Thanksgiving Greens in Homage to Carrie

I should be continuing on my pumpkin posts but since Thanksgiving is still fresh I'm going to forgo pumpkins and skip right to the greens. Each year we add a new dish to the traditional Thanksgiving fare. I knew the dish I would make had to include greens, because if I didn't use them right away they would be forgotten among the Thanksgiving  leftovers.

I found a recipe for Kimchi Creamed Collard Greens. I thought this looked great. This recipe appealed to me also because my sister is in Korea for a year, and we were celebrating Thanksgiving with out her, so I also decided to make it in homage to Carrie.

Turnip greens and kale

 For the greens, I used turnip greens, kale, and at the last minute I added a lovely bunch of bok choy. I am always amazed that no matter how many greens I have it always looks so much smaller in the end.

 I really loved this dish it's similar to creamed spinach but has a nice kick and flavor. How could you go wrong with greens paired with heavy cream and bacon. The kimchi was a nice spicy addition and if you have an aversion to fermented cabbage it tastes just as good without it. I am really impressed with the way that this turned out and might even work it into Christmas dinner as well.

Kimchi Creamed Greens

 This a salad my mom made but she used some the nice peppery arugula from the box.

 It was a roasted root vegetable salad with pears and roasted parsnips and carrots, and it was great. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with wonderful food.







Other Posts You Might Like
Thankful For Greens And Vegetables
Salad With A Little Bit Of Everything Including Radish

A Cornucopia of Pumpkin

I love Thanksgiving, and in celebration of this week of prepping turkeys and peeling potatoes, I've decided to make a post about all the things I've been making with pumpkins. I had been wanting to make pancakes, pumpkin, to be more specific and made a regular sweet breakfast pancake and made a savory one as well.

For the breakfast pumpkin pancakes I used Bob's 10 Grain pancake mix and added three quarters of a cup pumpkin puree and a little bit of cardamom and cinnamon. For the savory pancakes I found a recipe in the The New Moosewood Cookbook for sweet potato pancakes and adapted it for the use of pumpkin.

 Savory Pumpkin Pancakes adapted from The Moosewood New Classics Cookbook
1 1/2cups of pureed pumpkin

 1/3 of onion coarsely grated 
2 tablespoons of lemon juice 
salt and pepper to taste
2 beaten eggs
1/3 cup flour 


1. Combine all ingredients and mix well. 
2 Heat a small amount of oil in a skillet until it is very hot. 
3. Spoon batter and form thin pancakes patting the batter down, frying on both sides until brown. 
4. Serve hot with sour cream or applesauce. 


These were both wonderful treats. I think I am more partial to the savory pancakes, I was really impressed with the way they turned out. and I don't know why I had never thought of a doing a savory pumpkin pancake. But it is definitely not going to be the last time. Maybe next time some green onions or chives or bacon would be really good.

Happy Thanksgiving

Zucchini Couscous Salad

I was told to bring a salad to my friends Sunny and Peter's for dinner. Looking at the vegetables that I had left in the box it was either something with chili peppers, a pumpkin (which I didn't have time to roast), and zucchini. Zucchini it was.  I scoured Food52 for a salad recipe with zucchini and found a Squash couscous with mint, pistachios, and golden raisins. This was a wonderful recipe that I think next time I would probably double the ingredients, for more generous servings per person. There is minimal cooking, sauteing the zucchini and shallots for a couple of minutes at the most, and boiling vegetable broth for the couscous. I can see why this salad would be so appealing to make in the summer because it can be thrown together so easily. There are lots of different flavors going on a little bit of sweetness, freshness from the mint, and lemony goodness from the dressing. This salad also travels well too, which is always nice when bringing food to someones home. It was gobbled up along with the delicious pork stew and smashed potatoes.

These photos were taken with my phone because I apparently  like to leave my camera on  and let the battery drain. 

Other Posts You Might Like

Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

Salad With A Little Bit Of Everything Including Radish

Roasted Kale Salad

Here is the newest box, I realized that I haven't been showing them lately. I'm so excited about the pumpkin, I'm already making a mental list of things I can make. At the bottom of everything there is a small pile of chile's more than enough to take me through the new year. And I am at a loss of what to do with them.

You know what has never disappeared from the boxes this whole year? Kale. I have become so used to it that I stopped writing about it because I felt like it's ubiquitous presence was taking away from the other vegetables in the box. Then I saw a roasted kale salad in Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day: Well-loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen which is fast becoming one of my favorite books. This salad could not be more easier. It's tasty, it's filling, makes a great leftover lunch, and it's vegan.  Who knew that toasted coconut and kale would work so well together. I put it over farrow but I'm sure any type of hearty grain would would work well.

The second time I made this salad I decided to roast these three little deseeded Santa Fe chili peppers along with the kale and coconut. The peppers were an interesting addition it was good with the toasted coconut but it was a little to much heat. Not overly spicy but just assertive enough to make it's presence known. Chili peppers and Kale maybe not the best pairing, but it was worth a try.


Other Posts You Might Like
Delicious Black Bean Chili
Curried Eggplant

One Giant Pizza Post

Since I just did a post on pizza I decided I should just continue with the theme and show the other pizzas that have been consumed as of late. My room mate and I made a pizza with eggplant, with store bought pizza crust. For some reason I don't have any pictures of it, I must have been really hungry and just forgot to take a picture of the finished product. But here's a photo of an eggplant.

Not baked

Baked

The next pizza that was made I made with my friend Billie. We put zucchini and bell peppers on top and it kind of looks like Christmas in pizza form. We sauteed the zucchini and then just threw on the raw bell peppers along with the cheese. I made the crust with a little bit of cornmeal in it which gave a nice crunch to the loaded squash pizza. And Billie has a great pizza stone which gave a nice golden color to the crust and cheese.

There have been these lovely bunches of basil arriving in the box with the flowers still attached. They kind of remind me of bouquets of flowers, maybe because I stuck this one in a vase. Basil pairs well with tomatoes and that brings me to my last pizza endeavor.

The last pizza I made was with heirloom tomatoes. My friend Anna has the most amazing garden in her backyard, I would go so far as calling it a tiny organic urban farm. She generously gave me a large amount of gorgeous heirlooms. I made pizza crust and sprinkled it with a layer of cheese and then baked it for about 15 minutes, give or take.  I then sliced up tomatoes and layered them sprinkling salt, pepper, olive oil, and pureed basil on top. I didn't want to bake the tomatoes because they are so amazing in their pure form. This was definitely eaten with a knife and fork because the tomatoes kept falling off but, it was a nice reminder of a summer gone quickly by.


Other Posts You Might Like
Everything But The Kitchen Sink Pizza
A Little Roasted Tomatoes and Zucchini For Breakfast

Curried Eggplant Pizza

In Long Beach one of my favorite places to get pizza is Dean's. This is not your normal red sauce pizza, they use Thai curry sauce on a wonderful doughy crust, that combined with tofu, pineapple and cheese is a wonderful treat. I know Dean's in the true Italian style of pizza is blasphemous but that is the beauty of pizza, you can put just about anything on it.

Inspired by Dean's Thai curry pizza I was inspired to make an Indian style curry pizza. Using similar ingredients from the curried eggplant with a little variation, a pizza was made.

My friend Jillana, who has a fabulous blog called Ovenhappy, and I cooked and chatted away a Friday evening  hungrily awaiting the outcome. We sauteed the eggplant, and onion together adding curry powder and red pepper flakes. At the end we threw in some spinach and let it wilt.
On the pizza dough we spread a layer of labneh, and then spread the eggplant, onion, spinach mixture on top. We were in debate if cheese would be a good addition to Indian style eggplant, so we sprinkled some only on half.

I loved this pizza. Using the labneh as a sauce/base gave a nice tangy flavor to the eggplant. I really liked the addition of the cheese, but I think I favored the one with out cheese a little more. This delightful meal once again proves that just about anything can be put on a pizza and the outcome will be delicious.

Other Posts You Might Like
Curried Eggplant
Everything But The Kitchen Sink Pizza

Burnt Okra

Look how cool this okra is. I didn't even know okra could be purple, but aesthetically appealing as okra is, I am at a loss of what to do with it. I know it's used in lots of different types of cuisine and one of the most popular ways to prepare it is fried. I knew I wanted to prepare the okra but I also knew frying was not one of them.

Then in my Google reader an okra recipe appeared. Burnt okra sounded intriguing enough and is a really easy, not very involved cooking process.
 This is kind of like an okra hash, the potatoes and okra work well together with a nice garlicky presence. I really liked the texture of the okra as well, with a name like burnt okra it can be a little alarming, but mixed with the texture of the crisp potato it was good. The recipe calls for basil at the end but I opted to not use it. We put our burnt okra in tortillas and made tacos. It was really filling and I am on the watch for more okra to arrive so I can make it again.




Other Posts You Might Like
Lima Bean Veggie Burgers
Braised Late Lunch