Kabobs

Another grill favorite of ours are shish kabobs.  We are pretty plain people, so the veggies tend to feature green peppers and onions.  Not much else.  I'm attempting to increase our veggie intake, and had a bag of sweet peppers in the fridge.  I added some of those to the mix, along with some wedges of lemon.  Those were quite the experiment, but I loved the way they looked on the kabobs as well as the scent. 

 

My mister was very hesitant to try lemons.  There may have been some complaining, and a request to keep them off his kabob.  I may have added a couple anyways :)  I have to admit, the lemons were challenging to grill.  They kind of fell apart, and off the stick.  But they added a nice taste to the meat.  Very refreshing.  I love kabobs because they generally leave leftovers that are easy to heat up for lunch the next day. 

 

 

 

Steamed Peaches

The latest batch of peaches purchased were on the tougher side, and after hacking at one with a knife I figured there just had to be a better way of peeling them.  Out came my little cook-book, and I found a recipe where you steam the peaches.  It was pretty easy.  You wash the peaches and cut a deep X into one side.  In about an inch of water (I only used about 1/2") in a large sauce pan, you steam the peaches on the stove top.  I always have the lid cocked on, so the steam can escape while gently cooking the fruit.  It took about 10 minutes on the stove top until the skin puckered.  I removed the peaches with tongs, set them aside in a bowl to cook, and reserved the peachy water in a giant mug for blending. 

Now, when I went to remove the skin it was actually quite the chore.  If you ever read my post about blanching tomatoes, you'll know what I mean.  It was right up there from a gross factor.  I had use my super-sharp Rada knife to peel off the skin.  Once the skin was off I used my thumbs to dig down to the pit, and peel the fruit off.  After every peach I had to wash my hands to get all the junk off, before I started on the next one.  I used seven peaches total, and made several containers of baby food. 

It's been fun trying different techniques of cooking her food, figuring out what is easiest and most efficient.  While I'm not a huge fan of this method, I learned more about peaches and honestly they were so tough I think trying to peel them normally would have been even tougher.  There is nothing better than the knowledge that my daughter is eating fresh food, whose source I am familiar with. 

Blog feedback

A few weeks ago I started building pins into my posts to enable Pinterest use.  Has anyone had success with it?  I welcome the feedback or any tips to improve my blog!

Zucchini + Patty Pan



This was our first "real" week of the community shared agriculture crop share.  After watching One Direction perform at work (hello fantastic perks!), my friend and I went to pick up our share.  This week they had tons of good things, including zucchini and patty pan squash.  Now I hate squash.  My mom could tell stories for days about how much we all hate squash.  While the main purpose of the CSA was to get a variety of veggies for T, I also wanted the hubby and me to try more veggies as well.  One of my co-workers, who is a CSA veteran, said the key to using your veggies is to make dishes with as many as possible. 

 

One of the tips given by the farmer was to grill the zucchini.  To spice it up, I drizzled olive oil over the zucchini and patty pan, then added fresh cilantro, basil, and garlic scape.  We cooked it on our trusty grill pan for a few minutes each side.  Delicious!  Mark wasn't a fan of the zucchini but had 2nd of the patty pan.

 

Now for Miss T's portion.  I chopped hers as well, then wrapped it in a foil pack with a little bit of water.  After sealing it up, we tossed it on the grill while the rest of our food was cooking.  I removed it from the grill after about 15 minutes, then set it on the stove top to cool/finish steaming while we ate.  It turned out perfectly!  They pureed well without having to add any liquid.

Veggie Chicken for the Grill



We love grilling in the summer.  We especially love our grill pan, because diced meat and veggies cook up so quickly.  Even though we work early hours, nights are still busy and quick dinners are key.  Yet we need something that is balanced and fills us up.  I've been trying to add veggies into our meals, especially to take advantage of the season.  These sweet peppers have become favorites.  My hubby grumbles (he's a veggie hater, unless it's corn...need I say we're from Iowa?), but he grudgingly will eat some. 

This dish turned out amazing, if I may say so.  I diced chicken as usual, and added some chopped peppers (yellow, orange, and red).  To spice it up I added diced purple onion, fresh oregano from my garden, fresh sage from our CSA, and some grilling seasoning.  It took about 8-10 minutes to grill on the pan, and we used it to top pasta.  It would also go well with rice.  Delish!

Exploring new frontiers

I've hit a point where I'm not sure what to feed miss T, so we're in a rut.  Luckily our community shared agriculture share starts officially next week, so we'll have all kinds of new veggies to try out.  Her little system is so sensitive that random things (aka green beans, avocado, bananas, etc.) set her off and cause endless misery.  For the past two weeks I haven't introduced anything new.  I just was at a loss of what to even try next.  Well, this week they had a test drive of the CSA and gave us all spinach.  And cucumbers.  That, in combination with me running low on frozen food, and a big move looming over us, got me motivated to figure out my new-food-introduction plan for the upcoming weeks. 

So today I baked a couple of sweet potatoes and blended them with raw spinach.  In hindsight I probably should have steamed it at the very least, but I just threw it in raw.  With some water.  It blended pretty well, if you ignore the fact that the bottom of the canister wasn't screwed on completely and I ended up having spinach juice leak completely through the motor of my Baby Bullet and out the bottom of the machine, causing a moment of panic for 1) electrocution and 2) complete ruination of the machine.  You can breath easy though, it seems to have survived. 

Anyways, she loved the spinach and sweet potato combination.  I'll be giving that to her for the next few days, then introducing either raspberries or cucumbers.  I'm undecided yet which will come first, although I still need to complete my research of raspberries.  I'd always heard those shouldn't be introduced until after the 1st or 2nd birthday, but recently I've heard they are fine to give to kids after 6 months of age.  I also have a can of garbanzo beans, and read an article that listed those as a great food for babies due to the high level of protein.  So who knows, I may decide to go with those next.  Regardless, I'm excited to have a plan in place again and I'm sure she will be excited to have something other than sweet potatoes, peas, cauliflower, or mango :)

Baked Sweet Potatoes

I've found my new favorite way to make T's favorite sweet potatoes: baking!  If you remember, I am not a potato girl.  I have no idea how to make them, and have had to stumble around when working with them.  Well, after perusing my cook-book I realized that there were directions for baking the potatoes vs. dicing and steaming on the stove top.  Cutting the potatoes into steam-able portions definitely has hurt my hand in the past, so I was really excited to find an alternative method.  It's so easy.  You take a potato, wash it thoroughly, puncture it with a fork repeatedly all over to allow steam to escape (you don't want exploded potato in your oven, believe me), wrap in foil, then bake at 400F for around 45 minutes.  The recipe said 30-60 minutes, but mine took about 50 minutes.  Also, I didn't wrap one of the potatoes fully because I didn't cut enough foil, and that was a mistake.  That one was difficult to peel. 

Yes, I said peel.  The best part of this is that the skin basically falls off!  I monitored the progress of the potatoes by checking every 15 minutes, peeling back the foil, and poking with my fork until it was very tender.  One the potatoes were baked, I unwrapped them from the foil, cut in half length-wise, and flipped the cut side down on my cutting board.  Then I could get an edge of the skin and practically peel it off in one swipe!  The less baked parts kind of stuck on, but I was able to easily pry those sections off with the tip of my knife (RADA knives are my fave!  Super sharp and beautiful to boot!  Plus they're made in my home town of Waverly, Iowa). 

So, if your kid likes sweet potatoes too, I would recommend this method over the other steamed method I tried in the past.  Good luck!