Garden Stuffed Peppers

These were truly stuffed with the garden! These are peppers from the garden with onion, carrot, garlic, and tomato from the garden as well. There are so many, many versions of stuffed peppers out there, but this one was different, and a little more work because I used our fresh tomatoes rather than opening jars of diced tomatoes and sauce. It was well worth the effort - one of those "food of love" dishes. Make it because you love the people who are eating it!

Ingredients - all very flexible:

5-6 bell peppers, halved and seeded
I chose to precook these by placing them in a sprayed baking dish (9x13), and microwaving them for 3 minutes. Some people par-boil them instead, and some don't precook at all.

For the filling:
1 lb. lean ground beef, thoroughly cooked in a skillet along with one chopped onion and two chopped garlic cloves
3 C cooked rice - I used "sweet" brown rice, which is stickier than normal rice
2 shredded carrots
2-3 peeled, chopped tomatoes
2/3 C shredded cheese - I used sharp cheddar
Seasoning of your choice - I used 1 Tbs. parsley, 1 Tbs. paprika, 2 Tbs. Worcestershire sauce, 1 Tbs. brown sugar, 1 Tbs. balsamic vinegar, 1 tsp. celery seed, salt, pepper
Mix all of this together in a bowl. It's a good idea to taste this now, to see if it needs any tweaking. If it seems like it's not holding together very well, some recipes suggested adding an egg - like you would with meatloaf. Just do your tasting before the egg goes in!

For the sauce:
3-4 peeled tomatoes, chopped or torn into the same pan in which you browned your beef. Cook the sauce down until some of the liquid has evaporated. Then add a strange ingredient - about 1/4 C of catsup. I know! But it adds just the right punch to the sauce. Skip it if it turns you off!

Assembly:
Fill the precooked peppers with the beef and rice mixture; using your hands is the best way to do this. Set them back in the baking dish and then carefully ladle the tomato sauce down around the peppers, using a little bit of the sauce on top of each pepper as well. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30-40 minutes or until the sauce is bubbly and the peppers are tender.

Confetti Salad

This salad is so ridiculously simple that I hesitated to post it! However, it's such a great way to use up lots of produce at the height of garden season, and it's also something that I don't always think about making. So here goes!

Ingredients: any assortment of fresh, chopped vegetables - in this pictured version I used red and yellow tomatoes, cucumbers, green bell pepper, and spring onions. The dressing is as simple as cottage cheese and seasoning of your choice. Toss them all together, using enough cottage cheese to moisten the vegetables, but the amount of cottage cheese you use is completely a matter of personal preference. Let the flavors blend in the refrigerator for a few hours if possible. I served this alongside a spicy meal - very refreshing!

I used a grill-type seasoning this time, and fresh herbs, like basil leaves, are especially nice. BTW, I highly recommend an organic brand of cottage cheese called "Nancy's". It's quite different from run of the mill cottage cheese, and it has a distinct tangy flavor. I'm hooked!

Waldorf Coleslaw Salad

We have all kinds of cabbage coming out of the garden right now, so here's another coleslaw recipe to help you get creative with your crop too! This one tastes like a classic Waldorf apple salad, but no apples.

Dressing:
3/4 cup sour cream, or plain yogurt
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup walnuts,chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Salad:
1 medium cabbage, sliced or chopped
1/2 medium red cabbage,sliced or chopped
1/2 cup raisins

Directions:

Make dressing by combining first 8 ingredients. Toss together the green and red cabbage with the raisins. Pour dressing over the cabbage and fold in gently. Sprinkle on additional walnuts and/or raisins for garnish. Salad should be refrigerated for about 2 hours for the flavors to combine.
**This salad can be made ahead by preparing the dressing and cabbage separately, then adding the dressing 2 hours before serving time.

Sweet and Sour Green Beans

This is the first thing I made with the batch of green beans we picked from my uncle and aunt's garden. They are really terrific! I used this basic recipe from the Martha Stewart site, and made some changes.

Ingredients
Serves 4

* 4 slices bacon
* 1 large onion, chopped ( I used a sweet Vidalia onion)
* Coarse salt and ground pepper (yeah, just use salt and pepper for Pete' s sake)
* 1 pound green beans, trimmed (I snapped mine into inch sized pieces)
* 1/4 cup cider vinegar
* 1/4 cup sugar (I used Maui raw sugar, which has a great tangy flavor)
* 1/2 cup water

Directions:

1. In a large skillet, cook bacon over medium until browned, 3 to 4 minutes per side. With tongs, transfer to a paper-towel-lined plate (reserve skillet with pan drippings). (I chopped the bacon first and then browned it off.)
2. Add onion to skillet; season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onion starts to brown,3 to 5 minutes. Add green beans and 1/4 cup water; cook, tossing occasionally, until beans are bright green and tender, about 10 minutes. ( I added more like 1/2 C water and put the lid on for a good part of the cooking time. I don't really know how the beans would be cooked enough otherwise.)
3. Crumble bacon into skillet; add vinegar and sugar. Cook until a syrupy sauce forms, 2 minutes (I let it go a little longer in order to evaporate the extra water I added), tossing to coat. Serve immediately.
**See the recipe for Three Bean Salad for a great way to use any leftovers you may have!

Balsamic Glazed Beets

Wow, this was amazingly good. This little dish of baby golden and albino beets was my first serving idea for this yummy vegetable. Then I was trying to figure out what kind of salad dressing to make for dinner (one that wouldn't clash with the strong flavors in the beet glaze) and I came up with plan B, which was to dump the beets and glaze over the garden lettuce and sprinkle on a little chopped bacon. Oh my - it was a winner!
---based on a recipe printed in the Washington Post 6/6/07

Ingredients:
16 baby beets
(this recipe would work with regular beets, but they would need a longer roasting time)
fresh rosemary sprigs
1/2 C balsamic vinegar - I used white balsamic for my lighter varieties of beets
2 Tbs. brown sugar
2 Tbs. butter

Step 1
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Trim the beet tops down to about one inch, leave on the root end, and gently scrub the outside of the beets. Wrap the beets and rosemary sprigs in enough heavy foil to make a packet that seals. Place the packet on a jelly roll pan or something else with sides. Roast for about 30-40 minutes for small beets. You should be able to pierce the beet easily when they're done. Let them cool completely, then trim off both ends and peel off the skins. Discard the rosemary. Step 1 can be done up to a day ahead of time.

Step 2
Combine the vinegar, sugar, and butter in a small saucepan. Heat gently until slightly reduced. Add the beets to the sauce and heat through. Serve warm, or use on a lettuce salad with added crumbled bacon.

Shrimp and Pineapple Teriyaki with Swiss Chard

This was tasty! I messed around with the original recipe, of course, and added more veggies. This makes two servings. We had it over brown Jasmine rice, with a side of steamed Swiss chard, fresh from the garden. Swiss chard is good with a little toasted sesame oil drizzled over it, or Balsamic vinegar, or lemon juice, or... Fit the flavor to the kind of food you're cooking, and you'll never get tired of it. It's very versatile!

1/2 lb. uncooked shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 C sliced celery
1 C sliced carrot
2 green onions, sliced, with whites and greens separated
1 1/2 C pineapple chunks, fresh is better
1/3 C Teriyaki sauce
1/3 C orange juice
1 Tbs. lime juice
1 Tbs. corn starch
1-2 Tbs. oil

Mix the Teriyaki, orange juice, lime juice, and corn starch in a shallow bowl. Add shrimp and marinate for about 15 minutes in the refrigerator. Remove shrimp from marinade, set aside, reserving marinade.

Heat 1 Tbs. oil in a large skillet. Quickly saute the celery, carrot, and white parts of onions. Add pineapple and saute until pineapple begins to brown slightly. (You may wish to add a touch of sweetener to help the pineapple caramelize. One suggestion-raw sugar has a great taste with fruit.) Add more oil if needed. Then add shrimp and cook until almost done. Stir the marinade again, and add to the shrimp mixture; continue cooking another few minutes, until the sauce thickens. If you are steaming chard or another green to go along with this dish, you can steam it right on top of the shrimp while the sauce is thickening. Don't stir the greens into the shrimp mixture, just put a lid on the skillet and let them wilt down on top of everything else. Then remove the greens from the top of the skillet, and serve along side the main dish. Serve the shrimp dish over rice, sprinkled with the green parts of the onions.

Garden Pizza

Digging into the freezer for more garden goodies again! I made a simple pizza sauce by combining some of our frozen roasted tomatoes, a portion of frozen pesto, and a little dash of balsamic vinegar to give it a boost. Summer tomatoes and basil in November just about makes you forget how much work it took to get those tomatoes and basil in the freezer in the first place!
I use a homemade pizza dough - recipe below - tossed into my 11-year-old Zojirushi bread maker on the dough setting - easy stuff. My recipe makes enough for two pizzas and the second half goes into the freezer to save for another quick meal - either pizza or calzones, or even bread sticks. The first picture here, is of the raw dough with only the wonderful sauce so far, and it's sitting on my well worn baking stone from Pampered Chef, which is nice and dark now and missing one corner - but it still works great!

The toppings for this pizza were organic Italian turkey sausage, red and yellow pepper slices, red onion, and mozzarella cheese. Parmesan cheese is always the final touch when it comes out of the oven.

Mmmm...finished product. Fast food at it's best.

Whole Wheat Pizza dough for the bread machine:
2C warm water, 2 tsp. honey, 1 Tbs. olive oil, 1 tsp. salt, 4 C whole wheat pastry flour, 6 tsp. vital wheat gluten/dough conditioner (optional), 3 tsp. yeast. Add these in the order that your bread machine directs. I put mine on the dough setting and that's it. I always watch to make sure the dough is of the correct consistency, and then add a little more water or a little more flour if needed. It shouldn't be too sticky or too rock hard. BTW, you can easily add Italian seasoning, garlic, or whatever else you like.