2016 CSA Series- Week 4
Woah. Jokes over. Turn back the calendar. How it is August already?!?!
Life has been a little on the hectic side. We’ve been painting the new house in full force (since June really, but we’ve been going HAM lately). That leaves little time for blogging! 🙂 But I’m trying to snap lots of pics to share our mini reno were doing.
*side note* picking paint colors is a unique form of torture I was not aware of until now…..
Focus…. ok, since the last CSA(community supported agriculture) post I’ve also gone to my CSA farm to meet my farmers and have a tour around the farm. It was a beautiful day, it’s a beautiful farm, and I can’t wait to share more about that and pictures of it soon!
Now, this week is jam packed with goodies. ❤
Here’s what we got in box# 4:
Some pretty standard items so not too hard to identify but because it’s fun: 
Sometimes it takes a while for me to find something interesting and fun to do with the veggies but I’m pretty happy with what we did this time around.
Cabbage: I have the perfect thing I want to do with this but time got the best of me and then I got another one in my next box so I’m going to do a double batch and share it with you next time! Stay tuned 🙂
Broccoli: Honey Lemon Chicken Rice Bowls So albeit, while this might not be the most exciting thing to do with the broccoli itself this dish as a whole is fun. The broccoli was so fresh and delicious I’m sort of happy we just steamed it and go to enjoy the full blown flavor by itself. These Honey Lemon Chicken Rice Bowls are a breeze to whip up and also make great leftovers for work too!
You can reduce your sauce down as much as you ‘d like. The honey gets it very sticky and sugary so you can get a pretty thick sauce if you’d like. But it’s all up to you and what you like 🙂 The longer you simmer the thicker it will get (don’t forget it will thicken up even more when off the heat).
Pickling Cucumbers & Onion: Easy Refrigerator Pickles
THIS recipe is my favorite pickle recipe in the WORLD. It’s so easy and so delicious. A tab bit sweeter than the average recipe but I love it. I usually eat way more than my fair share of these in one sitting.
Zucchini/Summer Squash: Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies
Zucchini bread? Pretty tasty. Zucchini cookies? Amazing and world changing.
I adapted a recipe I found and added flax and chia seeds for added nutrition. There’s also a surprising amount of zucchini in here too! They’re cookies but they also pack a healthy punch! And important step in the instructions is to squeeze the zucchini dry (or as dry as you can) this will help keep your cookies from being a soggy mess. 🙂 I used both zucchini and summer squash in this recipe as you can see from all the beautiful green and yellow flecks below (Go Pack Go 🙂 ).
Cauliflower & Swiss Chard: Riced Cauliflower & Swiss Chard Spaghetti These pictures didn’t turn out that great. Apparently I was shaky mc shakes this day and all of them have a little blur, sorry about that! This was a off the whim creation and has a great summery lemon taste along with being packed with TONS of veggies; the swiss chard reduces in size greatly and the cauliflower rice is so fine you wouldn’t know you’re eating a plate of veggies too 🙂 
My hubs thought all the little riced cauliflower peices were garlic. ha! I DO love garlic but that would be extreme even for me. But as you can see from this close up, this recipe is a terrific way to get an extra serving of vegetables into a pasta dish. It’s virtually undetectable. 
Lettuce, Onions, & Cucumbers: Cucumber & Blueberry Summer Salad What would a week in summer be without a salad?! Very similar to our berry salad from last week, but still different enough and delicious! 
More Cucumbers: I had quite the supply of cukes laying around. I got a ton in the box and my in-laws gave some to me too. I made my go to bbq dish for a group of people we had over at the house and it was a big hit, not to mention a great way to use up a seemingly never ending supply of cucumbers. Oh and the best part? It take like 5 minutes to make. win.win.win.
Eggplant: Brushcetta I posted about this in the last box post as well but didn’t have any pictures. So because it’s so freaking delicious, I decided to make it again and share pictures this time! This one was one of the first recipes I put up on the blog back when I first started it. And oh woooowww, looking back how my formatting and photography have changed since then. Needless to say, an updated share was necessary although it’s still as delicious as the first time I made it; it just looks much more presentable now 🙂 
Carrots & Hot Peppers: Roasted Veggie Tacos This was the recipe I was most excited to make. Sort of inspired by my roasted veggie stacked enchiladas , these roasted carrot tacos are a delicious meat free meal for mid week (or any time of week!) If you wanted you could sub sweet potato for the carrots or do a mix, but I wanted the delicious carrots to be the highlight!! 
Whew another week in the books! 🙂 Hope you enjoyed. Get out there and make the most of the rest of the summer!
What are some of your favorite summer time recipes?!?
xoxo
Soooo I’m a day late this week. That’s allowed right? I just got back from vacation on 
Do you know what each item is? See below if you’re not sure. 🙂
I loveeeeee celeriac. And for all of those thinking “hey isn’t it a little early for this in the season?”…yes, it is. This is actually left over from winter. I was so excited that I was a little overwhelmed on what to pick to do with it. Soooo as usual when faced with a multitude of options, I freeze up. And actually that’s what I did with the celeriac too. Blanched it and froze it.
Zucchini:
The weather the past week or so around here has been out of this world! In Wisconsin, weather fluctuates pretty extremely. One day could be 70 degrees and then you get snow the next. It’s a lot to handle sometimes.
TWO: combine all of your spinach and cheese filling ingredients in a bowl. 
THREE: layer and assemble the lasagna. Follow those “layer instructions” below. 
FOUR: finish the layers and then top generously with cheese, because #Wisconsin.
FIVE: bake it, divvy up, and devour ❤
Oh so delicious. I love nutmeg but some people are not big fans, you can omit if you would like, although I might judge your sanity because it’s so good. I could go on and on, but I’ll let these pictures speak for themselves. Hopefully you make this and love it too!
If you’re not drooling now, something might be wrong with you. Here’s the recipe so you can make this for yourself. 
We’ve had a LOT of new views and new subscribers in the past few days because of the love from and a post by 
Winter.is…..here. It’s snowy, it’s sleeting, it’s icy, it’s…..COLD.
Now we were fortunate enough to have received a Vitamix as a wedding gift, but any high powered blender will work well (I’m told). I’m still learning the ways of the Vitamix and all the amazing things we can do with it. This was the first soup we made and I am SERIOUSLY impressed. I’ve obviously had a regular blender for most of my life and I’ve tried to make blended soups, both in the regular blender and also with an immersion blender. But seriously while those other two methods obviously work to a degree and definitely have their place in my kitchen for other tasks, I’ll never, EVER use either one again for the purpose of creating a smooth blend of ANYTHING(smoothies, soups, dips, hummus, etc…).
Even though the soup does have beer and cheese in it, because, why not? Oh and Bacon….we got a hearty 6 servings out of this batch of soup so for each serving you aren’t really indulging toooo much. But it will taste like you are. While eating this soup, it was like an EXPLOSION of flavor. So many of them. We both said aloud, “Wow, this is great. It’s like you can taste all the individual ingredients but yet they combine to make a kick a** combo!” Paraphrasing of course 🙂 And no lie, the leftovers were even better.
We used some pretty serious dark beer in ours, a dark ale from a local brewery, so our soup had some serious beer flavor, which we loved. But if you aren’t really into that, you could try a lighter brown ale (like Newcastle or something similar).
Happy Thanksgiving (a day late) everyone! I hope that you enjoyed the day with family and friends or whomever makes you happy!
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