Instant Pot Chicken and Wild Rice Soup

An Instant Pot version of the classic creamy chicken & wild rice soup. Laden with mushrooms, carrots & celery, this soup cooks from frozen chicken breasts in under an hour in an electric pressure cooker.

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Yes, it's been a while. I've been teaching a series of Instant Pot Basics cooking classes for the past two months. We make this recipe in Class 2:  Cooking from Frozen. My students have inspired me to create some new recipes for the Instant Pot that I'll be sharing here now that I'm in between classes for a bit, so stay tuned!


I love using my IP for soup. The ability to sauté the veggies, deglaze the pan, and then add the rest of the ingredients and walk away is heavenly! Because I'm sharing soups with my folks and my girlie as well, I've had days this winter when I've made 3 different soups in a single morning. My days are not All Soup All The Time, though. Mostly I've been spending my time shoveling since Minnesota decided to welcome me in a Big Way. We live on a corner, so after the first 5 or 6 snowfalls we really got the hang of shoveling this place. I even shoveled a racetrack in the backyard since there's so much snow. (You can see video of the dogs running their track on my FB and IG feeds.)

Sriracha Butternut Squash & Portobello Pizza

Spicy sriracha-seasoned grilled butternut squash and portobello mushrooms make a winter vegetarian pizza with a kick. You can break out the grill for this one if you dare.

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I'm pulling out another long-storing butternut squash from the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve for today's pizza. Friday nights are pizza nights around here, and I like to change it up to keep things spicy. Sriracha-spicy, that is.

The Sriracha I use is locally produced, House Made Sriracha. Until I started eating locally grown fruits and vegetables, and then eggs and beef, I never really thought about locally made sauces. It's neat how your horizons get expanded just by the simple act of choosing where to source your salad greens.

Jujube Fruit and King Oyster Mushroom Sauté (Eating Direct from Farmers with Barn2Door)

Subtitle: Get Your Produce Direct From The Farmer

Jujube fruit and King Oyster mushrooms sautéed with a bit of farm share onion in roasted garlic-flavored olive oil and butter. An elegant appetizer made from produce direct from the farmer.

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Today's recipe uses rare-to-me ingredients that I got directly from the folks that grew them but in different ways. Disclosure: I received the jujube fruit from Barn2Door in exchange for writing about this new way to buy directly from the farmer. As a dorkily passionate supporter of keeping sustainable farmers in business, I am delighted to help spread the Good Word.

Last weekend was the last local farmer's market of the season. We walked down with a big bag to stock up on long-storing local apples and also picked up some candy onions to caramelize and freeze for Fall and winter stews. The mushroom folks had a nice array of King Oyster/Trumpet Royale mushrooms, so with my remaining small bills [pay cash for local businesses whenever possible, please] I picked up a container. The lovely lady manning the booth offered me recipe tips and I headed home thinking I'd make some kind of mushroom appetizer for my spouse.

We returned from a Saturday afternoon bike ride to this sight--boxes on the front stoop, watched over by ⅔ of the canine population [Vincent is too little to look out]. I'm not usually one to get excited about printer ink, but the other box, from Fairview Orchards, did give me a little thrill. The folks at Fairview Orchards picked these organic jujube fruits and I got them from California 2 days later.

If you think, when you visit the farmer's market at 10 am on a Saturday, that all of the product on display was freshly picked that morning by an army of minions in fields with football stadium lighting--well, you've got another think coming. Farmers like to sleep just like the rest of us, and plenty of weekly offerings are picked in the days before and stored until market day. Heck, the garlic and onions were harvested and cured before being offered at market. A mere 2 days for jujube fruits all the way from California? Amazingly fresh in my book!

With two exotic items staring me in the face, I knew I wanted to combine them. After biting into a jujube fruit (we all tried them fresh out of the box, a crunchy light apple-pear kind of flavor with a date-like pit in the middle), I thought of the Trumpet Royale Mushroom, Apple, and Walnut Sauté I'd seen on the recipe sheet from the mushroom folks. I adapted that recipe to use the jujube fruits, and my spouse and I enjoyed this gourmet date night appetizer at home.

This got me thinking about the power of the internet and how Janelle and her folks at Barn2Door are harnessing that power to enable farmers to sell directly to a wider audience than just the local folks who choose to visit their market stall. There are small pockets of local supporters all over, but their reach is limited to their local areas. I mean, the grocery store down the street also supports local farmers--they spotlight the family who supplies their sweet corn in summer and the folks who grow their turkeys for Thanksgiving. To give their customers greater access to seasonal items, Hatch chiles are trucked up from New Mexico and wild caught salmon is flown in from Alaska. Yeah, and I can walk to all of this seasonal abundance. But what if you don't live near my fabulous grocery store? You've got an online resource in Barn2Door.

My town is known for the electric car starter and the pull tab for beer cans. We are not at the cutting edge of the local food movement. However, between in person and online interactions, I was able to sit down to a savory appetizer of exotic produce direct from the farmers who grew it.

Swiss Chard Hash

A skillet supper of Swiss chard, potatoes, mushrooms and sausage served with an egg on top.

"There should be a Sausage Monday"

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I fixed this on a Monday night, after getting the idea from a similar 'throw in whatever's handy' supper the week before that turned out surprisingly good. I was going to leave out the sausage and serve the hash with an egg on top. My spouse came in and asked what was for dinner. After I shared my vision he commented "that would be good with sausage". I replied "I was going for a Meatless Monday meal". He said, "there should be a Sausage Monday". So, sausage it is. Feel free to adapt to your Sausage or Meatless Monday needs by doubling the mushrooms in place of the sausage.

For other recipes using Swiss chard, please see my Swiss Chard Recipes Collection. For other recipes using potatoes since I have 25 pounds of them from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, please see my Potato Recipes Collection. Same thing for the Mushroom Recipes Collection (not 25 pounds, just check it out), all part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient--a resource for folks like me eating from the farm share. I'm also contributing to The Spiced Life's Mushroom Mangia board on Pinterest, have a Potatoes board on Pinterest, and interesting chard recipes that catch my eye live on my Greens board on Pinterest. Want to know How to Use This Blog? Click here.

CSA Recipe Index Revamped, and Garlic Scape Pesto Pizza with Mushroom, Artichoke, Pepper and Red Onion

A loaded vegetarian pizza with mushrooms, artichokes, yellow peppers and red onions on a garlic scape pesto-slathered crust. Plus--an expanded Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, now with recipes from all sorts of bloggers!

I had a "duh" moment the other day. My goal of making my blog a resource for people like me looking for recipe ideas for their Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, farmer's market, or garden abundance would be closer if I included recipes from other bloggers in my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient.

I sure don't have the lock on the best recipes using farm share ingredients, with the possible exception of my Sautéed Beet Greens and Spring Onions with Egg breakfast/brunch, which I happen to think is the world's best way to enjoy beet greens.

Everyone's tastes are different, so having a central location to see a wide variety of recipe ideas for whatever ingredient you're dealing with can only help. I hope the bigger and better Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient will enable more people to have a successful farm share season and keep coming back to their chosen farmers for more. Why is my family embarking on our 10th CSA season? Fresh food tastes good!

Now, I am one person with kids at home for the summer and dogs who require a lot of attention. I'd share a video of Robert Barker and I trying to teach Simon and Vincent how to howl, with mixed success, but I can't figure out how to get it off my son's iPad and onto my laptop. Scroll down for a .gif instead.

I won't have a whizbang revamped recipe index overnight. I've paid a chunk of money [gasp, go buy something on Amazon using my link please] to the good folks at Inlinkz and I'll slowly add to it in a seasonal manner, focusing on produce that is more unique to the farm share/farmer's market. That means garlic scapes right now.

If you check out my Garlic, Garlic Scapes and Green Garlic Recipes Collection you'll find a wide variety of omnivore, gluten free, vegan and paleo recipes contributed by many bloggers. [Every link has been obtained by permission of the blogger.] I've pinned all the links to my Garlic Scapes Pinterest Board, if you like to organize recipe ideas that way. There are many recipes for Garlic Scape Pesto, sure, because that is an excellent way to put up a garlic scape crop for the year--but I've included everyone who contributed because I'm not going to be the one to test and pronounce which is The Best Garlic Scape Pesto Recipe Ever. Taste is subjective.

I have two requests:

1. If you have, or know of, additional recipes I can add to the index, please shoot me an email and tell me about them. My info is on my About page.
2. I'd like to know how the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient works for you on your device. We are a Mac family, and Luddites to boot, so I have no idea how this looks on an Android product or on Chrome or stuff like that. I can't make it better if I don't know what's not working.

I have been sharing pizza recipes, and it's a Friday--the day I traditionally fix pizzas for my family--so since I have a food blog [I almost typed I am a food blog] I will uphold tradition and stop babbling about the new direction for the recipe index and instead share a pizza. 

Keeping it short and sweet, because I've written enough already.

Garlic Scape Pesto Pizza with Mushrooms, Artichokes, Peppers and Red Onion

1 pound pizza dough of your choice

2 to 3 Tablespoons of Garlic Scape Pesto (here's my recipe)

¾ cup chopped fresh mushrooms

½ cup chopped marinated artichoke hearts

½ cup chopped bell peppers

¼ cup diced red onion

1½ cups shredded cheese (I used a blend of fontina, mozzarella, and asiago)

For baking directions, please refer to my Pizza Primer, or my 7 Tips for Making Pizza at Home posts. I'd rather show you dogs running past garlic scapes. I'm sorry I didn't get a shot of Vincent. He's too fast.

Teriyaki Roasted Mushrooms

Teriyaki sauce tossed with roasted mushrooms for an easy to fix savory appetizer.

It's been over a week since our Fall Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share ended. One moment I'm blogging my Thanksgiving After Action Report, the next moment I'm cleaning up from Robert Barker's latest escapade [he chewed a hole in my nukable neck wrap and I vacuumed rice & flax seed from the living room rug. Now there are piles of rice & flax seed all around the yard]. You can read about Robert's story--and get a dog food recipe--here. The end of the Fall CSA means two things:  time for mushrooms and time to squeeze in all my end-of-year posts before I take a holiday break.

No, it doesn't mean I'll stop blogging about what we're eating from the farm share. Although we only get fresh foods from the farm for about 6 months of the year, to paraphrase the words of my birthday t-shirt, "We eat local because I CAN" (seriously cute shirts, no affiliation to disclose). The point is that I've been freezing and canning and filling up the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve like a boss an ant all Fall, and after I take a couple of weeks off to host my family-of-origin (flung from the far corners of the globe to Southwestern Ohio for the holidays) I'll be back on it with seasonal CSA-inspired recipes, ways to use local foods, and the occasional indulgence thrice weekly in 2015.

Mushrooms and end of year posts . . . there's a connection. We don't get mushrooms in the farm share, though if I'm lucky I can score an occasional King Oyster mushroom at the farmer's market--so I like to make mushroom treats for my spouse and I while I'm not staring at overwhelming piles of mustard greens. I'm also participating in Holiday Baking Week next week, sharing five sweet holiday recipes [though predominantly getting my ethnic on] with giveaways for you folks.

That means I need to get my savory and New Year's recipes up now, like this little effort-big taste vegetable appetizer, one of my Awesome Veggie Apps and Snacks (link to my Pinterest board). My spouse and I consider a skillet of mushrooms a mini-date--we're easy to please--and I've shared several recipes. You can find more mushroom recipes in my Mushroom Recipe Collection, part of my Visual Recipe Index.

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.

Grilled Mushrooms (Full Metal Basket)

Mushrooms simply seasoned then grilled--followed by your choice of seasonings to jazz up the flavor. Simple, easy, keeps the house cool in summertime.

I'm very fortunate that some committed folks made a weekly Farmer's Market happen in my little city.  I can't say I used it much last year--having my hands full with the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share and all--but I did enjoy the visits I made.  Since my spouse hadn't seen it, we did a recce [that would be a reconnaissance mission, it's pronounced wreck-ee if you'd like to co-opt this jargon for yourself] the other week to check out the new and improved sophomore year offerings.  I picked up some eggs, some blueberries, and then I spied the man selling mushrooms.  Woot!  Now I know where I can go for local mushrooms! Once I get into the groove with the farm share I will partake, because we love our 'shrooms.

Mushrooms = at home date night to me. What can I say? I'm easy to please. My spouse and I both love mushrooms and our kids don't, so anytime I'm making a mushroom side dish or appetizer it's guaranteed to be a date night treat.

So far on this blog I've shared mushroom appetizers that are sautéed [my Skillet Mushroom Dip for Two] and roasted [my Soy Sriracha Roasted Mushrooms].  Since the kitchen is heating up by virtue to the east-facing 86 yr old windows [and without my turning on the stove or oven] I figured it was time to get my grill on.  To do that, I bring out my new BGF (Best Grill Friend)--the Full Metal Basket.  I'm purposely not doing an Amazon affiliate link here because 1) the whole affiliate thing seems utterly pointless and 2) I don't know what brand this could be.

This new-to-me basket is large--9 inches square at the base, flaring out as it rises up 3½ inch sides to an upper opening of a square foot. It's perfect for grilling vegetables such as peppers, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, squash, turnips, kohlrabi, beets and mushrooms. I can stir in it without everything flying out [if you've ever seen my stovetop you'd understand].  Since I picked it up at the thrift shop a few months ago I've used it each time we grill.  That's a darn useful tool!

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.


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?

Open Faced Liver Paté LeverPostej Meatloaf Sandwiches

A traditional open-faced sandwich featuring meatloaf flavored with bacon and liver, topped with pickled beets, sautéed mushrooms, even crispy bacon and onions

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This open-faced sandwich is for the hard core carnivore out there.  Not those of you who dabble in boneless, skinless, chicken breasts.  Nope.  This is for those of you who will eat the whole cow, tongue to tail.  [I deliberately exclude myself from the head, though if someone presents me with a slice of head cheese I'll eat it.  I'm just not gonna make it and blog about it, okay?] It briefly passed through my brain to apologize to my vegetarian readers [thank you for stopping by! If you'd like a vegetarian open-faced sandwich recipe, here's my shaved beet one] for posting yet another meat-containing recipe, and then I realized that no, I'm going to own this.

In my opinion, it is disrespectful to the animal to cherry pick the handful of parts that you choose to consume.  I'm not saying to rush out and eat bung, instead I am saying to broaden your horizons and try more than just steaks and burgers or boneless skinless chicken breasts.  Beef tongue is pretty tasty, and the tail--man, I'm drooling just thinking about Elise's oxtail stew recipe.  But each bovine only has 1 tongue and, sadly, 1 tail.  There's a lot more to that animal--including the liver.

This, as you can tell from the head-scratching 'how do you pronounce it?**' title, contains liver.  If you like liver, you'll probably love it.  If you don't like liver, this smells like bacon while it's cooking and looks like meatloaf after it's baked, so give it a try.  My kids are not fans of the beets and mushrooms, so for them they are just eating a meatloaf sandwich, but you're welcome to make it your own. Try this, broaden your horizons, and respect the animal that you choose to consume.

This recipe is my adaptation of a traditional Danish open-faced sandwich or smørrebrød (literal translation is butter bread) using liver paté or leverpostej.  Like a Reuben sandwich is traditionally served with sauerkraut, swiss cheese, and thousand island dressing, the Danish leverpostej smørrebrød is served with pickled beets and sautéed mushrooms, sometimes crispy bacon or onions.

Soy Sriracha Roasted Mushrooms

Soy sauce and sriracha marinated roasted mushrooms for a savory bite.  Easy to make and addictive.

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Welcome to 2014! Have you resolved to eat more veggies?

The common theme I'm seeing among a wide variety of eating styles, from vegan to Paleo, is this:  eat more vegetables.  The best way to eat more vegetables is to have them in your kitchen. A terrific way to get vegetables into your kitchen--while supporting your local community--is to find a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share near you.  On the left side bar you'll see a Local Harvest gadget.  If you're in the US, you can type in your zip code and see what's available in your area.  If you live in the Seattle area, you can buy direct from local farmers via Farmstr.  Check out Farmstr here.

I always want to eat more veggies, so I've got another awesome veggie appetizer for you.  This one came about as a happy accident.  Like Liz, I attempt to maintain a well-stocked Asian pantry.
Key word:  attempt.

I was at the grocery store, swinging by the fancy cheese section looking for magical markdown stickers when I tried a sample of teriyaki marinated mushrooms (my eyes are starting to read 'magical mushrooms' right now, and while these tasted magically delicious, they are not that kind of mushrooms).  Those teriyaki mushrooms tasted so delicious I resolved to make them at home right away.  My spouse and I are the ones who enjoy mushrooms in our house, so I figured I'd branch out from our Skillet Mushroom Dip for Two and have another easy, eat it hot or warm or room temperature make ahead mushroom recipe in my repertoire.

I consulted this week's library loan cookbook, All About Roasting: A New Approach to a Classic Art (Amazon affiliate link), and adapted Molly Steven's roasted mushroom recipe.  I intended to splash in some teriyaki sauce after the mushrooms were done, but as you can see from the title that didn't happen.

I forgot that I'd used up all the teriyaki sauce in this meal.  Oops!  Well-stocked Asian pantry fail.  Instead I grabbed the sriracha and the soy sauce and made a delightfully zingy marinade.

This is easy.  This is fast.  This is a make ahead.  This is an awesome veggie app!  To find more awesome veggie apps and snacks, check out my Pinterest board. For other recipe ideas using mushrooms, please see my Mushroom Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. Want to know How to Use This Blog? Click here.

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.

Beef, Mushroom, Fresh Tomato Pesto FFF-a-boli (Pizza Night!)

I did warn you mention that I'd tried a couple of variations when I was rocking and rolling in the pizza.

Since my spouse also likes mushrooms, I made a mushroom variation of the Birthday 'boli.  Not one to waste perfectly good browned ground beef, I added a generous cup of sliced mushrooms to the meat left in the skillet from the basic 'boli.  Coupled with a Fresh Tomato Pesto then cooked down until thick, it turned out most excellent.

This got me thinking about more veggilicious 'boli fillings, so in addition to the Thanksgiving Leftover Remake 'boli that's in the can already, stay tuned for more rolled pizzas.  This is fun! Just the way a Friday night should be, you know?

Mu Shu -ish (Leftover) Chicken Burritos (Quick Take)

When I was a little kid, I used to hate Chinese food.  Luckily, my parents' desire to expose us to new foods was undeterred.  My mom would bring a chicken sandwich along in a baggie when we'd go out to a Chinese restaurant.

I wasn't so nice the first time we brought our kids to an Ethiopian restaurant.  I figured they could find something to eat, and they did:  they subsisted on injera and copious amounts of water from their constantly replenished water glasses.  I had no idea how much water they were drinking until we had multiple potty emergencies during the subway ride home.

Eventually I learned to like Chinese food, and my favorite dish was Mu Shu Pork.  I'm not sure if I liked assembling and rolling my dinner or the flavor of the hoisin sauce best, but it was my favorite thing to order.  Now my favorite dish is Ma Po tofu from the Great Wall Szechuan House near Logan Circle in Washington, DC, and when my brother returns from overseas I bet he will pack some in a cooler, hop on a plane, and we'll enjoy some together.

You wouldn't think from the title of this recipe that this is a 'kitchen sink' dish, but it is.  I had leftover roasted chicken, half a savoy cabbage, some mushrooms that were on their last stems, and we needed dinner.  This came together quickly, tasted great, and was a big flavor difference from the original chicken meal--my favorite way to cook once and eat twice.  This is not true a true Mu Shu--the mushrooms are all wrong and there's no egg for starters, hence the addition of -ish to the title.  Consider this if you've got a roast chicken and want to change it up a bit.

Mushroom Medley with Caramelized Onion and Gorgonzola on Boboli (Pizza Night!)

I've been sharing a lot of meat-heavy recipes this week, so I thought I'd change it up a bit and share a meatless pizza.  It's inspired by a pizza I had when we got invited out for pizza by some friends.

I will never turn down a chance to share a meal with others, even if it's at a local pizza place and I already make a great pizza, exactly the way I like it, in my own home, nearly every Friday night (sled hockey/wheelchair basketball seasons and marching band season notwithstanding).

Do I sound like a Pizza Snob?  I hope not.  I really love food, especially when someone else makes it for me.  I do think that I make each pizza for my family with more love and care than the machines at the frozen pizza factory or the under-appreciated minimum wage workers at the local delivery place.  You can see it in the finicky way I separate and space my toppings, if not from the farm fresh and wholesome ingredients.

I'm so glad my friend Rose Ann invited the kids and I to join her family out for pizza at Pie-tanza.  I got a chance to scope out some different pizza topping combinations.  My favorite was caramelized onion and gorgonzola.

I was planning to make that pizza for this post--I had caramelized onion packages in the freezer and there was fresh gorgonzola marked down.  But we'd just come in from out of town, had no dough made, and were at the grocery store on a beer/milk/eggs/pizza crust run.

At the store, a box of marked down Gourmet Medley mushrooms caught my eye.  Why not?  To the best of my knowledge I've never had oyster, cremini, or shiiiiiiitake (say it like a penguin) mushrooms on a pizza.  First time for everything.  Glad I tried it--those mushrooms took an already awesome combination over the top!

Skillet Mushroom Dip for Two (Quick Take)

Wine-soaked mushrooms sautéed with farm share vegetables and herbs, finished with creamy goat cheese. Makes enough for two--to share with your honey.

There are nights when I just want appetizers for dinner.  There are nights when I plan a romantic meal with my spouse.  And there are nights when the whole family feels like grazing.  Do you ever have those nights?

I had a hankering for something hot and shroom-y, but not all of the ingredients necessary for stuffed mushrooms.  So I decided to Dip It.  (Dip it good).

This comes together fast, fits great in my small skillet, and is the perfect appetizer for two mushroom lovers.  Using some of my freezer stash of put up veggies makes this a fast-to-assemble dish.  Just chop everything up finely, sauté it, add the wine, simmer, stir in the cheese and you're done.

Broccoli Rabe (or Any Leftover Cooked Mild Greens) with Ricotta and Sausage Pizza (Pizza Night!)

You ever make food that has similar components as another dish, but tastes completely different and you like them both equally well?  It's funny how that works out.  Kinda like kids--the same set of parental genetic material can result in totally different shapes/sizes/personalities/attitudes/cleanliness styles (pardon me, I have 2 kids in the throes of puberty--and braces--and it totally colors my view on children at the moment).

When I made this pizza, I had enough broccoli rabe and mushroom mixture left over that I wanted to try a little something different with it.  I also had some Italian sausage leftover from this dish, and I figured the strong flavors could use a mild sauce with a non-competition clause.  I have not yet tried Annemarie at Real Food. Real Deals homemade ricotta recipe, but I picked up 2 gallons of milk for a song today so I have plans.  I also snagged some recently marked down fresh mozzarella.  My family is loving fresh mozzarella on pizza these days, so I'm happy to indulge them.  Especially since everything else on this crust is a leftover!  Perhaps I should name this the Transmogrified Leftover Pizza?

Spinach Sausage Alfredo Tortellini (Quick Take)

As much as I love fresh spinach in an apple spinach green smoothie, there are times when I need to share the spinach goodness with the rest of my family.  They think I'm weird for loving green smoothies.
This was a quick way to incorporate a bag of fresh spinach from the farm share into a hearty, filling meal on a busy night.

Broccoli Rabe, Mushroom, Roasted Garlic Pizza with Fresh Mozzarella and Fresh Tomato Sauce (Pizza Night!)

I hate to waste edible food.  When I get greens from the farm share, I prefer to use the entire stem.  You will rarely find me using a recipe that calls for, say, discarding Swiss chard stems.  But when I read in the farm share newsletter that the stems of broccoli rabe (adorable how spell checker changes this to 'broccoli rage') could be used like asparagus, I decided to use the rest (leaves and florets) in a pizza.  With mushrooms, because I think they have that whole 'earthy' thing going on together.

As usual, I couldn't decide between sauces for the base.  So this recipe uses an amazing tomato pesto sauce recipe I got from Heather at In Her Chucks.  The sauce is so light and fresh that I kept the toppings simple and it turned out pretty good if I do say so myself.

Oh, and what did I do with the stems of the broccoli rabe?  I chopped them up, nuked them, and added them to tuna casserole.  I do not recommend doing that.  While they tasted fine, it ruined the familiar homey comforting that you expect from tuna casserole.  Luckily my son ate all the leftovers.