Today's Food

Sunday is usually a day where we settle so deeply into relaxation that we cannot be bothered to cook anything at home, and retreat to eating out at one of the of so tempting places nearby. Today was a different day, somehow. I'm sure people are sick of hearing me ramble on about how amazing our CSA is, but it just never gets old to me. Every week is like Christmas as we unpack our box of goodies and marvel at all the treats we get to enjoy in the coming days, and today's box left me inspired. We pulled the panini press out from the cupboard and made some DELICIOUS sandwiches, which included chicken, hummus, goat cheese and tomatoes (smoked gouda for Keith). Then I went to the kitchen and didn't return until our whole house was filled with the delicious scent of baked goods. Baking is something that I truly love to do... I wouldn't say that I'm necessarily the best at it, but barring any major complications (which I've had PLENTY of) most things I make turn out pretty great. Today's masterpieces: a loaf of zucchini bread, and a black raspberry cobbler. I am quite excited to wake up in the morning and toast up a piece of that bread because it has a divine flavor, and I can say that the cobbler you see pictured above has been at least halved by now. I think my favorite thing is that I now know what to do with the pounds of zucchini that have been piling up, and I only hope I can find a similarly simple solution to all those green beans! Not pictured: fresh corn cakes with pulled chicken and a tomato, avocado slaw... one of our most favorite dinners.

Today was filled with some truly great food, leaving me inspired to continue that theme throughout the week.

Dinner Talk

Please excuse this drab photo, but there were a few recipes that I wanted to share with you about tonights taco night. We are pretty routine when it comes to tacos at home, but once I saw this recipe for crockpot beer chicken on pinterest I knew we needed to try it. Super easy, super quick, CRAZY tasty! We both agreed this may be a new staple. I also tried my hand at some homemade refried beans and was pretty happy to find that it was much more simple than I may have thought. Now I have enough beans for like the next month though haha

Anyone been cooking anything good lately? I'm always eager to try new things!

Quotable

Last week I mentioned a book that I had received and was starting to read called An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler. I'm still only about half way through but there are some amazing things that I'm learning that I felt needed to be shared. I am completely in love with the way she speaks about food, and her philosophy on cooking.

If we are to weed, today, through all the advice for how to eat better, and choose what we ourselves feel most able and like best to do, we must regain our faith that cooking can be advantageous, something that helps eating well make sense. 


[This book] doesn't contain "perfect" or "professional" ways to do anything, because we don't need to be professionals to cook well, any more than we need to be doctors to treat bruises and scrapes: we don't need to shop like chefs or cook like chefs; we need to shop and cook like people learning to cook, like what we are- people who are hungry.


Resources for simple cooking often do more harm than good. A fast-and-easy cooking magazine I picked up recently seemed contrived to scare its readers off. The magazines advertised recipes for "boil-and-toss pastas" and "last-minute omelets" ... ALL pasta is "boil and toss". A lot of perfectly wonderful meals are "boil" alone. You don't need a shortcut for either, but to reserve the three dollars you might have spent on the magazine and use it for buying salt and decent olive oil ... There is plain deceit in hawking "last minute" omelets. Omelets happen almost instantly, no matter what you do to speed them up or slow them down. Suggesting there are special "last-minute" ones is akin to selling tips for breathing air more rapidly- if you have an egg, you have a meal that needs but a quick tap to be cracked open. 


I can't wait to finish reading, and then read this again and again! Or maybe I'll let you borrow it haha

Purple Peas

With our new CSA goodies, we've had to be a little more creative with recipes so we don't get really bored eating similar things every night. We got a bunch of dried purple hull peas in our first delivery and I was a little stumped on how to use them because they're kinda like beans and Keith hates beans. I decided to bite the bullet and make a yummy veggie soup, and thankfully Keith really enjoyed it (at least he said he did haha). 

I used this recipe as a pretty loose reference, even though we didn't have a bunch of the things it called for. It still had lots of peas, onions, turnips, tomatoes, and kale and its been delicious enough to eat for lunch everyday this week. I'm kinda liking the challenge of cooking with limited ingredients, it makes you feel a lot more accomplished when you get something really really delicious! Now my next mission is to use the rest of the peas to make this hummus...

Green

Since we got all kinds of awesome greens in our recent food delivery we've been doing our best to get creative with how we eat them. Thursday night we had our first ever turnip greens (delicious) and at the recommendation of everyone, we tried some kale chips this weekend.

All I did was remove the bitter stems, tossed my leaves in some olive oil and salt and then pop them in the oven for 20 minutes.

I wasn't really sure what to expect, but Keith and I were both pretty happy about how much we liked them. They are no substitute for potato chips, but are definitely a great salty snack that is super quick and easy to make. Since we liked them I decided to cut up the rest of the kale that we have so that if we wanted some more on the fly all I would have to do it toss them in the oven. I also really like this idea of crumbling the chips up and sprinkling over some pop corn.

All that aside, Keith did have a pretty great comment after his first bite: "oh hey, this kinda just tastes like I'm eating crunchy fall leaves!" Yep. Yep it does hahaha

Treat

I haven't baked or made anything sweet in SUCH a long time, so since I was home from work last week I was feeling the itch to bust out a new recipe. It is so hard for me to make treats because Keith is not a cake/candy/dessert person on a daily basis like I am. I always want to make something he likes but then it largely goes uneaten and I have to ditch it after a week. Thankfully I stumbled across this recipe for homemade Reese's cups on pinterest and I knew it would be a hit in our house.

You see, Keith LOVE Reese's cups, but he greatly prefers the ones that are made around Easter because they have much more peanut butter in them. Making them myself meant that I could add as much peanut butter as possible, and make my husband super happy. The results were AWESOME! They are super rich, so its hard to eat more than half of one at a time, but overall this was a super easy twist on a classic.

The recipe calls for a mini muffin tin, but I only had a regular sized one, hence their uber richness haha

Peanut butter filling!

I added SO much peanut butter that the chocolate for the top didn't go all the way around so they're a little more like peanut butter chocolate sandwiches, but who cares ;)

Mega tasty, I suggest if you have an extra 30 minutes on your hands and are looking for something great for dessert you try these out!

Natural

Since Keith and I have been together we've been working toward making more conscious food/health choices in order to be in better shape, but also to help our environment. I definitely don't have it all figured out, and we still struggle to find natural cleaning products that we love as much as our old favorites, but we have been making switches here and there that I think are steering us in the right direction. Thankfully this month I think I've officially squashed my craving for fast food or sodas, but in it's place I have a whole handful of other favorite things. I feel like I just want to buy everything I see in the natural section of Kroger, or at Turnip Truck haha. Here's hoping that those habit changes will pay off in our heath and how we feel about our bodies. Now I just need to convince myself that it's worth the extra cost to purchase natural make up products.... Here are some of my recent crave-able items:

I would drink one every day if it was more economical.

It took me a few tries to really get into, but now I LOVE coconut water and it leaves you feeling so refreshed!

Perfect little pre-lunch snack.

Mmm, a tasty little replacement for candy, if only I could work up the motivation to make this again.

Such a filling snack!

As a milk hater, I was surprised by how much I liked this... the dark chocolate is so rich, and joyous :)

Any other suggestions?

Hiatus

I took a little bit of unplanned time away from the blog this week mostly due to absolute exhaustion. I think I will always be amazed at how tired I am at the end of my work day, regardless of how busy I was. I don't work more than an 8 hour day, but somehow getting finished at 7pm as opposed to 5, or 6 just completely wipes away any bit of energy or motivation. Thankfully I have an amazing husband who feeds me dinner and puts me to bed each night, usually before 10pm haha.

Here are some things that happened this week while I was away from the internet:

Last Sunday we had Trent and Jordie over to watch the Titans game and we made our favorite pizza.

Then we worked REALLY hard to get this group shot haha

One of my little favorites Elijah was SOOOO excited about his new outfit that he asked me to take his photo... precious :)

On Friday Sarah and I took her middle school group on a field trip. 

We went to Rocket town, a local music venue/skatepark and they learned how to play some instruments (note the enthusiasm)

Friday night Steve and Sarah came over, we ate Mas Tacos again and came back to the house to have some beer and hang out... Keith broke out his leather jacket and we all had a good laugh haha

Saturday afternoon we ventured out to find the Grilled Cheeserie food truck with Steve.

I had cheddar with tomatoes and avocado aioli. Yum! Topped off with tots and Mexican Coca-Cola. 

Keith and Steve went to band practice for a few hours on Saturday afternoon so Sarah and I took a walk at Shelby Bottoms to avoid lazily laying on the couch all day.

Then Keith and I watched a movie and Theo stayed very close by 

and today, in honor of the great sandwich I had yesterday, I broke out the panini press and made my own, which was not nearly as amazing, but was way cheaper haha

Some other things that I did this week that didn't get photographed?

• I woke up early to run two miles three different mornings this week AND I went to a 6am Zumba class... hooray for morning motivation!
• Because of how good I was with exercising this week I treated myself to a delicious lunch at Mitchell's on Thursday. Mmmmm. 
• We slept in until 10am both Saturday and Sunday... it felt SO great.
• I worked a nearly 12 hour day on Friday which is usually my day off... oops.
• I finished everything I need to do to become a substitute teacher here in Nashville, I can't believe how soon I will be transitioning away from my job!
• I got some awesome new work pants at the Gap for 50% off! Good things come to those who wait for sales. 
• Oh and we made chili yesterday, and it was probably the best it has ever tasted. So stinkin good!

Anything interesting happen while I was away?

Peaceful Snacking

On Saturday Keith and I did some laundry and caught up around the house, which was definitely the relaxing day that we needed. The only time we deemed worthy of leaving the house was for Keith to get fitted for a suit for an upcoming wedding he's in. On our way back from the mall we stopped and grabbed a bottle of wine to share outside as we enjoyed the amazing weather :) Keith made us this great little appetizer that I found on pinterest awhile ago. It was such a tasty snack to have before dinner... and speaking of the weather? Nashville has had the grossest, hottest summer I've ever felt, but this weekend was pure bliss... I've almost forgotten all about these disgusting past 3 months haha. It was great to spend some time outside with my two favorite boys...

I cut mine up and ate it with bread, mmmm.

Fruity

Dice up the fruit.

As I was peeking around pinterest last week I saw this recipe for homemade fruit roll ups. It was so simple and an amazing looking snack so I decided to grab up some cheap berries and give it a try. The only thing that held me back during the week was that it takes 8 HOURS to bake in the oven, which made this into a weekend project. Yesterday I woke up with a mission, and that mission was to make tasty homemade candy fruit treats. The beginning steps were pretty easy, but it takes some major patience to let this sit in the oven ALL day. Here are some tips: the recipe calls for 2 cups of fruit... I added peaches as well which took me over the 2 cups but I figured it would be fine. If I did it again, I would be a little more strict though because having more fruit meant that it was a little thicker and took even longer to cook. Ugh. Another thing: it says to add water when you stew the fruit, but if you have relatively ripe fruit you really aren't going to need it. I added more water than I wanted to which made it more of a liquid consistency and also made it take longer to cook. Lastly... it says not to turn up the heat at all, and in my fit of impatience I broke this rule. Oops. It ended up not being a huge deal, but I did have a couple of burnt spots in the middle. Overall this was super easy to do, cheap, delicious, and something I would definitely recommend for a rainy day at home. Keith's only comment? "That took you 10 hours to make and 10 minute to eat!" Yep. It was so good that I ate the entire tray within an hour haha

I added peaches too because they are SO good right now.

Put them in a pot, turn it on low heat and let them stew until they're nice and mushy. After, you put them in the blender to make it nice and smooth.

Grease some parchment paper, pour out your fruit and smooth it over the baking sheet and get it in the oven!

I ended up pulling the edge off before it was completely done because I just couldn't wait. 

This straight up looks like bacon hahaha I didn't cut very pretty pieces, oops.

Nom.

This gets a huge thumbs up from me, and I'm thankful that I found the recipe. Can't wait to try it again with all different kinds of fruit! Let me know if you make it, I would love to hear how it went!