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.

Mustard Greens Kheema (Ground Beef and Mustard Greens Curry)

Ground beef and a whole bunch of mustard greens magically transformed into an Indian-spiced main dish the whole family enjoyed.

I've been calling myself a seasonal eater for many years now, since I embraced the concept of eating locally from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. I've recently realized that's not entirely true. A more accurate label would be I am a weather-dependent eater.

While I do eat locally [as in, you won't find fresh tomatoes or fresh berries in my house unless they came from the garden, the farm share or the farmer's market because I like food that tastes good] I don't care what season we're supposed to be in. What matters more is what it feels like when I step outside with the dogs each day. Menu plans get tossed out the window if the weather is not as expected.

Let's take the other day, the first of June, as a prime example. According to the guy on public radio it's the 37th Week of Middle Spring or something and I planned to use up the rest of my son's birthday dinner--steak, potatoes and Bernaise sauce--in an omelette with a side salad from the farm share. Sounds like a lovely Spring meal, no? Except June dawned cold and rainy, not omelette and salad weather. We turned the steak into beef stroganoff instead. I am a weather-dependent eater.

This recipe works for a wide climate range which makes sense because we eat Indian food year round. Last Fall I asked my friend Laura, author of The Spiced Life, for a recipe to use both ground beef [from the cow in the freezer] and mustard greens from the farm share. She sent me to her Kheema with Springtime Greens. My spice cabinet is not as extensive as Laura's and I wanted to just throw everything in the skillet, so I had to modify.

It looks like a giant skillet of mustard greens--but cover and wait!

Last week I posted an easy vegetarian recipe for using your farm share greens--Artichoke & Arugula Pesto Burrata Pasta. A year or so ago I posted an even easier vegetarian recipe--Squash, Mustard Greens and Chick Pea Masala.  I'm ready to share a more involved recipe. While it does have the extensive spice list of Indian food at home, it's also a one pot meal (ok, rice cooker = second pot). My kids liked both the near uniform texture of the meat + greens as well as the familiar flavors of their favorite Indian foods. I liked getting rid of an entire bag of mustard greens in one swoop.

Do you see how much this cooks down? Shown before adding yogurt.

For more recipes using Mustard Greens, please see my Mustard Greens Recipe Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. For more recipes using ground beef, please check out my round up of 106 Food Blogger Recipes Using Ground Beef. I've got a Greens board on Pinterest where I'm pinning interesting recipes I find around the web, and I also share some on my FB page.

Fresh Cherry Muffins--with Roasted Beets

Roasted beets and fresh cherries are baked in a tender--and shockingly pink--muffin.

Over the weekend I realized the cherry trees in my neck of the world are ready for harvest. My first clue was walking the dogs along a sidewalk covered with what looked like  . . . well, cherries like I get at the store. I could not pause to pick any fruit up like I did when encountering plums all over the ground because when you're holding leashes to a 16 pound, a 42 pound, and a 66 pound dog your hands are already full.

Yesterday I saw a dad holding his son steady on a ladder while the kid picked cherries from their tree.[At least I assumed it was theirs. Who am I to comment on foraged fruit?] The sight reminded me that I'd been sitting on a fresh cherry recipe for nearly a year. Since I like to share muffin recipes on Mondays [and I've been spending time updating my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient as well as adding a grilling section to my drop down menu recipe index, not plotting out the month's worth of posts] I figure today is as good a time as any.

Grab a cup of tea with these muffins--even though they have beets in them, they are delicate enough thanks to the yogurt. My kids ate them warm for breakfast and room temp for an after school snack with peanut butter and/or Nutella. Any method to get beets from the farm share into the family is a good method in my book.

For more recipes using beets, please see my Beet Recipes Collection. For more recipes using cherries, many of them dried, please see my Cherry Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. I've got a Fruit board on Pinterest where I gather interesting recipes, and of course I'm sharing other bloggers' successes and my epic failures over on my FB page.

Grilled Bok Choy (A story of a picky eater reformed by the farm share)

I'm throwing the farm share on the grill this summer, starting with Bok Choy. This easy and versatile side dish of tender stems and smoky crispy leaves is great with fish or chicken.

In honor of my formerly picky eater's 17th birthday, I thought I'd share a story about picky kids and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm shares. 

Ten years ago we set off on our first CSA adventure filled with loads of idealism (farmers! local food!) and a smattering of technical skills. Our kids really didn't have a say in the decision, but being resilient military kids they were used to going with the flow, living in a variety of settings and being offered a variety of foods. 

The kids were not big on a lot of vegetables, however. Sure, my daughter would eat raw broccoli stems for a snack and my son (a carb and cheese lover) would eat the occasional baby carrot under duress, but mostly they'd eat corn or potatoes. [One glaring exception was Yakisoba.] When a box full of vegetables comes into the house, and then another and another and another every week, though, you have to figure something out or you'll end up wasting food.

I hate wasting food. It's a waste of my money and our farmers' time. If the food came to us all packaged it would be an even bigger environmental waste, but in this case my compost bin doesn't complain.

After the massively steep learning curve of the first year farm share I picked up a few tricks [and shared some of them in a post written during the slow winter months]:

• Make familiar foods with additional vegetables added.
• Perform Vegetable Triage to identify and use what is most perishable first.
• Think outside the salad bowl.

Every season some new-to-me vegetable will throw me for a loop, but eventually I find a way [or fake one, our motto Peary high] to love it. Or at least tolerate it. I've had plenty of failures, some shown on my FB page, but the one that is family legend is Grilled Radicchio. I tried some recipe years ago and we hated it. [Like, straight into the compost bin don't even pretend to eat it for the kids'  sake hated it.] The only Good Thing about grilled radicchio became the story.

When you take your kids to the pediatrician they'll get asked "what fruits and vegetables won't you eat?" I'm sure it's a roundabout way to gauge a child's nutritional status. My kids will always answer without hesitation "Grilled Radicchio!". This usually shuts down that line of questioning. I can only assume it's because a kid who has an opinion on grilled radicchio has probably been exposed to more than just baby carrots, corn, and potatoes.

When I picked up the first farm share the other day I was delighted to see strawberries, spinach and salad mix and unsurprised to see additional greens. It's Spring, after all. I decided to grill some bok choy partly because I had the grill out for tilapia and salad turnips and partly to try and change our family's perception of grilled leaves. I loved how the edges of the leaves got all crispy like kale chips, and was pleased at how tender the stems became so quickly. I kept the seasoning simple--a splash of soy sauce--because we ate it with fish and rice, but I think you could go in a variety of directions. Maybe some lemon pepper seasoning, or hot sauce, or a balsamic vinegar reduction.

For more recipes using bok choy, please see my Bok Choy Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. For other ideas using greens, please see my Greens board on Pinterest.

Easy Artichoke Arugula Pesto Burrata Pasta

A fast-to-fix vegetarian pasta dish using farm share greens, marinated artichokes, and creamy burrata cheese. Putting up pesto is one way I keep from being overwhelmed when the farm share greens are in abundance.

I forgot to take finished, plated, photos of this dish. I also had the grill going and it just slipped my mind. I debated sharing this recipe today, seeing how it's the first day of the the farm share season and I had the potential for new and returning readers arriving on the blog and did I want to start off with less than my best foot forward?

I decided that I did. Hope you understand!

The idea that you don't have to Eat All The Greens in a Week was a revelation to me when I adjusted to eating from a CSA, and putting some items up for later use is one of the ways I feed my family from our seasonal farm share year round. We're starting our 10th year enjoying the fruits of CSA farmers' labors, and recipes like this are one the tips and tricks for farm share success. For other tips, please check out this post. 

When we get a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share box filled with assorted greens I am emphatically not looking to throw them all into salads. There are only so many salads we can eat in a week. Instead, I'm looking to turn anything not expressly salad-like into a recipe ingredient, and I give myself bonus points if it becomes a long-storing ingredient. I've shared a concept recipe for incorporating farm share greens into pasta dishes here, which is a terrific quick use for a bunch of greens. If you've got a bit of time to do some prep work, though, you'll be reaping the benefits for months by putting up some of your greens as pesto.

Arugula pesto fits the long-storing ingredient category--typically we're getting arugula in the farm share side by side with a bag of salad greens and other cooking greens. It's useful to be able to put up a batch of pesto. I store mine in the freezer in half pint jars, with a splash of olive oil on top, using these terrific lids (Amazon affiliate link). I don't just want to share how I put up this stuff, though--I want to show you how I use what I put up.

This pasta dish is my second version of a fast burrata pasta meal. The first one, that I've made three times now [unheard of in my family] uses meat and winter squash so it will debut in the Fall. Oh, so worth the wait. I wanted a vegetarian and summer-friendly version, good for a quick supper, so I took the burrata pasta concept and here we are. Adding in artichokes just elevates a simple pasta dish into a snazzier one, though we are in danger of the kids becoming artichoke fans and eating all the leftovers. The same thing happened to us with take out Indian food, and now my picky eater tells me the spaghetti sauce needs more eggplant. Educated palates. Harrumph.

Burrata cheese was new to me, and my spellcheck keeps trying to change it to burrito. When I first bought it I thought it was just like fresh mozzarella and was sorely disappointed when the creamy center oozed all over my pizza dough. Once I embraced the gooey center I came to appreciate it for what it is (creamy), not for what it's not (solid). I've found burrata cheese at the fancy cheese counter of my local Kroger. It's pricey but perishable, which means whenever I see it marked half off/quick sale I pick it up. [Yes, I cruise the fancy cheese counter looking for magical markdown stickers--I'm married, I don't cruise bars anymore.] I know we'll enjoy burrata pasta dishes so it's worth the splurge--at half price at least.

For other recipes using arugula, please see my Arugula Recipes Collection. For other recipes using marinated artichokes, you're looking for the Recipes Using Veggies In Jars Collection. These are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for ideas when you're facing an unfamiliar ingredient. You can also find me sharing ideas via my Pinterest boards and my FB page. Want to know how to Use This Blog? Click here.

Green Garlic Hummus with Green Garbanzo Beans

Freshly harvested mild green garlic and green garbanzo beans make a colorful and flavorful dip.

We are all hungry. My spouse is bike commuting these days and comes home starved. My kids get home from these last weeks of school and are starved. I think about making dinner and get peckish. Having an easy appetizer on hand, one that is protein-packed like hummus, is such a time- and appetite-saver for us all. I'm not worried about mindless snacking when I know what went into the dip.

Sometimes I'm buying the giant vats of Sabra from Costco to get our hummus fix. Sometimes I'm looking around at the contents of our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share box for hummus ideas. I've done quite a few for the blog--here are some of them:

In the spring we sometimes get fresh green garlic in the farm share. I like to play with it and try new things--I grow my own garlic but I've never harvested it as green garlic. Susan of Luna Cafe has a Fresh Primer on Green Garlic and Garlic Scapes--check it out here. [The garlic scapes, however, are something very worth harvesting--here's what a brand new baby scape looked like on my tallest plant the other day]. 

This hummus marks my first foray into green garbanzo beans. I saw some at my local spice shop and couldn't resist. I had no clue that spice shops existed before I moved to Dayton, and now I'm aware of 3--although I primarily shop at Spice Paradise where I got these beans. You can also make this with regular dry or canned chick peas. Whatever's easiest.

Green garbanzo beans and green garlic seemed like a good idea--so I made a hummus. We enjoy hummus with carrots, pita chips, pretzel chips, and even piled up in a plate with other summer eats for an easy dinner.

For other recipes using garlic, please see my Garlic Recipe Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. Want to know how to Use This Blog? Click here. For other vegetable appetizers, please see my Awesome Veggie Apps and Snacks Pinterest board. To see what's up in the garden, feel free to check out my FB page. And, for more clickable collages of recipe suggestions like the hummus above, click here. 

Time Out for some Weeding

I've been doing a lot of weeding lately, and sitting and pulling out unwanted growth gives me time to think. Weeding one section of the brick patio gives me a sense of accomplishment, but when I turn around and gaze at the rest . . . . sigh.

I'm truly grateful that so much is bursting to life in the yard. I'm tickled that I appear to have volunteer cilantro and dill, and about a dozen volunteer pumpkin-ish squash plants. [Those squash starts are like moles popping up all over, but I'm not playing Whack A Mole unless they truly are in in a terrible spot. Like the section of brick patio I just weeded a few days before.] I'm creeped out as I drive past sterile brown fields that recently sprouted orderly rows of corn. Where is the green chaos of my garden?

Having a blog is a lot like having a garden in perpetual Spring. There is always some weeding to be done. Updating the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, adding notes in earlier posts directing readers to other recipes using similar farm share ingredients, and updating older posts with new search descriptions are all ways I weed the blog.

Spending time weeding means I'm not editing photos and writing up new posts, nor going around on social media sharing my newest recipes.

I'm taking a week off of posting new content to weed--both the garden and the blog. I can't promise I'll have everything ship shape, but it will be incrementally more user-friendly when I return, in time for our 10th CSA season to begin.

I'll be back with Green Garlic Hummus, a fun way to use both green garbanzo beans and fresh green garlic--in a week. In the meantime, if you see my on FB--please tell me to go weed!

Spiced Cottage Cheese Chip Dip

Cottage cheese blended with spices makes a simple dip that is great with potato chips or vegetable dippers. But really, you want it with potato chips. The ruffled kind are best.

On this blog I typically share how I feed my family the seasonal produce of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. Occasionally I'll share other, non-produce inspired recipes.

This is one of those times because every summer gathering needs a good potato chip dip.

This is an old family recipe that has been passed onto the 3rd generation. My daughter now makes it, and scribbles the amounts I call out in decimals--".66 mayonnaise", anyone? It seems awfully silly for a family recipe of what amounts to a diet food [used as a way to get more potato chips into my mouth] but no matter.

Growing up my mom didn't buy those tubs of sour cream-based dips for parties. She'd just make up this dip instead. When my brother comes home from overseas, in addition to fried eggs, he wants a bag of chips, a container of cottage cheese, and seasoned salt--the bachelor version. I thought everyone ate cottage cheese as a chip dip, and had no clue cottage cheese was thought of as a diet food until recently.

We are particular about our cottage cheese and prefer a dried style and smaller curd than most nationwide brands. Each time we move I have to find a new cottage cheese source, and here in Ohio it's Michigan brand cottage cheese.  Since I'm still not really sure how to respond when someone yells O-H!, and since my spouse is from Michigan, there is no foolish sports-related reason not to live in Ohio and enjoy Michigan brand cottage cheese. No sponsorship implied--sharing a fine example of 'good' cottage cheese for this dip. Back on the east coast it was Nordica brand. I never found a good brand in Hawaii. I ate sushi and malasadas instead.

For grins and giggles, even though there's not a vegetable in it or a Chip Dip Category on it, check out the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. If you're still got time to kill while avoiding something more pressing, head over to Pinterest and follow my Awesome Vegetable Apps and Snacks. Still want to poke around? Learn how to Use This Blog here.

Grilled Garlic Scape Pesto Smashed Potatoes

Crispy grilled potatoes smashed and seasoned with garlic scape pesto.

Subtitle:  Yet Another Reason Why You Should Put Up Garlic Scape Pesto This Year

I will shamelessly admit that this post is a Call to Action. I want you to find garlic scapes (if it's not too late in your neck of the woods) and make pesto with them. Make lots and lots of pesto, then freeze some of it because pesto lasts a long time and can be enjoyed in so many ways.

Here is my garlic scape pesto (GSP) recipe, using pistachios, parsley and basil for that whole Green on Green action, but use the recipe that appeals to you the most. There are many pesto options in my Garlic Scape Recipe Round Up and on my Garlic Scapes Pinterest Board. If you get enough scapes, you could try them all!

I use a bit less olive oil in my recipe so the result is a thicker pesto, easy to scoop (Amazon affiliate link to my scoop) onto a tray to freeze. [I prefer not to use my ice cube trays since I use them to make ice and never have enough ice in the summer.] I often whisk thawed scoops of GSP with additional oil before using, like I did in today's recipe.

The first time I heard about smashed potatoes was while skimming through a Pioneer Woman cookbook in the bookstore. I failed at my first attempt to make them [I was too vigorous with my smashing] but they still tasted good. I tried them again on our old grill, but when your grill is optimized for portability and powered by a creme brûlée torch-sized can of propane, you learn not to expect much. The third time was the charm for these spuds--I didn't crash too vigorously and the grill was big enough, and hot enough [and gosh darn it, people like it] to make this concept work.

These were rounds 3 and 4 for the grill--I'd already grilled green beans and zucchini for later use.

My daughter filled up a 3 quart saucepan with potatoes because I know that no matter how they are prepared, my family loves potatoes. I only grilled what would fit on my grill sheet because I didn't want overcrowding, and because we can always find a use for cooked & cooled potatoes. [In this case, some went onto a pizza, some went into a spinach and potato quesadilla, and some were fried up with onions and eggs for breakfast.]

For other recipes using Garlic Scapes, please see my Garlic & Garlic Scapes Recipe Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. I've got a Pinterest board of Garlic Scape Recipes here, and a Round Up of 28+ Food Blogger Recipes Using Garlic Scapes here.

Make and Take Smoothies for Moms

Consider giving the gift of smoothies to a new mom, a friend recovering from oral surgery, or a harried neighbor. Ready to shake up and drink, smoothies are a fast way to get some nutrition and get back to business--be that bonding, healing, or caregiving.

Motherhood equals nurturing (no, you don't have to have created/raised offspring to read on--we've all had moms). One way folks nurture is via food [hello, nurture and nutrition share the same root].
Taking meals to a new mom is one way of nurturing the new family as they become a unit. Taking a meal to a mom after her 6th kid is just plain nurturing for her [though watching the kids and doing her laundry so she can get a massage is even better but doesn't fit with my theme for today's recipe].

What about other folks who need nurturing? A busy friend caring for aging parents? A neighbor caring for his ailing wife? Someone recovering from oral surgery? It's the last situation that inspired today's post, but the more I though about it the more I think this concept would work for a variety of circumstances.

Smoothies keep for several days, and it's easy to scale up a recipe to make an extra portion. With that in mind, when I found out my friend wouldn't be eating solid food for quite some time after her tonsillectomy, I offered to bring her some smoothies. I was going to be near her home on post-op day #5 and that seemed like a good time to deliver as she'd be coming out of the initial post-op haze.

Grilled Steak & Vegetable Wild Rice Salad

A hearty main dish salad of grilled steak, zucchini, mushrooms and peppers tossed with wild rice and topped with olives, artichoke hearts, and feta cheese.

If you've been on my FB page lately, you'll see evidence that my motto is Grill All The Things. I don't know if it's because I'm so stoked about having a decent grill or because I can't stand to see a hot cooking appliance (NOT in my kitchen) underutilized or what. I just know that I've been routinely grilling some vegetables, fruit, and perhaps a protein or a pizza each time I fire it up. I've learned how to get the propane tank refilled, and I'm really looking forward to playing once the summer bounty of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share is arriving in my kitchen.

Grilling often means that I've got extra grilled stuff to use on the off days. Following that 'cook once, eat twice' philosophy, I've got a main dish spring salad to share with you today. This hearty salad is for the days when you've worked hard [weeding, pruning, mulching, planting, doing a marathon 5K instead of reading the Sunday paper--pick your reason for a hearty salad]. It's satisfying and can be customized to suit your tastes with optional toppings. I went with a Mediterranean theme because I'm sort of stuck on artichokes, olives and feta cheese these days.

A warm day followed by a cool evening is a great time for a filling salad such as this. We enjoyed it slightly warm, tossing all of the previously grilled items with hot rice. My daughter preferred the leftovers served at room temperature, with plenty of cheese.

For other recipes using mushrooms, please see my Mushroom Recipes Collection. For other recipes using Zucchini, please see my Zucchini Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. Want to know how to Use This Blog? Click here.