Instant Pot Taco Rice

This comfort food combines taco-seasoned meat with cooked rice and salsa in a hearty bowl of family-friendly food. This recipe is great to serve a crowd, too. Use the Instant Pot for easy clean up!

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This is not a pressure cooker recipe, but I am including it in my Instant Pot on Campus series for a couple of reasons. First, this recipe is a family favorite which my son has cooked on the stovetop many times under my tutelage. I'm posting it on my website so that he can access it without sending me texts at 10:49pm asking how to make it.

Second, using the Sauté function on the Instant Pot or Mealthy (or Brown on the Presto) makes your electric pressure cooker function like a high-sided electric skillet. When I make this dish in my 12 inch cast iron skillet I inevitably fling some of the contents all over the stovetop as I'm stirring. That results in a thorough cleaning not only of the skillet but also of the stove. Using the Instant Pot to cook this meal saves clean up!


The third reason I'm sharing this is because I think that electric pressure cookers are hidden gems for disabled cooks. Instead of having to strain to access a stovetop to brown meat--or pay to modify the stove height--cooks can position the electric pressure cooker on a convenient flat surface and work in comfort. Wear an apron and mind the splatters, though.

Chocolate Cherry Beet Brownies

These fudgy brownies are topped with dried cherries and white chocolate chips, stuffed with beets, and a divinely sweet way to enjoy beets from the farm share.

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My son had a school project--to make a recipe utilizing a vegetable, document it, and write it up for submission.  Sounds like a blog post, no? Especially fitting for a blog that provides ideas and inspiration for feeding family-friendly recipes using seasonal ingredients from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, the farmer's market, and the garden.


I had plenty of beets from the farm share (and had not discovered this amazing Beet, Orange and Cranberry Smoothie) so I asked him to find a recipe using beets.  He found this Fudgy Dark Chocolate Beet Brownies recipe from Pinch and Swirl. I gave my thumbs up and then sat back and filmed him for his project. Leaving my kid to figure it out on his own (to be clear, the instructions in the recipe were excellent and my son followed them easily) helps create independence in the kitchen. This in turn creates independence in life, which is what I want in a kid I'm raising. I wanted to make these brownies a wee bit seasonally festive, so I had him add a topping of dried cherries and white chocolate chips before baking.


I originally was going to share this recipe for #ChristmasWeek but got distracted with My Scottish Grandma's Shortbread and decided that they'd be an excellent Valentine's day treat. Perhaps as the finish for a kid-made meal of Baked Ravioli Valentines? Just a suggestion. I'm all about the suggestions here.

Want more suggestions for beets? Try my Beet Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. This is a resource for folks like me trying to feed them family from the farm share without getting bogged down in the same old same old. Want more recipe ideas? I've got 'em on my Pinterest boards. I'm sharing them on my FB page. I'm finding them on Instagram. Want to know How to Use this Blog?

Zucchini Bacon Pizza

Everything's better with bacon? Well, bacon sure makes the August zucchini crop extra tasty on this pizza with fontina cheese, zucchini, and fresh tomato pesto

This summer is not the summer of monster zucchini--not in my garden nor in our farm share.  [It is, however, the summer that I harvested a 42 pound volunteer--meaning I didn't plant that--pumpkin the first week of August! You can see us here on my FB page.] Nope, all of the zucchini and summer squash has been harvested in lovely small tender sizes--perfect for grilling or slicing and using on a pizza. Then again I think everything is perfect for a pizza.

I'm having an interesting summer so far with the produce from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share.  Normally my kids do not readily embrace all of the vegetables, so I shred and tuck them in here and combine there so that I'm serving meals that contain a lot of vegetables but don't have lots of single vegetables dishes, if that makes sense. 

This summer, the kids have realized how tasty a zucchini pancake (or crepe, or fritter) is, so we've been making them often. [Turnip fritters, too--and I've got a beet hanging out in the crisper waiting it's turn to fritter away . . .] They are also eating peppers and onions in their eggs and on pizza. Crazy--is it teenagers, or is it because it's our 9th season eating from the farm share (more than half of their lives, both of them!) and the constant exposure to all the vegetables has worked?

Greens and Pasta--A Fast Concept Recipe

A concept recipe for quickly getting a meal on the table that your family will eat and using the kale, spinach, bok choy, mustard greens, beet greens, turnip greens or Swiss chard from your farm share.

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Would you like to walk in the door after picking up the CSA box and, within a half hour of arrival sit down to eat a tasty meal the whole family will enjoy?  If I haven't yet mentioned it in on this blog [Ha!  As if!], CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, a farm share program where you sign up and pay your farmer before the growing season starts in return for receiving a weekly share of the produce during the growing season.  It benefits you because you've met and shaken hands with the people who grow your food, and it benefits your farmers because they are paid in advance--to buy seeds or equipment necessary for the upcoming season (link to a photo of my farmers doing exactly that)--as well as lessening the risk that is independent, diversified, small farming today. Use the Local Harvest tool on the blog to find a CSA near you.

The only drawback to being a CSA member, which of course is why I started this blog, is having a ripe vegetable in your kitchen that you don't have a clue what to do with, knowing that loads more vegetables are coming within a week, and knowing if you don't figure something out--quick!--your money and your farmer's labor are going out in the compost, down the garbage disposal, or out to a landfill. That'd be a shame.

 Since I hate to waste food, and I like to laze about encourage my kids to get busy in the kitchen, this post will be another segment of Cooking with Teens as well as a concept recipe.  I first learned of the term "concept recipe" from my blogging mentor Alanna, and it works here.

Not a Clickable Collage--just a collection of times we've executed this concept.

You'll need pasta--dried or fresh, thin noodles, shaped noodles, filled noodles all work in this
You'll need a sauce (prepared or put up pesto or alfredo or marinara or vodka sauce)
You'll need greens (beet, chard, kale, spinach, tender collard, mustard or turnip greens)
If you like, you could add a protein (bacon, breakfast sausage, ham, meatballs, paneer, tofu)

Since my son graciously (?) agreed to cook for us, I've got some gifs of the process and I'll post the recipe afterwards.

Fried Rice with Greens and Chicken [Cooking with Teens: Episode One]

Yes, two rice dishes in a row.  I've broken a food blogging rule, but you only become a teenager once.

After a call to action to help fight hunger in my last post, I'd like to share something hopeful:  kids are being taught to cook with Bok Choy in school.  Is that a stretch on the hopefulness scale?

I don't think so--I sure didn't learn about Bok Choy until I was an adult. When I hear about folks who desire to improve their health by including more vegetables on their plates, part of the stumbling block is just plain not knowing about different kinds of veggies.  And, if you get a CSA farm share box, chances are excellent that it will contain items you've never seen before much less know how to incorporate into your meals (sorrel, I'm talking 'bout you).  So yeah, kids being taught about Bok Choy is a hopeful sign to me.

I am now the mom of two teenagers, so in honor of that momentous occasion I made slave-drove encouraged assisted my newest teen while she fixed supper.  In school, she'd made Chicken and Bok Choy Fried Rice, and she was forced planned to duplicate that for the family.  We only had cabbage, however, so there's the first lesson in cooking:

Use what you've got.

My girlie couldn't remember the exact specifics of the recipe, so we turned to technology--specifically the How To Cook Everything iPad app by Mark Bittman.  If you're interested in encouraging kids to cook, I recommend this app--it's $10 and I don't see a dime of that--because it's very thorough, easy to use, with clear illustrations, and has that cool techno-thing going for it that all the kids like these days.  Writing that made me feel older than being the mom of two teenagers already makes me feel, so I'll just leave it as "easy to use".

One of my goals for this summer (hey, helps to have something to look forward to) is that both kids pick up at least a meal a week, and in addition to cookbooks from the library and food blogs, the Bittman apps (we also have How To Cook Everything Vegetarian) are part of my strategy.  Guess what else, kids?  Lawn care!  You're beyond old enough and have had 2 summers w/ Dad doing the work for you.  Time to step up.

If you have Bok Choy, Chinese Cabbage, Savoy Cabbage, Napa Cabbage, Plain Old Ordinary Green Cabbage*, or what my farm shares term "Asian Greens", try this recipe.  Save the kale, mustard, collard, beet or turnip greens for other uses (see my visual Recipe Index by Ingredient for ideas).

*I have a fear of radicchio after attempting to make grilled radicchio, so you'll not see it on this blog.