Anaheim and Jalapeno Poppers, Friday Night’s Dinner

Eric and I got a variety of peppers in our CSA two weeks ago–a combination of sweet peppers along with a jalapeno and an anaheim.  Tonight I’m going to turn the jalapeno and the anaheim into poppers. 

I’ve never made jalapeno poppers before so hopefully mine will come out alright. This recipe for jalapeno poppers from AllRecipes.com sounds great!  Unfortunately, it calls for cream cheese, and I don’t have any cream cheese in the fridge.  I have sour cream, which won’t provide the right consistency, but it will have to do.  Rather than halving the peppers, which is what the recipe calls for, I think I’ll leave mine whole (minus the ribs and seeds) so that the sour cream and cheese mixture doesn’t melt out when I fry them.   

I’m also going to make more roasted veggies and a salad to go with the poppers since we still have so much lettuce, cauliflower, potatoes and beets left.

Update 7:14 PM

The poppers came out awesome!  Eric bought cream cheese at the general store so that I didn’t have to use sour cream, and it made all the difference.  The sour cream just wouldn’t have withstood the heat of frying.  I left the peppers whole and stuffed them with the cream- and cheddar cheese mixture. (I left out the bacon bits because I didn’t feel like cooking bacon and having yet another pan to clean up.)  I fried the peppers in a saute pan because I don’t have a deep fryer. (If Eric and I owned a deep-fryer, we’d be in deep trouble, as we’d be cooking donuts and churros and friend chicken ALL. THE. TIME.) If I ever make the poppers again, I’ll fry them in a Dutch oven or a large pot to prevent the oil from spattering all over my cook top.

Roasted Vegetables, Thursday Night’s Dinner

Two weekends ago, Eric and I visited our friends, the Donnelly-Foremans.  Stephen and his daughter Madden cooked an awesome dinner for us: grilled rib-eye steaks and roasted vegetables.  After feasting on Madden’s savory roasted veggies, I vowed I’d make them for Eric and me, and tonight, I did just that. 

We have so many vegetables from the CSA that cutting up a bunch of them, tossing them with some olive oil and kosher salt, and roasting them in the oven is a perfect way to use them. I roasted a beet, some fingerling potatoes, a carrot, a sweet potato and some cauliflower at 425 degrees for an hour.  I neglected to toss the veggies while they were cooking, and consequently, they got a little burned, but they still tasted great.  

I had intended to marinate some tofu to go with the roasted veggies for dinner, but I never had a chance to whip up a marinade this morning or on my lunch break.  Fortunately, there was a leftover piece of pecan chicken in the fridge from Tuesday night,  which Eric ate with the vegetables.  There wasn’t enough chicken for both of us, so I fixed myself a salad and sprinkled it with some kidney beans.  Not surprisingly, it wasn’t enough food for me. I guess I’ll have to have a hot fudge sundae later tonight.

Dinner Menu: Wednesday Night

For a meat-and-potatoes man…actually, allow me to rephrase this. The meat-and-potatoes man I’m writing about is my husband, but he’s not so much of a potatoes man. He likes potatoes, for sure, but he also likes to avoid carbs.  So I guess I should just call him a meat man.

For a meat man, my husband, who loves his steak and his venison and eats bacon for breakfast almost every day, is surprisingly open to eating vegetarian meals, including tofu.  The fact is, the guy just likes to eat. It doesn’t matter what he’s eating so long as it tastes good.  I am grateful for this because, although I am a flesh-eating omnivore, I enjoy cooking and consuming vegetarian meals. 

Tonight I cooked a meatless meal: A quick black bean soup, Delicata squash and salad.  The recipe for the black bean soup came from Simple and Delicious magazine, and it was indeed simple and delicious. It consisted of just four ingredients: a can of black beans, a cup and a half of chicken stock, 3/4 of a cup of chunky salsa (I used Newman’s Own) and lime juice.  Dump all the ingredients in a pot, heat over a simmer, and voilà: You’ve got instant, tasty black bean soup.

The Delicata squash came in last week’s CSA. I baked it at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.  The red leaf lettuce and bell peppers that I used in the salad also came from Clear Brook Farm. 

It was the perfect, hot, nourishing supper for a cold, rainy Vermont night.

Clear Brook Farm CSA Week 3

Eric and I signed up for Clear Brook Farm’s 10-week winter CSA again this year, and we’re heading into week three of our farm share. 

Every Wednesday, Clear Brook Farm sends an e-mail to all CSA members listing everything they’ll get in their share that week.  It’s a courteous gesture designed to help us plan our meals–and the rest of our grocery lists–for the following week.  I’m sure it’s also intended to generate excitement for that week’s share. I know I look forward to receiving these newsletters in my inbox every week and to finding out what awesome organic veggies I’ll get to cook with. 

This year, Clear Brook Farm’s newsletters contain recipes for some of the produce in each week’s share.  I’m glad they’re doing this because last year I really didn’t know what to do with some of the veggies I had never heard of, such as romanesco and celeriac, and I never made the time to search for recipes for those items online.  This week’s newsletter contains recipes for roasted root vegetables, celeriac root bisque, beet and celeriac salad, and sweet and sour carrots.  As you might have guessed from those recipes, this weeks’ share contains celeriac and carrots, in addition to butternut squash, fennel, spinach, brocoli, lettuce, scallions and onions. 

I saved two carrots from the first week’s farm share, so I think I’ll make my favorite carrot ginger soup–the recipe comes courtesy of The Silver Palate cookbook via my friend Alice Stokes.  Maybe I’ll try that celeriac root bisque, too.  The recipe didn’t excite me at first, but it did elicit a Homer Simpson-esque “oooh!” from Eric.  (What the heck else am I going to do with celeriac?) I’ll definitely make roasted root vegetables, too. 

What would you make with this week’s farm share?