Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Organic and local

We started receiving our weekly CSA box from Grant Farms last week. We've been enjoying fresh veggies! The first box was mostly greens plus radishes, cilantro, dill, and baby beets. Here's a picture of one of the salads I made this week with greens and radishes from our CSA box.

My neighbor gave me some fresh oregano out of her garden, so I chopped some up and some fresh dill from our CSA box and put them in our mashed potatoes. It was yummy! I'm looking forward to seeing all the cool veggies, fruits, and herbs we're going to get this summer and fall.

The great cookbook challenge!

I thought about calling this - super busy stay at home family manager of a family of 7 cooks dairy free/gluten free gourmet recipes! It was a bit long though, so I figured the great cookbook challenge had a better flow to it. My husband and I had a rare few hours to ourself on Friday evening, so we went to a movie. One of the previews was for a movie coming out with Amy Adams and Meryl Streep called Julie and Julia. Meryl Streep plays Julia Childs. Amy Adams plays a woman named Julie who decides to make a Julia Childs' recipe every day of the year and blog about it. I TOTALLY loved that idea. Now, if I was a single woman with no children or at least had no children - I would do that! However, I am married and I have five children. So, a new recipe every day will never fly. I have decided on a modified approach to the challenge. The book I'm using is already vegan, so that takes care of the dairy issue. Many of the recipes in the book are already gluten free, but I may be modifying some of the recipes to make them gluten free. Plus, there are no rules about following the recipe perfectly. I've never been too good at doing what I'm told anyway! LOL. Anyway, here is my first recipe out of Veganomicon for the challenge: potato-kale enchiladas. I made a few changes to the recipe. The most obvious being that I made it into an enchilada casserole instead of rolling and stuffing the enchiladas. When one is a busy mom trying to squeeze in some healthy cooking, you make things easy on yourself!



Here's how I made them (the stuff in italics are things I've changed):
Enchilada Chile Sauce:
2 tbsp olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 sm can roasted green chiles
2 tsp chile powder (the recipe says 2-3 tsp, I knew my hubby would prefer 2 tsp, so....)
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1 tbsp chopped fresh oregano
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes with juice
1 1/2 tsp salt
(the sauce also calls form 1 tsp sugar, but I have learned by trial and error to NOT add sugar, so I didn't)

Potato-Kale Filling
1 pound potatoes (they call for Yukon gold or red)
1/2 pound kale, washed, trimmed, and chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 C beef type broth
2 tbsp lime juice, 1 tbsp lemon juice (I changed this one simply because I ran out of lime juice - they turned out so well that I'll probably leave it that way. I liked the tanginess of the kale!)
1/2 tsp salt
18 corn tortillas

Preheat oven to 375.
Prepare enchilada sauce:
Saute the onions in oil for 4-7 minutes, until softened. Add remaining sauce ingriends, bring to a simmer, remove from heat. Puree sauce in blender.

Prepare filling:
Peel and dice potatoes, boil until tender, drain and cool. (I made these the day ahead to make preparation quicker and easier!) Cook garlic in olive oil until garlic is slightly browned. Add the kale, sprinkle with salt, and raise the heat to medium, stirring to cover kale with garlic and oil. Cover the pot and let the kale wilt. Remove lid, add ingredients and cook 3-4 minutes more.

Assemble:
Use a 9" x 13" pan. Put a little sauce in the bottom, dip 6 tortillas in the sauce and lay them in the pan. Spread half the potato-kale mixture on top. Repeat and end with a layer of tortillas. Pour any sauce left on top of the casserole. Cover with foil and bake for 25 minutes. Remove the foil and bake another 12 minutes or so until the tortillas start to get a little crisp on the edges. Then - enjoy!


We had a yummy salad made with our CSA greens and radishes. Then, we ate super delicious strawberries from our CSA box for desert!

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Garden greens


We harvested our first garden greens! They were yummy! Our garden is doing pretty well. We've had outrageous amounts of rain which is incredibly unusual for Colorado. It did wash away a couple of my pepper plants, all of my basil, some of the second batch of lettuce, and some of the carrots. The peas, tomatoes, zucchini, strawberries, and chives are looking awesome! We made a salad with the romaine and spinach that we picked. The kids had a blast picking the greens, and they all ate them as well!