Cook away my CSA Challenge

I just signed on to take the "Cooking away my CSA challenge," so I will be posting about once a week about how I'm using my CSA contents that week! It sounds like my CSA started a little earlier (end of April) than some other folks, so I have a bit of a head start. Therefore, I may be getting some warm weather vegetables earlier than others (like cucumbers.) I will also be using produce from my one-woman-CSA (my own garden.)

This week, in my CSA, I got the usual lettuce and raddiccio (delicious salads all week!) some little yellow squash, a big fennel bulb, beets, mini broccoli (called "happy-rich," love that,) garlic, leeks, and baby pac-choy. I also received a dozen eggs and a four pound chicken.

I've got big plans to do grilled spatchcocked chicken (that's just a fancy word for chicken with the backbone cut out and flattened. I just love the word,) veggie packets on the grill, and rice. I love to marinate chicken in just basic olive oil, salt, pepper, and lemon juice for about an hour before grilling. It really enhances the flavor and keeps it moist without overwhelming it. These CSA chickens are so delicious on their own!

I'm going to cut up the squash, fennel, and an onion and add some herbs from my own yard and balsamic vinegar and grill those up next to the chicken.

I'm also making cucumber salad with cucumbers from my yard, just basic rice wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and a little bit of sugar with some vidalia onions. I start it in the morning and then shake it throughout the day.

My favorite thing to do with the whole "choi" family is to make wilted, chilled sesame-vinagairette salad. You blanch the greens and then chill them in a bowl of ice water and squeeze them dry. Meanwhile, whisk together some sesame oil, vinegar (I use rice wine vinegar,) Sake, Soy Sauce, garlic, ginger, and whatever else looks good that day (crushed red pepper? mirin?) toss the dryed greens in the dressing and *try* to let it chill for an hour (I hardly ever make it, it's so good I eat it all straight from the bowl. my husband has never gotten to try it.)

There's not much of the mini broccoli, but I will probably saute that and then squeeze some lemon on it for a side sometime this week.

I'll be chopping the garlic and leeks and mixing them with the rice for dinner tonight!

Asian made easy

I made this delicious beef and broccoli dish from one of my favorite food blogs today, SimplyRecipes, courtesy of another one of my emerging favorite food bloggers, Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen. It is super easy, quick, and involves like five ingredients, always a bonus for asian food!

If you don't have oyster sauce on hand, try experimenting with whatever you do have: hoisin sauce, black bean sauce, whatever! That's the best part about cooking at home, experiment!

Cooking is easy.

No, really, it is! Let me show you how easy it was for me to make a delicious roast chicken, on a monday. Really, it is. Sometimes I even do it in the toaster oven, and since my toaster oven has convection that makes it get done even faster!

First, I hoofed it up to trader joes after school today and bought a chicken. Then, I came home and preheated my oven to 375 degrees. I put the chicken and some cut up potatoes, onions, and smooshed garlic in a pan and drizzled everything with some olive oil, salt and pepper, and TJ's 21 spice salute.


I threw that in the oven for about 1.5-2 hours, depending on the size of the chicken. It helps if you have one of these to help you know when it's done.



I usually take it out at 165, but I overshot this one some and took it out at 168.

Some of you are like "ewww, 165 isn't cooked enough" but this thing seriously carried over at least 8 degrees in like ten minutes. If you DON'T have a thermometer, you can tell it's done when you pull gently on the leg and it does this.


DO NOT depend on one of those silly pop up timer, things.

I also threw together some brussel sprouts, drizzled them with salt, pepper, olive oil, and balsamic vingegar and threw them in while the chicken finished/rested.


I took the chicken off on a plate when it was done and put the potatoes back in, too. I like mine really browned.



See how easy that was? Things to keep in mind is if you mix some herbs/spices with butter and put them under the skin on your chicken, the flavor gets in there even more. Lemon zest works well, too. Leftovers are awesome, and, of course, it's born for homemade chicken stock. I take the giblets out of my chicken and just roast them in the pan with it, and then throw them, the chicken carcass, leftover onion, carrot, and celery ends (keep a bag in the freezer for just that purpose) in the slow cooker or pressure cooker, depending on what kind of mood I'm in.

I also prefer the potatoes cooked in their own pan, they get a lot crispier and carmelized and, well, less covered in fat. This was easier and made less mess, though!

p.s. I had the most infuriating time ever trying to upload these pictures! For some reason firefox doesn't recognize them in my "last import" folder, and I guess flickr merged with yahoo and now I can't log in anymore?? Finally made it work with picasa after much angst.

I have not abandoned you

although you have been all but replaced by twitter. Of course, you have twitter to thank for this post, since stickyheels st patty's day post inspired me to write it.


anyway, I made homemade ravioli last night! it was actually really easy, I had leftover roast chicken, and some othe rstuff. I think you could use whatever you wanted, just about, and it used wonton wrappers for pasta!!

Here's the rundown. First, I processed some cottage cheese until smooth (you could use ricotta, but cottage cheese is just as good, cheaper, and I had some) I then dumped that out, and processed the chicken until chopped pretty fine. I combined all that, some italian seasoning, some parmesan, some thawed, chopped frozen spinach (squeezed dry, of course) and two eggs. Mix it really good with what AB would call the best implements ever, two clean hands.


You could probably refirdgerate for a couple of days at this point, if necessary.

Then, lay out some wonton wrappers
and put water around the edges (I just used my fingers, I ruined my pastry brush using it on something hot. probably a chicken.)

Then, put a little tablespoon full of filling on each one, and press another wonton sheet down on top.
seal well.

I forgot to mention you should have some butter warming in a skillet at medium to low eat at this point.

saute the ravioli's for, well, awhile. until brown on one side.

I then flipped them and browned them on the other, because more stuff browned in butter is always better than less.

While they saute, you can experiment with your graduated cookie cutters and other shapes.


Or make raviolis like chinese dumplings, with one ravioli per sheet.

When you have this many ravioli made

and this much filling left over

remember that's why God invented lasagna.

add them back to the pan, and dump in some marinara sauce. I broke one of my main rules last night and used jarred sauce (homemade sauce is really easy to make, and then I can it) the trader joe's sauce is good, as is newman's own.

Simmer them for awhile, until they are nice and soft. serve with garlic bread. they were reeaaalllly good.

it never rains but it pours

so things have been kind of hairy around here. Im not sure how much of this I have shared, but todd and I have been dealing with quite a bit of bad luck, lately. First, our house in VA never sold. We finally got a tenant, and as they were doing the final walk through, they opened the door . . . and water came pouring out. Our upstairs toilet had broken, overflowed, and flooded the entire house. Basically most of the house had to be gutted and replaced. They finally finished the work, and on saturday we got a call saying the property manager was showing it to another family, and it was flooded AGAIN. This time it was a frozen pipe, adn the damage wasn't as bad (looks like the kitchen will have to be gutted, though) but SERIOUSLY? twice? are you KIDDING?

On Tuesday, todd and I came home from risking life and limb to go to work, and our heat was out. Again, SERIOUSLY? I fell like that lady on Greys anatomy that kept yelling at God.

Really, we are very very lucky, because all our flooding damage has been covered under insurance, and our broken heat was covered by warranty (really, thank God, because we are broke.) Also ,our neighbor is an HVAC guy, and he really saved our tail by lending us some space heaters and working late at night to fix our heat in a timely manner. I am, repeatedly, forever in his debt.

Just when I thought our luck couldn't get much worse, the law of averages kicked in, and we had a little good luck! Directv mistakenly (I think) emailed us an offer for a free HDTV upgrade! (we have TIVO, and I think it was only supposed to apply to directv dvr customers.) The Directv "guy" was here today, and we ahve a new dish and a new HD DVR! I would prefer an HD Tivo, but considering we finally have real HDTV and it was FREE, I'm pretty stoked.

Five things

that were commonly said in our house in 2008


1. Place. Ass. Now. (sorry, that might not be the official vocabulary they learned.)

2. I wish the mechanicsville house would sell

3. Would you . . .

4. Too bad she's a pee pee cat

5. I just mopped like yesterday!!!

TMI Alert

I know you dont' want to know this gory detail, but I need to spread the word about this home remedy, so here it is: I have had a big, fat, ugly, painful, coldsore for the last few days. a bad one, too. (Sidenote: those always make me think of joanne.)

I swear by Lysine as a remedy for coldsores. L-Lysine is a dietary supplement, and I think it's an amino acid. Apprently, coldsores need one type of amino acid to develop (dont' ask me which one, I'm not that technical) and Lysine is the "other" kind of amino acid, and it inhibits cold sore development. I usually take Lysine at "the first tingle" (if you get coldsores, you know what I mean) and it can head them off at the pass. This time, I wasn't on it enough to do that, so starting with the second day or so of my cold sore, I have been taking 3000 mg/day, broken up into two or three doses. It has managed to shorten my coldsore from the usual 8-12 days, to starting on Tuesday and being almost gone by today, I also think it has made it less painful.

OK, TMI over, if you get coldsores you can thank me later, if you don't, good for you and I'm sorry for the oversahre.