Sautéed Greens with Cranberry and Pistachio

Brightly colored and fresh tasting, this side dish of sautéed cooking greens with dried cranberries and crunchy pistachios is sure to satisfy. Great alongside roasted meats or mashed potatoes!

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Talking with my friends who've eaten from Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm shares, a few frequent comments stand out:

• "The flavor of fresh foods is amazing"
• "I never knew I liked _________ (insert a new-to-them vegetable here like kohlrabi or beets)"
• "I'm not used to eating all these greens."

It's this last comment I want to address today.

I'm finding that my family is more likely to eat greens if I keep throwing greens at them. Not literally, though. If I literally throw greens at people, Robert Barker happily eats whatever lands on the floor. Simon flees from the leaves in terror, and Vincent grabs one, refuses to eat it, but will defend--to the pain--his right to keep it in his bed. Anyway, I serve a lot of greens during the cool weather crop season. Salads (chopped, rinsed, spun and packed into wide mouth jars for easy access) appear alongside most entrees when we've got salad mix of lettuces in the farm share box. Stir fries (like my Colorful Chard and Chicken Stir Fry or my Orange Teriyaki Slaw Stir Fry) or smoothies (like my Peanut Butter, Spinach and Banana Smoothie or my Kale, Date, Banana, and Peanut Butter Smoothie) appear if there are members of the beet and cabbage families in the share.

Low Carb Swiss Chard and Sausage with Burrata

A low carb meal of sausage sautéed with Swiss chard and topped with creamy burrata cheese.

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It's good to have some simple cooking concepts in your back pocket for when you don't have a particular plan in mind for dinner, but you've got ingredients courtesy of you Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. This is another simple cooking concept.

Mentally [or print it out and physically] file it alongside Fast Greens and Pasta, a Concept Recipe and Fried Rice with Greens and Chicken. These are 3 different ways to get a bunch of cooking greens out of your refrigerator and into your belly. And my family liked them all.

Swiss Chard with Bacon and Roasted Potatoes

Fill your plate with vegetables--this dish consists of a heaping helping of sautéed Swiss chard and a side of roasted potatoes. A bit of bacon for flavor and you're ready to eat.

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I did not choose the name Farm Fresh Feasts for this blog because I create fancy feasts out of the farm share box each week. Instead, I felt that even a simple meal, prepared with fresh goodies from local farms, can be a feast.

I've long viewed Swiss chard as a comfort food simply because I grew up eating the chard grown in our suburban backyard garden. [This makes me curious what my kids will grow up to view as a comfort food, actually. Not any beet preparations, except maybe Chocolate Cherry Beet Brownies. Perhaps turnips in Pasties. Possibly kohlrabi in Chirashi Sushi. Certainly Yakisoba and homemade farm share Spaghetti sauce.]

This meal could be seen as comfort food by my family--they sure devoured it and I was glad to have snapped some photos before we ate. Something as simple as chard and potatoes can't be seen as high falutin' food but it sure does hit the spot.

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.

Colorful Chard and Chicken Stir Fry--a Concept Recipe for Stir Fries

Subtitle: The Stir Fry as a Concept for Simple Farm Share Suppers

Swiss chard, carrots, radish and onion cooked with chicken strips and seasoned with Asian flavors. Can be served over rice or rolled up in Chinese pancakes.

One of the most common ways I use the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share to fix supper for the family rarely appears here--a simple stir fry. Stir fries in my kitchen are one skillet meals into which I try to cram as many stray vegetables as possible. I'm not getting fancy with seasonings or sauces, it's just basic food that gets vegetables out of the farm share crate and into our family. I happened to get some photos of one, a rare occurrence, so I'm sharing the idea today.

Last week I made a stir fry using up dribs and drabs of what was available, no photos or anything, and got raves from the menfolk [my daughter was off in Canada pouring maple syrup onto pea soup in a sugar shack. And practicing French]. I was kicking myself for not documenting how I'd made it, so I'll be making that one again, deliberately. It had bok choy, smoked sausage, spring onions and roasted potatoes.

A few Notes:

• When I make a stir fry using the quick cooking greens from the farm share [Swiss chard, bok choy, tatsoi, pak choy, spinach, cabbages--NOT turnip greens, mustard greens, or kale in this case] I separate the leaves from their stems, chop the stems up, and cook the stems first with the onions.

• If I've got root vegetables to use I'll shred or finely dice them and add in along with the onions and stems.

• I typically include a protein in my stir fries--a chopped chicken breast or two, some ground meat, scrambled eggs or a fried egg on top. A piece of diced chorizo or smoked sausage provides a ton of flavor with very little effort.

• We usually have a starch with our stir fries. This is typically rice, but can also be potatoes, tortillas, Chinese pancakes (boughten** Mu Shu wrappers), bulgur or couscous. If you're going to have a separate starch like rice, make sure to start that first so it's ready.

For other recipes using Swiss chard, please see my Swiss chard Recipe Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, an ever-expanding [thanks to generous links from my fellow food bloggers] collection of ideas for what to do with your farm share. But wait, there's more! I've got a Greens Board on Pinterest. I share recipes on my FB page even. Wanna know how to Use This Blog? Click here.

**boughten. In preparation for a trip West to include sites from the Little House on the Prairie series I've been re-reading the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I love reading how Pa built a house using boughten boards and a boughten door. I buy my mu shu wrappers in the freezer section of Asian grocery stores.

Swiss Chard Sauté

Swiss chard stems and leaves quickly sautéed with a bit of onion and finished with a splash of vinegar. This side dish goes with a variety of meals and uses a large bunch of chard.

Buy ALL the vegetables!

Eat ALL the rainbows!

If you haven't seen Hyperbole and a Half's hilarious post, This is Why I'll Never be an Adult, (which provided me the inspiration for the intro to today's post) please do yourself a favor and pop over to read it. You can find it here, and I'll wait patiently while you read.  I've got a cup of tea handy.

Have you ever gone shopping--at the farmer's market, the grocery store, or Costco--and been struck with the desire to EAT ALL THE RAINBOWS? You buy more vegetables than your fridge can hold, convinced that this time, THIS TIME will be different and you'll magically find room for it all and eat everything before it spoils. That's the problem--buy too many bags of potato chips and they'll keep wherever you find space for them. Not so much for bags of Swiss chard. 

I rarely shop at the farmer's market since my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farmers do such a terrific job of keeping me in fresh veggies from June into December (and then I do a pretty good job of keeping myself in veggies for the intervening months, eating up the veggies I've put up in the freezer, the pantry, and the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve). Mostly when I hit the farmer's market I'm picking up honey, maple syrup, and the occasional mushroom. If I didn't have a CSA, though, I'd routinely come home with more produce than I could store.

This side dish is great for when your pile of new veggies exceeds your available fridge space. [While I'm doing my weekly post-CSA pickup vegetable triage, I leave Swiss chard on the counter. A lovely large bunch takes up so much room that I may as well sauté it up and serve it with dinner.] It's fast, requires very few pantry staples, and goes with a variety of entrees from fried eggs to Beetloaf. While it is a simple recipe, it's great to have a fast, easy, and basic cooked greens side dish method in your back pocket [next to your phone].

For other Swiss Chard recipes, please see my Swiss Chard Recipe Collection, part of my Visual Recipe Index.

Swiss Chard Tart with Ham and Manchego

Crispy shaved ham and Manchego cheese add flavor and texture to a pile ol' pile of Swiss chard from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share.

I am having Greens-induced Kitchen Paralysis. I've been unusually busy both weeknights and weekends, and consequently neither my brain nor my fingers are actively working to use the greens in the farm share.  And in my family--using the greens requires active work! After picking up the share this week, when I tried to stuff yet another bag of salad mix into my overloaded fridge, I realized something had to give.

Here's just the greens in my fridge this week (an accumulation of up to 3 weeks worth from our farm share). Not shown are 2 cabbages, a small mountain of kohlrabi, turnips, radishes peppers, leeks and carrots which have overflowed the crispers. The Strategic Winter Squash Reserve is happily hanging out in the basement, waiting until I can deal with it [as is the laundry, not so much the dogs].

Shown are up to 3 weeks of greens from the farm share: a head of lettuce, 2½ bags of salad greens, 2 big bunches of dill, a bag of spinach, a bag of tatsoi, and the bane of my existence--2 giant bags of mustard greens.

Often there is an item from the farm share that stumps me--and causes the creative juices in my brain to grind to a halt. When this happens, like a log jamming up the flow of a stream, I may or may not be able to use up the rest of the perishables while pondering what to do with the lone difficult item. Currently I'm stumped by mustard greens and kohlrabi and beets and radishes, and I am finding it exponentially harder to keep up with the other items that I can usually use without thought.

I've been a canning fool lately--making hot pepper jelly and cranberry salsa to use up the glut of hot peppers. I announce the pings on my FB page, if you'd like to follow along. [Since I had the pot out, I whipped up a batch of kohlrabi pickles with a giant kohlrabi. I'll do a taste test in 3 weeks, and if the recipes are good they will probably appear on the blog next Spring when kohlrabi season resumes.] I've been roasting and freezing tomatoes, and chopping and freezing peppers. But the vegetables keep on coming.

This recipe came about from a previous bout of Greens Paralysis. We happened to be home for lunch on a Saturday and I had no bread for sandwiches nor meat thawed and it was chilly enough I didn't want a salad.  And we'd had eggs for breakfast. Thank goodness for a roll of pie crust in the freezer--I threw everything together and hoped for the best. The kids had seconds--so yeah, this one worked.

For other recipes using Swiss Chard, please check out my Swiss Chard Recipe Collection.

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.

Swiss Chard, Chicken, and Leek Enchiladas with Slow Roasted Tomato Sauce

Swiss chard, chicken, and leeks fill these summer enchiladas, flavored with green chiles and slow-roasted tomato enchilada sauce.

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If you've got a big pile of Swiss chard available (please note I could have written 'to use up' but opted against it because chard in this dish is something wonderful, not something to use up) read on.

Bonus if you've got some leeks.

If you prefer not to eat chicken, try Lauren at Gourmet Veggie Mama's Chard Enchilada recipe or Michael at Herbivoracious' gorgeous Chard Enchilada recipe (where I was inspired to throw cilantro and red onion on top of my finished dish).

This recipe turned a big bag of Swiss chard and two fat leeks from my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, plus some leftover roasted chicken--hanging out like a bored teen in the summer--into a cheesy and satisfying summer supper.

It all started with this enchilada sauce recipe from Andrea of Recipes for Divine Living.  I figured I'd use some put-up slow-roasted tomatoes in place of canned, and I made a whole mess of sauce.  Half go it went into Confetti Turkey Enchiladas and the other half went into a quart jar in the freezer.  When Lauren mentioned her chard enchiladas the same day we got our CSA pick up my mind started considering my options.  I thawed the jar overnight in the fridge and corralled my bored teen to help chop, and we had a great dinner.


For more recipes using leeks, please see my Recipes Using Leeks collection. For more recipes using Swiss chard, please see my Swiss Chard Recipes 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.


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Slow Cooker Squash and Beef Masala

Indian spices, patty pan squash and ground beef comingle in this slow cooker supper.  A tasty way to feed the family from the farm share on a busy afternoon.

With school starting I feel like I'm supposed to say our days will get busier, but more than the busier Fall days, I am looking forward to the structure of the coming weeks.  Without any structure to each week (my activities have been irregular this summer), meals and meal times have really been fluid.  We'll eat lunch at 2 pm, then not really be hungry for dinner.  Having the kids up at ___ time, out the door at ___ time, with evening activities at ___ time will give me a framework on which to hang meals.  Then my spouse will return, and we'll soon be in the swing our our family routine again.  I'm looking forward to that.

I use my slow cooker year round, but not often enough for it to get Pride of Place in the kitchen.  It lives in the basement Active Storage area.  Technically I have 3 slow cookers, so they live in this area.
[My spouse has an engineer brain, so we have an Active Storage area and a Cold Storage area--which doesn't store food, but does store less frequently accessed items like Christmas decorations.]  I primarily use my ancient 3-4 Quart Crock pot, but I love to heat spaghetti sauce in my little one (for the days when my son is in charge of boiling the noodles right before the rest of us get home) and make Kalua Pig or soup stock in my large one.

I developed this recipe from a desire to use some of the cow in the freezer and the patty pan squash from the CSA farm share in a form that my kids would enjoy over multiple meals.  They loved Rebecca of Foodie With Family's Slow Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala when I riffed off it to make my Slow Cooker Chicken and Chick Pea Tikka Masala.  I figured I'd do something similar.  Since tikka = chicken it makes no sense to title this dish "Tikka" anything as there's no chicken in it, but since masala = a sauce, usually with tomatoes and spices and cream, I'm good with my title.  This makes a lot, and the leftovers are good in a thermos for a school or work lunch.

Very Veggie Sloppy Joes for a Crowd

Sloppy joes are a kid-friendly meal. Add finely shredded vegetables to the beef and you'll be boosting the nutrition of this crowd favorite!

Lesson #4 in action.

I went through a long stretch of adulthood without eating sloppy joes.  All Lunch Lady joking aside, I have no idea why that was.  I like my joes.  That long stretch was finally broken one lunchtime when a bunch of moms gathered with their kids at my friend Miho's house.  She served a big pot of sloppy joes and all of a sudden I remembered loving them as a kid.  My kids tried them for the first time and thought they were pretty tasty.  I started making them for my family, and I'm pleased I can stretch a pound of ground meat into multiple meals.


When I signed up to bring lunch at the thrift shop, I wanted to make something that would appeal to a variety of meat eaters (I knew there were no vegetarians that day).  I also wanted something with veggies, and something that could sit in a crock pot unattended all morning while I was busy out front.  Very Veggie Sloppy Joes fit the bill.  I fixed this the afternoon before and brought my crock pot and rice cooker in to the store to provide everyone with options*.

*I am all about the options, I realize.  Even the composting pigs get a choice of sleeping compartment each night when we put the Pigloo, the Woodland Hideaway, and the SnackShack into their cage.  Two pigs, three bedrooms.  Back to the topic at hand.

My friend Cathy mentioned that her family enjoys the Pioneer Woman's sloppy joe recipe, so I used that as a jumping off point for this recipe, but added more veggies since I've put them up from my CSA farm share.  We like our first round of joes on buns, with a slice of cheese and a squirt of yellow mustard.  The leftovers get served over rice, with an optional cheese slice sandwiched between the joe and the rice.  My kids enjoy this in a thermos at school, or come home for lunch and eat it here.

(48.3% Meat)Loaf Stretching Meat Part 3

(I know this is not meatloaf.  This is the sweet and white potato mash with cottage cheese I plopped on Loaf #2)

You know I'm all about the Frugal Eco Farm Fresh Feasting, how I stretch meat by making tacos, and burgers.  I do not hide vegetables in other dishes.  I am completely aboveboard with my family when it comes to adding additional vegetables in traditionally non-additional-vegetable foods (like eggplant in the spaghetti sauce or spinach in the pizza crust).

Ok, I lied, in fact I've totally been known to slip a beet into a blueberry smoothie, though I try to own up to it if I'm asked a direct question involving specific vegetables.

But when I make meatloaf, the family totally knows that there's more than just meat in that loaf. When I saw ground pork marked down at the store, I knew it was time to make up a batch of meatloaf, Farm Fresh Feast style.

Today, we weighed the ingredients (and apparently didn't take photos), did the math, and in fact, this "meat" loaf contains 48.3% meat.  What's the rest?  I'm glad you asked. Meatloaf for me is more of a concept recipe, as Alanna of A Veggie Venture and Kitchen Parade would say.  I use a mix of meats (usually ground beef and pork), a bunch of veggies, something dry, and some sauce.  Sometimes I add an egg or two if it seems too loose.  Sometimes I add salt and pepper or other seasonings. I make this into 2 small loaves and freeze one uncooked for a later meal.  Luckily I took some photos of the second time 'round.

Panade, with Swiss Chard, Onion, and Cheddar Sausage

It's amazing when a leftover ingredient gets used up in a delicious way.  After I first tried Panzanella, I found it so marvelous that, come spring, I started freezing all my Good Bread** ends for summer salads.  But I didn't have a winter equivalent for the Good Bread leftovers until my spouse sent me a Buzzfeed article that included this link.  I was intrigued.  Not about the pumpkin, but what was inside.

Panade.  Never heard of it.  I searched around the webs and found this version.  Apparently panade took the food blog world by storm a few years ago.  I can only assume it was during another deployment and I was not Creating Grand (farm fresh) Feasts, only making stuff the kids and I would eat--with very few leftovers.  Now that I'm blogging, what will I do with this next deployment?  I need suggestions.  So far I'm thinking a Farm Fresh For Fewer series.

This is a Grand Dish.  It takes a long time to bake (but a comparatively small amount of hands-on time) so I found it perfect for a Sunday supper.  Just like with panzanella in the summertime, panade takes leftover bread and turns it into a delicious new meal.  And with my Swiss chard growing like crazy in the garden, it provides me with a great way to use a readily available green.  I switched it up a bit and added some 'we're never going to eat this for breakfast so why not toss it in?' leftover cheddar sausage links to the finished dish.  Everyone went back for seconds.  If you missed this one a while back, do try this at home.

**Good bread for me is La Brea Bakery Whole Grain Loaf.  I usually buy it in a two-pack at Costco but have seen it in my local grocery stores in both Virginia and Ohio.  Any dense chewy whole grain bread is Good Bread in my book, though. If you'd like to make your own at home, I recommend my Multigrain Sourdough Bread.
For other recipes using Swiss Chard, please see my Swiss Chard Recipe Collection, part of my Visual Recipe Index.

Quadruple Roasted Vegetable Mock Florentine Mock Lasagna

I've been tweaking the blog a bit.  If you look over that way ----> you'll see a clickable Recipe Index.  Thanks to Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes for the code to make that work.  Moving the recipe index off the top bar gave me room for some essays (recipe-free ramblings, really) I wrote way back in the fall :) when I started this blog in case you just feel like reading a bit.
Let me know (comments or on my FB page) what you think!  On to the food.

This, probably more than anything else, illustrates how I feed my family from our CSA farm share all year 'round.

This dish contains 4 roasted veggies:  garlic, roasted after I harvested it and frozen in early summer, eggplant and bell peppers, marinated in a vinaigrette and roasted and frozen when I was overwhelmed with veggies in late summer, and sweet potato, roasted for another use and left over in the fridge.

The mock florentine refers to the liberal use of Swiss chard in lieu of spinach.  I used a bunch of fresh chard (stems in the sauce, leaves with the noodles) in addition to incorporating leftover Creamed Swiss Chard.  (If you're keeping track, the Leftover Score is now at 2).

The mock lasagna refers to the fact that, although I have a well-stocked pantry, I didn't have any lasagna noodles.  Yes,  I could go out and buy some, I'd rather use up what I already got.

Hence the crazy convoluted name.

I walked in the door after an afternoon wheelchair basketball exhibition game with the idea that I wanted "something good" for dinner but having no clue what that would be.  Seventy-five minutes later I was putting this dish in the oven.  It's not a 'quick take', but to go from cluelessly scratching my head in the middle of the kitchen to completed, ready-to-bake Quadruple Roasted Mock Palooza impresses me.  Then again, I'm easily impressed.

Having the roasted veggies and the prepared pesto put up, and a freezer full of potential pizza toppings, means that making this truly does illustrate my goal of feeding my family from our farm share--all year long.

Creamed Swiss Chard with Back Bacon--A Lovely Leftover to Have

When my first child was around 6 weeks old, my in-laws came to visit and meet their first grandkid.  They took us out to a steak place.  A Very Fancy steak place.  The kind of clubby, dark wood, tuxedo-shirted server place where you can't see much less hear other people in the restaurant.  The kind of place where the steak has its own price, and the side dishes each have their own price and the prices are . . . well let's just say my in-laws took us out for dinner. And the food was delicious and the company was convivial.

I will not tell you how, because he was our first, we were unbuckling the giant rear-facing carseat and lugging that giant monstrosity into the fancy steak place. (No, not the kind that snaps into/out from a base with a handle so that you can sling the sleeping baby, still buckled, over your arm like a basket.  The other kind of rear-facing car seat that can eventually be turned around and used as a front-facing car seat. We were dumb.  First kid.)   Let's just say that I felt exceedingly out of my element.  And the food was delicious and the company was convivial.

I had creamed spinach as my side because, even though I was ravenous all the time, I couldn't see paying that much money for a baked potato.  Baked potatoes I can do at home.  But creamed spinach . . . that was something I hadn't made before.  I always like to order things I don't try at home.

I love creamed spinach.  My mom used to make a cheater version with a box of frozen spinach and a can of cream of mushroom soup that was da bomb.  If creamed spinach could be da bomb to a kid.  Well, the taste memory of it is da bomb to me--it wasn't too rich like most creamed spinach I eat these days.

It surprises me that, as much as I grow Swiss chard and get Swiss chard from my farm share, therefore I've got piles of Swiss chard waiting to be used at any given time, I never thought about making creamed Swiss chard.

But for some reason--um, I'm blogging about how I feed the family from the farm share, that's the reason ;) --I decided to try my hand at creamed Swiss chard.  I got inspired by this recipe but veered off course a tiny bit to use what I had on hand.  As usual.

The recipe is pretty easy to make-I worked it so that I cooked everything in one saucepan, which kept the dishes down.  We ate it alongside a flank steak and rice because I remembered that fancy steak dinner.  We don't normally eat steak.  The interesting thing to me was what I did with the leftovers.  I'll blog about that in another post, but let me just say 'mock lasagna' and leave it at that. Well, I'll tease you at the end.

Slow Cooker Salmon Swiss Chard Artichoke Dip

Salmon combined with swiss chard in a hot artichoke dip, served from a slow cooker? I'm in.

Updated photo, same great recipe!

It's steamy--I could hardly wait to eat a bite!

I still remember the first time I had hot artichoke dip.  It was amazing.  It became a regular on my roster of hot party dips because the key ingredients either could hang out in my pantry or were fridge staples.  Then I moved to Hawaii and my friend Sara served my beloved dip--but with salmon.  It was eye-opening@  Sara had been inspired by a crab version, and a smoked salmon version, but made it her own with a salmon filet and liquid smoke.

I've kept liquid smoke in the pantry ever since.

I never empty the bottle, however.  I keep moving and giving away the open bottle first.  Then I get to discover where the liquid smoke is shelved in a new grocery store and carry on.

Thus was the status of my hot party dip roster (everyone has one of those, right?) until I read Farmgirl Fare's Hot Swiss Chard Artichoke Dip.  Her seamless blending of my most prolific garden green with my favorite dip inspired me to add it to my recipe.

If you have a massive salmon filet, use part of it in this dip and part with oranges on pasta.  I did.  When it's warmer, I have other plans for my salmon filets, so stay tuned.

I've made this with both marinated artichoke hearts and canned (non-marinated) artichoke hearts.  I think it works well both ways.  If I have canned choke hearts I add mayo, and if I have choke hearts in oil I use less mayo.

Swiss Chard, Corn, and Feta Pizza (Pizza Night!)

This pizza was inspired by a flatbread at SmittenKitchen.  The combination of leeks, corn, and chard sounded just delicious.  I haven't gotten any leeks from my CSA farm share this year, though.  So I knew I'd need to sub in some onions.  I grew up eating the entire piece of Swiss chard, and I hate to waste edible food, so I adapted it based on what I had on hand.
I'd been experimenting making pizza sauce with fresh tomatoes, so I smeared half the pizza with the sauce that didn't get put up (I ran out before I finished).  Half of this pizza is <gasp> naked!  It's ok, though, I covered up the bare dough with stuff.  It's totally safe for kids.

You don't normally see fluorescent pink in nature.

Rainbow Pizza (Pizza Night)

This pizza was more an exercise in How Many Colors Can I Put On The Blank Canvas of Alfredo Sauce & Dough than a real taste combination inspiration. It started because I saw Alfredo sauce marked down and thought that would be good on a pizza, and continued when the yellow Bright Lights Swiss chard was calling to me from the garden.  Then I started looking around and noticed the red tomatoes, the mushrooms . . . and finally a purple pepper.  Just be grateful I didn't grab the beets or blueberries.  This time.  While it made for a pretty pizza, and it tasted good, I don't usually prefer sliced tomatoes on my pizza so next time I'd leave them off.  If you love them, go for it.

And I can see red, and yellow, and green, and purple, and brown, and . . .

Fried Potatoes--Farm Fresh Feast Style

Fall comfort food at its best--fried potatoes pumped up with farm fresh ingredients.  I learned how to make fried potatoes in Germany from a very patient social worker friend.  He would cook his potatoes low and slow, until they had a nice crust and were cooked through.  I don't have the patience, so I nuke or boil my potatoes first, and finish them in the skillet.  Try it!

Oops, forgot the seasonings and the garlic.