strawberry – Chocolate 'N Children

May 29, 2015May 27, 2015

Food Friday – Second CSA Box Recipes

I still have green onions to use up. That’s on my to-do list for this week. “Find Green Onion recipes that the kids will eat”. This could be interesting…

Did you know that soups are hard to photograph? Or maybe it’s just me. I feel like I need to take a class in food photography to do this right. Anyways…we already had a bunch of carrots in our fridge and we got some in our CSA box. My 6yr old has been begging to make carrot soup, and with all these carrots I agreed that this would be a good time to give it a try.

Carrot soup

1 lb carrots – peeled, and sliced into small pieces.
1 onion – roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic – chopped
2 leaves fresh basil
2 Tbsp oil (I used coconut oil)
2 Cups chicken stock

Place first 5 ingredients in a skillet and cook, with the lid on, over medium heat until carrots are soft. About 30 minutes.

Transfer to a blender and blend until everything is blended well. Add chicken stock and blend until well combined and to desired texture.

Pour into a large pan and heat on low for as long as needed. I just let mine simmer while I made the rest of our dinner.

This soup was surprisingly rich, I was going to eat a huge bowl and just couldn’t.

We had a few carrots left over so later in the week I made carrot sticks and red pepper sticks and we dipped them in ranch dressing – which is the kids favorite way to eat carrots.

Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

These didn’t make it to the end of the day. They were eaten up almost immediately.

First, wash the strawberries and then cut off their tops. I put my tops in a tupperware in the freezer for later use in smoothies.

There’s two reasons for cutting the tops off before dipping. First, I want the tops for smoothies. Second, the kids will ask me to cut the tops off before they will eat them, so I may as well cut them off first and have tops for my smoothies.

Next, I highly recommend a decent quality dipping chocolate. I found this Ghirardelli dipping chocolate and it’s awesome. You melt it on the defrost setting in your microwave and it melts in just a couple of minutes. It’s also basically room temperature after you melt it so I don’t have to worry about the kids burning themselves on hot chocolate or melting something I don’t want melted with my chocolate when I dip.

Then, dip away!

It dries fast, by the time I had finished dipping all the strawberries, I could pick up and eat the first ones I had dipped. And they were delicious!

May 28, 2015May 21, 2015

CSA Week 2

Here’s what came in my second CSA box. Recipes for some of these items will be on the blog tomorrow!

Basil – I’m seeing lots of italian foods in my future! Did you know, basil is a spice that does better on the counter instead of the fridge. Just put it in a jar of water kind of like you would a flower, cover it lightly, and leave it out. It’ll keep longer. Not the most beautiful flower but it really does smell so good!

Kale, I really love kale. It’s one of my favorite greens. Plus I have a great recipe! (once again, come back tomorrow!)

Lettuce, luckily we love salads around here. This is such a big head! We’ve had a great spring for lettuce growing and it really shows.

More green onions, we got green onions last week as well. Apparently, it’s been a great spring for them. We don’t eat a lot of green onions so I’m struggling with what to do with them. I don’t mind them as toppings for salads, soups, tacos, etc. But no one else likes them, so I have to find a way to hide them when I cook with them. Check back tomorrow and see what I came up with.

More strawberries, they didn’t last long. We ate them up within hours of getting them home. They’re so sweet and juicy!

One green pepper. It’s pretty large, and looks delicious!

Carrots, my 6yr old has been begging to make some carrot soup. So we did, come back tomorrow and see how it turned out!

May 22, 2015May 21, 2015

Food Friday – First CSA Box Results

My first CSA box was full of some great stuff. Take a look at all the tasty treats here!

What did I do with all of this? Well, for starters I had fun! I love trying new recipes and experimenting in the kitchen. Here’s what I came up with.

Roasted Radishes

Thinly slice your radishes and spread them on a cookie sheet. Top with a bit of butter, salt, and pepper, and bake in the oven at 300 for about 30 minutes. Taking them out and stirring every 10 minutes.

Don’t these look delicious? I’m not a big fan of radishes, but these had a great flavor and after being baked were still packed with flavor but were not spicy like raw radishes are.

Strawberry Shortcakes

Because who can resist a strawberry dessert with strawberries so sweet they don’t need sugar!

I purchased the cake from the store.

The strawberries are easy, cut the tops off, slice, and put them on top of the cake.

I put my strawberry tops in a tupperware in the freezer for using in smoothies later.

For the whipped cream, it’s so easy! 1 cup of whipping cream, 1 Tablespoon sugar, beat with an electric mixer until it’s as thick as you want it. I like mine pretty thick. Place on top and enjoy!

Pesto

I had what I think were carrot tops, so I made some pesto to top my steamed carrots and broccoli with.

I liked the pesto on my carrots but not on my broccoli. I also tried it on corn chips and that was not good at all. So stick with using this on carrots.

4 Cups carrot tops (cut off the stems and use mostly just the leafy parts)
1 Clove garlic
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp oil
2 tsp lemon juice

Place all the ingredients in a blender and blend, scraping down sides as needed, until the pesto is finely chopped and well combined. Serve with roasted or steamed carrots.

May 15, 2015May 14, 2015

First Food Friday

We’re trying out a CSA for the first time this year. I’m so excited! To celebrate, I’m going to be doing a Food Friday series on the blog every Friday.

I picked up my first box on Wednesday, so no recipes today since I haven’t had a ton of time to work with my box yet, but you’ll start seeing recipes and tips next week. So come back.

This week, I’ll just show you what’s in my box and my initial reactions to everything.

Lettuce, a whole giant head of it. Actually, it’s a bunch, not a head, because it’s not round. Anyways…we love salads at my house so we’ll have no trouble eating this up!

Broccoli, we also love broccoli – at least I love broccoli so I think everyone else should too. I did steam some for dinner Wednesday night and it’s delicious! There’s six little heads here. Come back next week to see what I do with all of it.

Strawberries, and they’re delicious! Also, they didn’t last past Thursday, we just gobbled them up. Someone did tell me that the tops are great in smoothies. So I’ve frozen them for later smoothie making. We’ll see how it turns out.

Broccolini, at least, I think that’s what it is. There seems to be a lot of leaf and not a lot of broccoli flower. I’ve seen so many recipes for this green but my local Kroger doesn’t sell it, now I get to try it!

There’s one other mysterious green leafy item that I think is carrot tops, I’ve also heard that these are very tasty and quite nutritious but I’ve never tried them. This could be exciting. If all else fails, I’ll just use my favorite greens recipe and it’ll be delicious.

These are some rather large green onions (also see the carrot tops in the bottom-left-hand corner). One per recipe should work great.

And last item, radishes. I haven’t had a radish since I was a kid. I sliced up the tiny one that you can see in the picture and ate it just to see how spicy they are. Not too bad, but I don’t see any of my kids or my husband eating them just sliced on a salad so I’m going to have to find a better use for them.

I’m so excited to have some new vegetables I’ve never tried before to cook with, and I’m excited to have some of my favorites like strawberries and broccoli, and not so excited about the radishes.

Come back next Friday to see what I make with all of this!