Mediterranean Shrimp Salad for Two

Shrimp tossed with a spiced Greek yogurt & feta sauce, served 2 ways--spread on toast or layered with preserved and fresh vegetables in a salad.

Everybody dies famous in a small town.

I'm usually more pop music or classical than country music, but I've been humming Miranda Lambert's song for the past few days. Our little town* has a weekly newspaper and this blog was profiled. On the front page. Above the fold. I'm very pleased with the article and doubly glad that I don't need to clean my house to have you come and read this blog post. [Mom & Dad, I've already mailed a copy of the paper to you and when I did the gal at the UPS store said 'you were in the paper, weren't you? I read about you while eating dinner last night'.]

You can read the article here, and if you did--thanks for stopping by!

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As high falutin' as it may seem to be on the front page, that doesn't alter the reality that I spent part of the morning scooping the back yard. Let me tell you, replacing 8 pound Wee Oliver Picklepants (there is no replacement) with 40 something pound Robert Barker is NOT easier in that regard. However, once the back yard was cleaned up I did manage to have a pretty glamorous lunch.

Eggplant Feta Casserole

Slices of crisp baked eggplant chips layered with feta cheese and smothered under tomato sauce. Served on a bed of spaghetti, this is a vegetarian casserole that will please the whole family.

Sometimes I've got a lot on my mind. Sometimes I don't have much to say.

This is one of the latter times. If you've been getting a lot of eggplant in your Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share like I have, then you may be ready for a new idea without scrolling through a story. If the weather is turning a touch cooler in the evenings like it has been here, you may even be willing to turn on the oven.

If you've got eggplant and you're willing to turn on the oven, this Baked Eggplant Chip recipe from our old CSA farmers of Blenheim Organic Gardens is a must try. I took it one step further and added a layer of feta cheese, because while living in Richmond, Virginia the Greek spaghetti from Texas Wisconsin Border Cafe was one of my favorite take out meals. I often throw a layer of feta between the noodles and the sauce on my plate when our family eats spaghetti just to recreate this memory.

For other recipes using eggplant, please see my Eggplant Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share.

What is Tomato Pesto? Why Put it on a Pizza?

A vegetarian's delight: pizza with marinated artichoke hearts, kalamata olives and pickled banana peppers on fresh tomato pesto, topped with salty feta crumbles and creamy burrata cheese, finished with fresh summer savory.

Have you made Fresh Tomato Pesto yet? It's one of my most popular posts every summer, and with good reason. This flexible dairy free recipe uses ANY type of tomato (I've tried cherry to Roma), assorted nuts--or sunflower seeds--and whatever herbs you've got handy. I prefer a combo of flat Italian parsley and basil, but I'll be experimenting with cilantro this year.

This is after thawing!

Eat it fresh, and if you've got a bunch of ripe tomatoes--put some up for later by freezing! I like these reusable storage caps for freezing (Amazon affiliate link) and freeze my pesto in half pint size jars. I use a piece of clear tape to write down the contents so I don't get mixed up--for example between arugula pesto and  garlic scape pesto. The lids wash up fine and only break when you swing the freezer door open too quickly and everything falls out and rolls on the floor to the delight of Robert Barker. [I'm sure that only happens to me, though].

I like to dip a variety of veggies and crackers into my fresh tomato pesto, but I really like to use it on pizza. I thaw a jar a day or so in advance, in the fridge, and drain off any water that rises to the top [For use as a pasta sauce I just stir it in.] Then I've got a flavorful sauce that adds a homemade touch to pizza.

Go make Fresh Tomato Pesto. My tutorial is here. For other recipes using tomatoes, please see my Red & Yellow Tomato Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. For other Awesome Veggie Apps and Snacks, please see my Pinterest board. For more vegetarian pizzas, please check out my Visual Pizza Recipe Index and my Friday Night Pizza Night Pinterest board. Wanna know how to Use This Blog? Click here!

Chicken Pizza with Strawberry Salsa and Garlic Scape Pesto

Strawberry salsa-tossed chicken layered with cheeses on a garlic scape pesto-sauced pizza crust. A pizza recipe straight out of my edible back yard (exceptions chicken, peppers, and cheese).

I was thinking about starting a "What is Edible in the Yard This Week" sidebar column, but then I looked around the yard and realized that the chickweed growing up between the bricks on the patio is about it. [FYI, chickweed tastes bright and lemony, if you're wondering, and Robert Barker snacked on it for me. But he snacks on everything.]

Sure, the garlic is growing well, the raspberry canes have leafed out, and the peach tree bloomed beautifully. Burgeoning piles of mint, rosemary, and thyme are spreading out in the sun. The sugar snap peas, chard, strawberries, and parsley have begun to grow. I've even spotted volunteer pumpkins [or mutant squash] and cilantro sprouting their first true leaves.

Despite the lack of current edible items in our garden, the pizza I'm sharing today shows how I put up food when it's ripe and then eat it year round. Strawberry salsa and garlic scape pesto came right from my little back yard, and I open jars/thaw cubes when I want some Spring flavors. With a stove and a freezer [and a food processor or blender is nice as well--and power too, since I'm blogging from the library because a transformer blew and our power is out] eating pizza like this is well within reach for you, too.

Seeing an albino squirrel in the back yard [photo by my lightning-reflexed spouse] I'm feeling the absence of the composting pigs this Spring. After nearly 5 years with them, my spouse finds himself plucking dandelions before he remembers there are no pigs to wheek their pleasure at the treat.

PSA:  If you're in the market for another family member, consider rescuing a pair of guinea pigs. Keep their large cage in a common area [ours lived in a corner of the living room atop the dog crate] and these social creatures will not only brighten your day and let you know when it's dinner time, they'll eat up any unwanted Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share produce. [Thus I termed them the 'composting pigs', as guinea pig poop is perfectly fine for your compost bin.] I'm glad of my worm bin to take up the slack, but the worms aren't very interactive. Not like our beloved pigs. [Will we get more? Not at this time. For me, 3 dogs are plenty of animals to care for.]

For other recipes using garlic scapes or garlic scape pesto, please see my Garlic/ Garlic Scape Recipes Collection. For other recipes using strawberries, please see my Strawberry Recipes Collection. These are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. I even have a Visual Pizza Recipe Index, because I have a thing for indices.
I've pinned more garlic scape recipes to my Garlic Scapes Pinterest board and more pizzas to my Friday Night Pizza Night Pinterest board. Wanna know how to Use This Blog? Click here.

Greek-seasoned Salmon, Artichoke and Feta Dip

Greek-seasoned salmon with feta cheese and artichokes in a baked dip--terrific for a Dip Dinner!

Having an assortment of dips for dinner is a nice way to change up the dinner hour. Dips are easy to assemble in advance--no last minute work involved!
After spending time outdoors enjoying the return of warm sunshine I'm not necessarily ready for a heavy meal--but I'm happy to turn on the oven.
A dip dinner like this makes a good compromise meal. I like to offer choices, knowing that my spouse will clean up whatever is left another night as a pre-dinner snack. [Sometimes it can drive me batty that dinner will be ready in 7 minutes and he has to eat something NOW, but if I've got a bit of this or that to use up I'm all over it.]

It is hard to show a black dog against a dark background.

For this Dip Dinner I had this Greek-seasoned salmon, artichoke and feta dip, a vegetarian spinach feta artichoke dip (to be coming soon) and a mash up of this dip and the vegetarian one. That mash up won't be written up for the blog--it was too wishy-washy of a dip.

This recipe came from my friend Sarah while we were both living in Hawaii over a dozen years ago. She served it at a rubber stamping party and I immediately requested the recipe. I've played with the recipe over the years, sharing a slow cooker & swiss chard variation early on the blog, Slow Cooker Salmon Swiss Chard Artichoke Dip, as well as an arugula & artichoke version, Baked Artichoke & Arugula Dip.  I like my apps, and you can find many more ideas on my Pinterest board, Awesome Veggie Apps and Snacks.

I opted to try a Greek version using this new spice blend I picked up at a shop downtown (see Note below) along with feta cheese covered in a magical markdown sticker. This is a very good combo which we'll have again. For more recipes using Salmon, you're out of luck until I add protein to the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. I have worked my way through the whole salmon I bought at the grocery store down the street (wild caught, overnighted from Alaska, and cut & wrapped to order). For more recipes using marinated artichokes, please see my Recipes Using Veggies In Jars Collection, which is really quite a mouthful but a tasty one at that.

Mediterranean Chopped Salad Concept Recipe

Fresh vegetables chopped together, tossed with a vinaigrette, and garnished with feta cheese.

This is not a post for a tentative cook, though honestly I have no idea how many of my readers aren't assertive in the kitchen. I mean, someone adventurous* enough to sign up for a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share has got to have some confidence in the kitchen, right?

I made this salad to serve alongside a Lebanese-spiced ground beef and lentil dish. We ate this as shown, with hummus, yogurt, and warm naan bread. The fresh crunchy salad was the hit of the meal. Over the summer I threw together versions of this quick salad to serve alongside grilled chicken, alongside a dinner of hummus & chips, and as a snack. [Apparently I never bothered to label any other photos of it in the thousands of photos taken last year.]

Why should I include such a simple recipe idea on this blog? Easy. The whole point of the blog is to give you ideas for what to do with produce from your farm share, your garden, the farmer's market or store. The more ideas, the more successfully you'll use your produce. If the photos do a decent job of conveying how fresh and crunchy this side dish is, then my work here is done.

This recipe will appear in the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient as well as the Cucumber Recipes Collection and the Pepper Recipes Collection. If I remember to snap a photo of it with other combinations of veggies, I'll update and add it to additional collections. You can also find this, and other ideas for using Colorful Veggies [that grow] Above Ground on my Pinterest board of the same name.

Fresh Corn, Hatch Chile & Feta Pizza

Fresh corn, roasted Hatch chiles, and feta cheese top this vegetarian summer pizza.

Even though the humans are remarking on the unseasonable weather this summer, the vegetables are going about their business as usual. It had [please notice past tense] been so unusually NOT hot & muggy that I really never considered grilling our Friday Night Pizza using the Mr BarBQ Grill Stone Pizza Set** that I won on Barry's blog Welcome to the Cookout!™. Speaking of winning . . . .

Did I mention that I won that prize? I did? Good. As with all giveaways, someone's going to win the entire prize package of kitchen tools and cookbooks I've been reminding you about lately. It may as well be you. I can't enter, and besides I already won a pizza set. I'm good. You can't win the #IceCreamWeek giveaway unless you enter. The contest ends on August 31st--enter here! 

Fresh Tomato Pesto with Mushroom, Olive, Artichoke and Feta Pizza (Pizza Night!)

Sautéed mushrooms, olives, artichoke hearts with feta and fontina over fresh tomato pesto

Those of you who subscribe to my blog via email or somehow grab the RSS feed [thank you!] were treated to an unwitting peek behind the scenes one week ago when the rough draft version of this post went live without my awareness.

When I was plotting out the pizza posts for July I’d tentatively scheduled this one for the first Friday. Then I thought of fireworks, changed my mind, finished up the Pepperoni and Yellow Squash pizza and scheduled it for the same day. I didn’t notice that I still had the draft of this pizza scheduled for later the same day, and didn’t even check that the pizza had posted properly when I first woke up. Nope, I went about my July 4th—packing and traveling to visit family, not even checking email until late afternoon when I was surprised to see the draft was live and sent out in my RSS feed.  Oops!

I wanted to get this pizza up because it uses Fresh Tomato Pesto and I think you should try your hand at making this tasty concoction at least once during tomato season. Even though the tomatoes in my garden are as green as the squash plants that have taken over, the nights are warm (for ripening) and we got our first tomato in the farm share this week. [I’m making a BLT out of it, not this pesto.  I have my priorities for the first tomato of the summer.]

Fresh Tomato Pesto is easy to make, stores well in the freezer, and can be used as a dip for chips or vegetables, a pasta sauce, or on pizzas. I’ve been sharing a lot of meat pizzas lately [just updated my Visual Pizza Recipe Index] and it’s past time for a vegetarian one.

Fresh Herb Pizza on Tender/Crunchy Pizza Crust

A mix of fresh herbs and a blend of tangy cheeses on roasted garlic oil for a light summer pizza.

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Herbs seem to be one of those feast or famine items for me--either my newly planted cilantro is ready to bolt, or I'm snipping my plants down a little too much for comfort just to get the minimum needed, or I'm overwhelmed with a glut of leaves and have to find something to do before they spoil. [I don't have a dehydrator--yet--it's fresh tomato pesto, garlic scape pesto, or pesto for me.]

Sometimes, when I put basil leaves on a pizza, they seem sort of dry and forlorn after baking.  For this pizza I spread plenty of roasted garlic oil on the crust to try and counteract this issue, and I believe it worked well.  I had both crumbled feta and crumbled goat cheeses in the cheese drawer--an embarrassment of riches if I don't say so myself--so instead of dithering between the two I used some of each.

The result is a pizza that tastes a bit like amped up cheesy garlic bread--fresh flavors, vibrant color, but a familiar taste [even if my daughter wasn't initially sure about the giant pile of green leaves on the pie].

This pizza is made using the Tender/Crispy pizza dough I used on my Dainty Radish Pizza.  The second time I made this dough my results started off pretty rough.  I made a gif showing how I fixed the dough with additional kneading, water, and time:

Greek Olive Salad Pizza

A recipe for vegetarian pizza topped with olives, sautéed mushrooms, feta and fontina cheese. Sounds gourmet but you'll make it at home!

It's pretty slick when you can take a couple of containers out of the refrigerator and produce dinner, especially a dinner that would be found on the menu of some fancy pants pizza joints. [Can you be both fancy pants and a pizza joint? I think so.] Continuing my message of how to have varied and interesting pizzas at home, let's talk about long-storing preserved veggies aka Veggies in Jars.

I started this . . . lesson? discussion? rant? soliloquy? all terms would work . . . the other week with Cheesy Garlic Scape Pesto Flatbread, suggesting you make and freeze garlic scape pesto, fresh tomato pesto, roasted garlic and even plain old ordinary pesto while these items are seasonally abundant and inexpensive.  Meghan reminded me to add caramelized onions to that list--how did I forget those?--and Angie suggested onion marmalade.  Great additions for my list!  Let's move the storage device from freezer to fridge and continue the discussion.

My love affair with olives continues [hey, if my then-deployed spouse can go to a website and fall in love with . . . well, wiener dogs . . . why can't I carry on a love affair with olives?].  I've been buying olives by the Costco vat, and that means that I've got plenty for this pizza.  Since I'm also buying feta cheese by the Costco vat--well, ♫ "put 'em together, it just makes sense"♫ *.  Just like my Very Veggie Puff Pastry Pizza Bites, fresh spinach from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share would go nicely on this pizza.

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For more pizza recipes, broken into category because I like to organize things a heck of a lot more than I like to dust, please see my Visual Pizza Recipe Index. For more recipes using mushrooms, please see my Mushroom Recipes Collection. For more recipes using vegetables in jars (or buckets, as the case may be), please see my Veggies In Jars Recipe Collection. They are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.


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Greek Stew Meat Tacos

Beef cubes, marinated in artichoke, lemon, and olive juices served taco style with avocado dip.

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One way to be a meat-eating local food eater is to buy a cow, or part of a cow.  We did, and that's how I got the cow that lives in the freezer.  One of the cool things about going in on a cow (ok, technically he was a steer), like I've mentioned, is that you get a LOT of cow parts that may be new to you.  And in cooking them, you learn new dishes that you love. Like tail.  I love me some tail!  You also get meats you may be less desirous of--thanks Dawn for bringing over the liver your family isn't fond of--we use it in meatloaf.  When you get a portion of cow all at once, you can find yourself with a package of stew meat tucked away in the corner of the freezer when you're not really interested in fixing a stew.

Just because a package says "stew meat" doesn't mean you need to make stew with it.  It just means that the meat needs tenderizing, either by long slow moist cooking, or by a long soak in a tenderizing marinade.  I opted for the latter this time.


This goes back to my mom wanting to use up the liquid left in the olive and artichoke jars because she never throws anything away without some sort of reuse.  (See where I get it from?)  When I made the Slow Cooker Greek Chicken Tacos the artichoke/olive juice marinade made for tasty meat--so I did the same thing with beef.  Note:  this has an overnight marinade!

For more recipes using avocados, please see my Avocado Recipes Collection. For more recipes using carrots, please see my Carrot Recipes Collection. For more recipes using olives, and artichokes, and other veggies in jars, please see my Recipes Using Veggies in Jars Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share, the farmer's market, the garden, the neighbor's garden, and great deals on ugly produce at the grocery store.


I'm sharing more recipes on my Pinterest boards, follow me there. If you like a good peek behind the scenes like I do, follow me on Instagram. Need a good read? I'm sharing articles of interest on my Facebook page, follow me there. Want to know How to Use This Blog?

Avocado Lemon Feta Yogurt Dip

An easy and versatile vegetable dip of creamy avocado, bright lemon, and salty feta in a yogurt base

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One of my New Year's Resolutions, for the second year running, is to add more avocado to my life.  I love in it guacamole.  I love it filled with corn and black bean salsa.  I love it smashed with some salt, spread on toast, and eaten with an over easy egg.

I got that idea off a BBC show about astronomy and the SOFIA project where I saw some German astronomers--working on the Very Large Telescope--who who were being interviewed over breakfast high up in the Atacama desert in Northern Chile. One astronomer was smashing an avocado with his toast and egg.  Try it--it's delicious. 

Avocado is just delightful--and no, I'm not being paid to say it. It's a New Year's Resolution that I'm able to keep, which is the best kind of resolution.

Brighten up a mashed avocado with a splash of lemon, add the salty tang of feta cheese, make it even creamier with yogurt, and you've got yourself a real winner.

This is the first of two avocado dips I'm sharing this spring.  My second is Avocado Feta Hummus. Both use the delightful combination of avocado and feta, first brought to my attention with Maria's Avocado Feta Dip and cemented into my palate with my Slow Cooker Greek Chicken Tacos and Five Layer Mediterranean Chicken Dip.  I like to serve these dips piled with vegetables and sprinkled with additional feta cheese, and we scoop them up with carrot slices, celery sticks, fingers, or pita chips.  I stumbled across this concept last summer, making my supper out of a Layered Vegetable Appetizer, and refined it during January's #AppetizerWeek when I made a week's worth of vegetable appetizers with a talented group of food bloggers.  You can see all our creations on the #AppetizerWeek Pinterest board.


Not into avocado + feta? How about queso? You can find my Avocado Queso Dip here. 

We've had a string of sunny days, which gives me hope that this winter will come to a close.  Amazing how wonderful time spent in a sunbeam can feel.  I think our dogs have it right--follow the path of the sun from East-facing windows to West-facing windows over the course of the day.  [That's when they're not napping on the heat vents.] This dip makes me think that Spring is right around the corner which, looking at the calendar, it is.  Hooray!

Vegetarian Antipasti FFF-a-boli Rolled Pizza on Sweet Potato Dough

A cheesy mix of mushrooms, artichokes, pickled peppers, pesto and olives rolled in a sweet potato crust

It's been a while since I've shared a rolled pizza.  I started with a Basic FarmFreshFeasts-a-boli, then later a Beef and Mushroom FFF-a-boli.  Coming next Friday I'll have a tasty turkey 'boli using Thanksgiving leftovers.  But today, I am all about the vegetables.

The base of this rolled pizza is a Roasted Sweet Potato crust I shared here. [Can you tell that I make multiple batches of dough in one go, so I can play around with the toppings?]  Since I usually have an antipasti bar going on in my refrigerator door I grabbed a bunch of jars for pizza topping ideas.  I put back the grape jelly, peach jam, sriracha and lemongrass but kept the stuff you see below.  Starting with a base of sautéed mushrooms, I added some pickled peppers, then olives and artichoke hearts, with pesto to tie the whole thing together.  Three cheeses make this extra gooey and yummy.

If you eat turkey for Thanksgiving, but will be serving vegetarians in your post-Thanksgiving Eat All The Leftovers period, keep this pizza in mind.

Layered Summer Veggie Appetizer

When you think about appetizers, do you throw a bone to the healthy contingent and include some carrot sticks and hummus?  Is your conscience soothed by adding celery sticks to your Buffalo chicken dip?  Do you pick up a veggie tray at the store and call it good?

Are vegetable appetizers an afterthought?

I want to change that.

I'm on a quest to create awesome vegetable appetizers--ones that are demolished before the cocktail weenies or cheese balls, because they are just damn good.  I've got a Pinterest board, Awesome Veggie Apps and Snacks, and as I find new ways to turn vegetables into desirable appetizers I'm pinning them there.  Please leave suggestions in the comments so I can add them--thanks!

Cherry tomato confit, cucumbers, banana peppers, artichoke hearts, olives and feta

Last winter, I started things off here with a Slow Cooker Salmon Swiss Chard Artichoke Dip and a Skillet Mushroom Dip for Two.  In the spring I started a craving for Five Layer Mediterranean Chicken (or Chick Pea) Dip that continues today.  Lately, I've been kinda dippy, with Fattoush Dip with Kale and Sumac Hummus and Indian-spiced Eggplant Yogurt Dip.  Today I want to share another delicious way to incorporate seasonal vegetables into your happy hour, cook out, tail gate, or indulgent dinner for one:  the Layered Summer Vegetable Appetizer.

While the autumnal equinox is weeks away here in North America, the mood has shifted to autumn.  The kids are in school, football marching band season is in full swing, and the sled hockey gear is back out. However, the garden and the farm share are packed with late summer vegetables--peppers, eggplant, tomatoes and squash are filling up my weekly box.  I created this layered appetizer to show off the best of late summer produce.

Grilled red peppers, grilled red onion, grilled yellow squash, artichoke hearts and feta

Discerning readers will say "hey, that looks like the Fattoush Dip she posted 3 weeks ago" and you'd be correct.  Other clever followers will think "what, another Wednesday eggplant dip recipe?"  Right again.  However, I'm sharing this recipe now, not next summer, for a few reasons:

• the base of this appetizer, roasted eggplant, is still very much in season and you might be looking for new ways to enjoy it
• I think this is a party-worthy appetizer, and while I'm not hosting anything until Fall, you may be looking for new appetizer recipes
• with the variety of special diets around, vegetables are a great way to create a dish that nearly everyone can enjoy

Five Layer Mediterranean Chicken Dip

Would it be awful to suggest you make Slow Cooker Greek Chicken Tacos just to have the leftover meat to make this appetizer?  Oh, and make Avocado Feta Dip (my variations are below) too, because that's what provides the foundation for this delicious appetizer.  If you don't eat chicken, scroll down and see the photo I took yesterday of something I think would go great instead, marinated chick peas, or skip it and just use the rest--still utterly delicious, but you'll have to call it a Four Layer Dip.

When I think of appetizers, I tend to return to my favorites time and again.  After all, they are favorites for a reason!  You can find them over there -----> in my Recipe Index By Category.  In the Appetizer category.  That was probably redundant.

I always like to try new things, however, so this recipe came about as a combination of wanting to try something new, wanting a familiar appetizer, and the desire to use what I've already got in my fridge.  Voila!  Taking a page from the many Mexican layer dips I've enjoyed over the years, I present to you Five Layer Mediterranean Chicken Dip.  Thank you to Linda for help with the name.  I can develop the recipes, grow the celery, prepare the food, take a few photos, write the post . . . but dreaming up recipe names is HARD! (Yes, I'll take some feta with that whine.)

About five minutes after I took the first photo, this was all that was left.  I know we were hungry, but holy cow!  This appetizer is delicious.  We ate it with pita chips and carrots, but home re-grown celery, snow peas, zucchini or yellow squash slices would all be great delivery vehicles for this stuff.

Slow Cooker Greek Chicken Tacos

If you've been enjoying some early summer salads and are looking for a change of pace, try this dish.  It's a great as salad, and as an appetizer, and works year round as an easy supper.  Since this is a year round dish, it's been in the queue for a while waiting to be published.
Last week I was participating in a G+ Food Bloggers Community Education event with +Chef Dennis Littley  and +Larry Deane, and Larry said "give your readers what they want".  That struck home with me, so since I've gotten requests for this recipe, it's bumped some fresh-from-the-CSA recipes to come out today.  How did folks know to request this?  They saw the photo on my FB page, that's how.

I intended to title this post Greek Artichoke Lemon Olive Chicken in a Slow Cooker, in the interests of being as descriptive as possible.  Then I thought about how we actually ate the resulting chicken, asked folks on FB for suggestions, and decided that Slow Cooker Greek Chicken "Taco" Meat is really a more apt title.  This dish is cooked in my crock pot, and does contain the artichoke, lemon, and olives I originally mentioned, but we use it like we use taco meat:  stretched on tortillas, over grains, or in a salad.  And the leftovers?  They make the best Greek Five Layer Dip I've ever had.  Possibly the only Greek Five Layer Dip I've ever had, too.  Try this in the summer when it's too hot to cook, or during football season for a delicious dinner/appetizer that's just familiar enough not to be weird and a delicious twist on a classic.

I may have alluded to my cold kitchen over the winter months.  Either the reference to the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve in the cold (down to 50 degrees Fahrenheit!) corner of my breakfast nook, or the photos of the frost on the inside of my kitchen window, seen in my Gardening Photos album on my FB page, would get the point across.
As cold as my kitchen is in the winter, it is correspondingly hot in the summer.  I do what I can, covering the East-facing windows with heat-blocking drapes in the morning and using the oven less.  I intend to get my grill on this summer, but there is another way to cook your food without heating the kitchen--a slow cooker.
This dish started with my desire to use my slow cooker to do the cooking while I was at work, and turned into a game to see how many complimentary layers of flavor I could add to the dish.  I was inspired by these other Greek Chicken Slow Cooker dishes, seen here and here, but since I had tortillas but no pitas, I went in a taco direction.  Then I read about Avocado Feta dip, and it was a great accompaniment to the chicken.

Arugula Pesto Focaccia with Artichokes, Feta, Goat Cheese and Green Olives (Pizza Night!)

Foh-KAH-chee-ah.  Foke-ah-CHEE-ah.  No matter how my spouse chooses to pronounce it, you need to try this.  Now. It's that good.  And if you've got arugula going to town in the garden?  More better.

I'd noticed that every time I was out of town on a Friday night (for sled hockey tournaments) my spouse would order a focaccia pizza.  The leftovers I'd have after my return were pretty tasty, so I was eager to try it out myself.  I consulted my personal pizza resource, The Best Pizza Is Made at Home , for inspiration on the crust as well as baking directions.  I had some arugula pesto, made using the recipe out of Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables, so I decided to try that.  If you don't have asiago cheese, try Bryn's easy arugula pesto recipe instead, or the arugula pesto of your choice.
I was comfortable jumping into a flavored dough but needed to try the method on a barely-topped bread first, just to make sure I set myself up for success.  The last spectacular pizza failure, seen on my Facebook page, of my deep dish spinach pie on eggnog crust is still too fresh in my mind.  Such a great idea in theory, so bad in execution . . . ah well.  That's why I call it recipe development.  If at first you don't succeed . . .

Making focaccia this way calls for a 12 inch round deep dish pizza pan.  I don't have one.  Since I never know what size kitchen we'll be living in at our next house, I try not to collect single-purpose items (hello, asparagus steamer, I'm talking 'bout you!).  I do have a 12 inch cast iron skillet though.  That's what I used for this focaccia, and I recommend using one if you also have one.  The resulting bread was thicker than my usual pizza crust, crisp on the bottom like my cornbread, delightfully chewy on the inside, and topped with a flavorful combination suggested by my spouse from items we had on hand in the fridge/freezer.  The toppings added to the flavor of the base, but didn't overpower it.  I've said in my Pizza Primer that less is more, and it sure is true here.  You really don't want to glop on heavy toppings or sauces here.  At least, not the first time you make it.

Who knows what I'll do next time, though clever blog readers may think I've already done it with this Salmon, Goat Cheese, and Arugula Pesto pizza--though that is baked and topped differently, and even a bit different ratio of flours for the dough.  All good, though, and yes you are quite bright!