you are going to grow edamame, make sure that you are buying certified organic seeds.  Generally I don't care that much about organic when it comes to my seeds, because I  know I'm not going to use any pesticides on the final product, but soy is one of the most genetically modified crop in the US.  93% of all soy in the US comes from GM plants, which have specifically been modified to contain a herbicide resistant gene taken from bacteria.  This means that most of the seeds on the market are also going to be GM.  You can't be organic and genetically modified, so I tend to stick to organic seeds in the veggies that are currently modified (the percentage is the percentage of US product that is modified - per my always reliable source, Wikipedia): Soy (93%), Corn (86%), Cotton/Cotton Seed Oil (93%), Hawaiian Papaya (80%), Canola and Rapeseed (93%), Sugar Beet (95%), and Zucchini (13%).  Starting in 2013, also be on the look out for Golden Rice.  Also, consider reading a little more about the California Right To Know Referendum, which will be voted on in the upcoming November presidential election.

Anyway, back to the garden!  I also wanted to plant regular beans, and since their pot had been given to soy beans, I had to find somewhere new to put them.

This year for my birthday, my father got me a small green house like contraption that I could use to start seeds.  It's very useful, except in the summer and winter when really I can't think of what to do with it.  And since it's permanently affixed to my back porch, I feel like it's taking up space and not doing any good.  So I decided to try to plant the beans in it.  My thought was, put them in a tray at the bottom, leave the door and top propped open so it doesn't get too hot, and let them climb up through and hold on to the shelves.

Yeah, not so much.  Not sure if it was too hot for them, they weren't getting enough light, or both, but the beans were not happy inside the green house.  So I pulled them out and am hoping that they will start climbing the railings on my balcony.  Also up on the balcony I have lettuce and spinach (greens do well in containers.  They also benefit from the fact that containers can be pulled into the shade, extending the life of your greens when it gets too hot in the summer.), carrots, radishes (which are done and I need to plant a second round of), hot peppers, kale, and quinoa.  I'm not expecting to get much quinoa, but whatever).  Last but not least, I also have pots with my herbs and my citrus plants, which are doing surprisingly well.  No flowers yet, but at least the plants are finally starting to grow since I got them after my citrus debacle last May.  I ended up just buying the plants individually on Amazon, and they've been tiny and slow to show any growth, but they're finally moving.

Herb and citrus garden.

Dwarf Lemon Tree.  This was a twig early this spring.

One thing that I've done the past two years now is grow my cucumbers on my trellis.  I have a large trellis in my back yard that supports roses on one side, and on the other side I've gotten cucumber vines to climb it.  I spent a lot of time last summer sitting under it, which was nice because it smelled both like roses AND cucumber!

Cucumbers starting to climb the trellis.  Ignore the weeds!

So, start thinking for next year.  Or, if you're considering growing some fall crops, but feel like you just don't have the time, consider a $5 25 gallon bucket of radishes or lettuce.

And, when the lettuce becomes overwhelming, try this recipe!  If you don't have any lettuce, head down and visit my buddies Jess and Sam at the Rhine Center Vegetable Club booth at the Westtown Farmer's Market on Wednesday.  Let them know I sent you, even if you're just stopping to say hi (it makes me look good!)

Lettuce Pesto
(Why not?  They make pesto out of spinach and arugula, why not try lettuce?)

• 2 tbsp pine nuts
• 2 tbsp garlic scapes,
• 2 large hand-fulls of lettuce, washed and dried
• 1 tbsp finely grated Parmesan cheese 
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup olive oil

Toast the pine nuts by heating a large, heavy skillet over high heat.  Add the pine nuts directly to the pan (no oil) and toast, keeping the nuts moving in the pan.  They will look like nothing is happening, and then they will start to smell a little nuttier and richer, and then they will start to lightly brown, and then immediately they will be burnt and ruined.  So watch them very closely, and as soon as they start to brown, remove them from the heat and pour them directly from the pan into a food processor where they can cool.

Meanwhile, coarsely chop the garlic scapes.  Garlic scapes are the top shoots of the garlic plant.  They taste to me both garlic-y-er and less sharp than regular garlic, all at the same time.  I think they are a good addition to this because they provide a strong garlic flavor without overwhelming the delicate flavor of the lettuce.  If you can't find any (you could check out RCVC!), you can use one large clove of regular garlic.  Add the garlic to the pine nuts in the food processor, and process in pulses until the nuts and garlic have a consistent texture of very small pebbles.  You don't want to go too far and have them start to turn into paste.

Add the lettuce (I needed to add lettuce in two batches, because it didn't fit in my food processor bowl.  This is perfectly fine.) and process until the lettuce is just broken down into small pieces. should still be able to see individual bis of lettuce, nut, and garlic.  Continue to process, adding olive oil in a slow stream.  How much you use will depend on what you are using your pesto for - a spread will get less oil, while a pasta sauce will need more.

The pesto will last in the fridge for a week or two, stored with a thin layer of olive oil poured over the top.  It can also be frozen in individual zip lock bags.  If you are storing it, add less olive oil and then add more when you are ready to use it.  Once you are ready to use the pesto, add the cheese and any more olive oil as necessary.

I served this with pasta as a side for some spicy tequila lime chicken lettuce wraps, topped with kohlrabi and radish slaw.  It was good, but in eating the leftovers I discovered that it was much, much better on cold pasta.  I would recommend this as a pesto for a cold pasta salad - it tastes fresh like lettuce, and who wants to eat warm lettuce?

Enjoy!

Slightly Less Than a Shit-Ton of Meat

Saturday was an exciting day in the Oscarson household.  Saturday was... wait for it...

FREEZER DELIVERY DAY!!!

Yay!  My shiny new chest freezer has arrived.  Better yet, I think it spent the night on the truck, so it was almost all the way cold when it got delivered.

Now, I didn't know it was going to be pre-cooled, but fortunately when you live in WI in December, your backyard is a freezer too.  (This is not fair.  It has been unseasonably warm.  I do love me some global warming just a little.  But there was a high of only 20 this past Saturday).  Which means that I could go to the farmer's market and buy meat, not knowing exactly when the freezer would be delivered (between 11 and 2) or how long it would take it to chill. 

And so buy meat I did.  What I would have called a shit-ton of meat.  I bought chicken, and a turkey, and pork, and beef, and lamb!  Yes, the lamb people were at the farmer's market, and I stocked up! 

And as I handed over all my money I thought "well, that is sure a shit-ton of meat."

And as I hauled the bags to my car I thought, "boy, a shit-ton of meat sure is heavy!"

And as I piled it on the kitchen table to take a picture and brag to my husband about what all I got, we both were convinced that we had a shit-ton of meat on our hands.

And then the freezer came.

Now, I do not have great spacial reasoning skills, as proven by the fact that the freezer did not really fit in the space I prepared for it.  And, sure, I know chest freezers are big, but I thought I bought a fairly small one.  7 cubic feet is, after all, not that much.  Heck, most of the Energy Star chest freezers I looked at were 15-25 cubic feet.

So, you can imagine my surprise when my supposed shit-ton of meat turned promptly into almost nothing when placed at the bottom of an empty chest freezer:

Where did all my shit-ton of meat go?  Did the meat gnomes steal it?

I did clean out my regular freezer - which was so full it didn't want to stay closed - and I got the chest freezer to a more respectable level of fullness:

Still, though.  A lot of empty space in there.  Might be time to get some bulk beef.  I'm thinking a 1/4 beef should do...

And what's for dinner?  Meat, of course!  Boring, I know, but nothing makes me happier than a baked chicken.  I cheated just a little and got a lemon, and I blended together olive oil, garlic, oregano (the indoor oregano is doing GREAT!  You can't kill that stuff even if you let a cat sleep in the middle of the pot!), and lemon zest, and then rubbed that all over the outside of a butterflied chicken.  I served this with cheddar ranch broccoli and cauliflower. 

The broccoli was definitely an exercise in frustration.  It was something I knew should exist.  We had a large amount of ranch dressing in the refrigerator which was going to go bad before we could eat it.  Parents make their kids eat broccoli, and parents use ranch dressing to make kids eat vegetables, so cheddar ranch broccoli should be a thing.  But it's not.  Why?  I don't know.  I scoured the internet for something that wasn't a gross sounding egg bake casserole (there's a lot of this recipe floating around out there) and finally found a cheddar broccoli that used a roue base.  I figure, add some ranch into the roue, and there you go!

No.  Too much flour, the cheese melted and turned into an oily mess.  It was awful.  I'm not sure what I did wrong.  So I ended up just taking the broccoli and cooking it on its own, tossing it in some ranch dressing, and letting some cheddar cheese melt on top.

And do you know what?  It was delicious.  Fatty, unhealthy, not even good for you anymore vegetable delicious.

Exactly what my little heart wants sometimes.

And Sunday for dinner, I baked up a spaghetti squash.  Spaghetti is by far my favorite squash.  Like many of your winter squashes, it keeps well in a cool dark place, so I bought a lot at the last outdoor farmer's market of the season, and have them sitting in my basement waiting for me to eat all winter!  I have seen microwave directions for making spaghetti squash, but I prefer the traditional method.  Cut the squash in half the long way and scoop out the seeds (which I saved, and have soaking in salt water as we speak, ready to bake up.)  Drizzle some olive oil over the squash, and season with salt and pepper.  Bake, cut side down, in a 350 degree oven, until the outside of the squash can be pierced easily with a fork.

Once the squash is done, allow it to cool, and then scrape out the inside with a fork, going with the grain of the squash (side to side).  It will flake out in strings, like spaghetti.

You can then treat this exactly like you would pasta for a low carb equivalent... because... if you know anything about me... I try to be low carb...

Wait... that's not right...

Anyway, I tossed mine with some pesto, and some of the leftover chicken from Saturday night.  It was good!!

Mmmm.... eggs and carbs....

If there are three things that I love, they are carbs, carbs, and breakfast.  If I could have a big bowl of buttered noodles, with garlic mashed potatoes and a fried egg on top, I would be so totally down.  Unfortunately, that is not really socially acceptable.

If there's one more thing I love, it's my pink Himalayan salt bowl, which I got at the Spice House at the Milwaukee Public Market.  It's so pretty, but there aren't a lot of uses for it.  The one use I have found for it, however, is to make a fritatta.  It looks good for serving, and it gives the eggs a nice salty bite.

This recipe is an adaptation of one I've made a couple times.  I really enjoy a spaghetti fritatta, and I am sure you will see that on here sooner or later.  I had a package of rotini pasta that I wanted to use up, and this seemed like a good way to do that.  You certainly do not need a salt bowl to make this recipe.  A frying pan works fine:

Pesto Pasta Fritatta

• 1/2 cup prepared pesto (I am 99% sure that this was all local.  I made it last fall when I broke down my garden, and there was still a lot of garlic at the farmer's market then... but I can't guarantee anything.)
• 1 cup (or so) pasta - you can really use any kind you like (This was not local.  I used boxed, dry pasta.  It was in my pantry.  I'm not going to waste food here, people!)
• 6 eggs (from my chicken man)
• Splash heavy cream (or milk, if you prefer - I can find local brands of most dairy products at Pick n' Save.  One of the joys of living in WI)
• salt and pepper
• 1 cup thinly sliced mushrooms (from the winter farmer's market)
• 1/4 cup feta, cubed or crumbled.  Or substitute some other kind of cheese if you don't like feta (I was very excited to learn that Montchevre cheese is all made in WI.  This gives me a lot of options for fancy cheese.  And I LOVE cheese.)
• 1/2 tbsp (or less) butter

Cook pasta until almost done.  You want it a little harder than al dente, because it will continue to cook in the eggs.  Once pasta is done, stir in the pesto to coat the pasta and set aside.

In a separate bowl, beat eggs, and mix in cream, salt (not too much if you're using the salt bowl), and pepper.

Melt butter along the sides and bottom of whatever you're cooking the eggs in.  If you are using a salt bowl, you will have had it heating up in the oven for probably an hour before this, so the butter will melt fine. Otherwise, just heat up your frying pan on the stove.

Combine eggs, pasta with pesto, mushrooms and feta, and pour into your buttered baking vessel.  Bake in a 325 degree oven until the center is set.  How long this takes will depend entirely on how shallow your baking vessel is.  My salt bowl is pretty deep, and it cooks things slowly to begin with, so this took about 30 minutes.

I served this last night with the last of my salad from Monday night, and it was excellent.

No dinner tonight; my husband Jeff and I are going on a date!