Zucchini mania continues

This year zucchini is the HOT item in the garden.  Almost every day I am picking another one.  We have tried tons of recipes, made many multiple times and continue to freeze it for winter use.  It is delicious this year.  Way too many recipes to write them all out, if you see something you like message me.

Enjoy!

zucchini chocolate brownies made with sun butter, no flour!

south west zucchini boats

kale/zucchini  "pancakes" with a side of cucumbers (yes also from the garden)
These are AMAZING.  If you are new to kale this is a perfect recipe to try.

Zucchini crazziness

This year the garden is HOT with zucchini!!!
I have been making everything from zucchini cookies, cake, three different kinds of breads plus grilling it, cooking it with pasta and more.  So far we are not sick of it.  We LOVE it.  The kids LOVE all the baked goodies and even one recipe of zucchini spaghetti.  Win win for us all!!  SO fun to go out to the garden and find these growing and then find new recipes to try.  Here are just a few of the ways we have enjoyed our zucchini so far.

Just a few of the zucchini from the garden

This is only about 1 &1/2 cups of cooked noodles the rest zucchini, peppers and baby kale

zucchini pancake: sour cream, eggs, onion, spaghetti noodles  Cooked to a crisp

vegan chocolate zucchini bread with cranberries

chocolate zucchini cookies

sliced with a couple different cheeses and broiled

On the grill smothered in garlic seasoning with other veggies

Makeover biscuits

Anybody who knows Isaac knows that he LOVES biscuits.  He still won't touch bread but he could eat biscuits everyday, and more than one at a time.  Oh and I should mention he eats them plain.  No butter, no jelly no nothing.  Again, I am off topic.  Since we eat a lot of biscuits the need to add some flare to the original biscuit is needed.

This is a quick and very adaptable recipe for whatever veggies/cheeses that you have in the fridge.
Use your favorite refridgerator biscuit brand and flatten the biscuits until they look like little pizzas.  Drizzle each one with olive oil.  Then add about 4 to 5 spinach leaves, fresh sliced peppers or cherry tomatoes and top with crumbled blue cheese.  Bake right along side your other biscuits.  They might take slightly longer to bake.

Easy, Enjoy!!

flattened biscuits

before baked

after baked and ready to eat

Grape.spinach and chicken salad

In the summer we eat LOTS of salads!  The other week we got some grapes at whole foods that were super onsale which meant we had TONS of grapes.  Not really a problem around here because they are a favorite and GREAT frozen in smoothies.  Anyways...back to the salad.
I made this into a layer salad and then mixed right before eating.

Bottom is celery, then red grapes, then fresh baby spinach chopped,thinly sliced grilled chicken,craisins and parmsean cheese

I don't have measurements for you.  I just made to fill the bowl.  I did not add dressing to the entire bowl we added it to our individual plates, which was a poppy seed dressing.  The grapes in the salad were so good and added a nice sweet crunch.

bread, bread and more bread

I HATE turning the oven on in the summer time.  In our small house it heats up the entire house.  yuck!  This is why I chose to have a bread marathon and bake three kinds of bread in one day.  A total of 16 loaves of bread.  My kids HATE traditional breakfast foods, except sugar cereal and pancakes.  I make them pancakes on the weekend, and sugar cereal they only get as a treat not breakfast.  The fight over breakfast was getting old, so I decided to make a bunch of breakfast bread, freeze it and take it out as needed.

What a HUGE hit!!  They LOVE all three kinds and I will be baking another 16 loaves soon I am sure because they are not lasting long.

The kinds: 1. Pumpkin with carrot, coconut oil, honey and craisins  2. banana oatmeal with raisins  3. pumpkin zucchini, with applesauce and carrot.
** All of these were made with whole wheat flour, very little sugar and in one recipe no added sugar at all except the honey.  Notice the kids were already asking for slices before I could take a picture.  The pumpkin and zucchini were both frozen and out of the garden last year.

Grilled Lemon Chicken Sandwich

Lemon Chicken Sandwiches:
3 chicken breasts

Marinate your chicken breasts for at least 24 hours in the following:
1/4 cup of lemon juice
sprinkle with lemon pepper seasoning, and rosemary
2 teaspoons of crushed garlic
As time goes by the marinade turns thicker and will stick to the chicken very well.

Grill chicken breasts on low heat on your grill, side by side with some sliced green peppers and red onion slices.
See pictures for the rest of the steps to make these FANTASTIC, no additional sauce  needed sandwiches.

chicken in marinade

grilling with the veggies

grilled veggies

slice the chicken very thin, and add to the veggies.  This is only one chicken breast sliced for two sandwiches.

two slices of provolone cheese

done, divde in half and add to toasted bread

This is a whole wheat bread toasted with half the above mixture on it.

I promise no extra sauce is needed!  The cheese and chicken marinade are enough to make this sandwich juicy and delicious!  Serve with some baked potatoes, salad or your favorite roasted veggie for a complete meal.   Save the other two chicken breasts for more sandwiches the next day or seconds.  Don't cut until you are ready to eat, they will dry out.

Roasted loaded potatoes

One of Isaac's all time favorite foods is potatoes.  He is very partial to mashed potatoes but I wanted to try something different for the rest of us that were getting a little tired of the same potato side dish.  I peeled and sliced the potatoes and roasted them with a little bit of olive oil.  They got a little crunch to the outside, and of course Isaac informed me that he liked the old potatoes much better.  He ate them but he wasn't thrilled about it.  After roasting the potatoes I decided they needed some dressing up.  I melted cheese, and sprinkled with green onions and turkey bacon.  Super super delicious, we all thought so minus Isaac.

Oh and I also decided to try it with one sweet potato and it was equally delicious!!

lightly seasoned with olive oil

toppings

ready to eat

sweet potatoes 

Baked Fried Chicken

I am not big on fried chicken, in fact I could go as far as to say I don't really like it.  Baked, breaded chicken now that is a different story.  A recipe that claims to taste like fried chicken but is baked, yep that I needed to try.  It of course was one of those messy dip in buttermilk then in flour mixture so it was very very messy to coat the chicken.  The family ate it up like it was candy!!!  EVERYONE LOVED it, fairly simple to make and for sure makes it on the family favorite list.

Looks just like flour but trust me it is much more

out of the oven

http://bakerette.com/baked-fried-chicken/

Kale on Pizza?

Let me answer that question for you, yes it is delicious.  Can you even taste the kale? Nope!!!  Seth and I went to quick fire pizza in stillwater about a week ago and we had a delicious pizza there made with only oilve oil for the sauce.  I tried to recreate at home....wasn't nearly as good but I loved it because it was PIZZA!

pepperoni, sausage,peppers,onions,spinach,kale and olive oil and garlic for the sauce

yummy

ruhbarb sauce

It doesn't get much eaiser than this recipe to enjoy the season of ruhbarb in a delicious way.  boil 1/2 cup of both sugar and water.  Add 4 cups of chopped ruhbarb and cook until ruhbarb is sauce/tender.

I love to eat this with honey toast.  Ieither dip it directly in the sauce or spread it on like jam.  So good, give it a try!!

sugar and water

add the ruhbarb

cook until it looks like this

My honey toast and sauce

Let me introduce you to okra

How many of you eat okra and have it in your families vegetable rotation?  Okra is a vegetable that I throw into stews and turkey/chicken noodle soup.  It is delicious in all of these and this time I decided to branch out  and stirfry it with some aspargaus.  We had some AMAZING aspargaus in the fridge from my parents garden, HUGE difference in freshness than store bought but there wasn't a lot so I paired it with some okra and it was a great combination.

The okra was frozen when I added it to the pan and it took both vegetables the same amount of time to cook.  I used olive oil in the pan with some Mrs. Dash seasoning and cooked until veggies were tender.  One thing you should now about okra is that it produces a little slime as it cooks.  You will see what I mean once you try this recipe.

ENJOY!!

ruhbarb pie

You know it is the beginning of summer when you can start eating out off the gardens slowly.  Right now ruhbarb is at its prime and thanks to Isaac for picking one of our entire plants we have been eating lots of ruhbarb.  This pie is super fast and very good.  I did a little bit of cheating and bought a store bought crust for the bottom, where all I had to do was roll it out.
The filling is about three cups of ruhbarb, 2 cups of sliced strawberries, sugar and cornstarch
The top  is 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 cup flour and 1 stick of butter
I baked at 375 until the crust was a nice golden brown.  That's it.  It was so good.

without the top

top

after it was baked

croutons

I was looking for a way to spruce up our grilled chicken salads the other night and  then it dawned on me croutons would be great.  Checked the cupboard and nope we didn't have any.  It is not usually something I keep on hand.  Then the real light bulb went off...I could make some out of the old sourdough bread that was drying out anyways.  So glad that light bulb went on.

This is what I did: cut the bread into cube pieces and placed on some foil.  Drizzled with olive oil, salt, pepper, basil,oregano, and parsley.  Bake at 425 degrees until golden brown and crunchy about 10 minutes.

If you are looking to dress up your summer salads this is a fast, easy way!

bread cubed with olive oil

spices

crunchy and baked

on top of my grilled chicken salad

Grilled Chicken pitas

I LOVE chicken tacos, I think I could eat them everyday.  So I decided to change it up slightly for the Mister and make chicken pitas.  Slightly different vegetable mix and I must say much for filling.  We both could only eat one.  You can fit a lot in one pita bread!!
This is what I did:
Grilled two chicken breasts on the grill marinated in some garlic and herb sauce
In a saucepan I put some bok choy, onion, celery and mixed colored peppers all chopped.  Saute until the veggies are almost done.  I also added some Mrs. Dash seasoning, choose your favorite.
Chop the chicken and heat through

When you are ready to eat heat your pita bread slightly in the microwave.  We first added mashed avocado, then chicken mixture and topped with baby spinach.  This was delicious and a great meal for a summer evening.  I don't even think we ate this with a side, it was a meal all in itself.

chicken and veggie mixture all cooked in olive oil and ready for the pita bread

layer of avocado, chicken mixture and fresh baby spinach.  Fold and enjoy!

kale/asparagus salad

A slight twist on the normal italian dressing noodle salad.

1/2 box of elbow noodles or any kind really.  It is just what I had in the cupboard.
5 sliced mushrooms
6 stalks of asparagus cut in about 4 pieces
a handful of kale
about 1/2 cooked green peas.
1/2 cucumber peeled and chopped
Mix together and then add enough Italian dressing to cover and to taste.  That's it.  No cooking the vegetables...they all taste delicious in this dressing with the noodles.

Avocado cabbage

I am not a huge fan of avocado, but I know it has a lot of health benefits and I want to try to incorporate it more into meals.  I found this awesome recipe to combine it with cabbage and use it instead of lettuce on burgers, pitas, or instead of slaw on sandwiches.  It is delicious, and I am liking the taste of avocado more and more since starting to make this.
Recipe:
a couple of cups of thinly sliced cabbage (or you could buy it shredded already in the bag)
1 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1 mashed avocado

Like I said you can use this in place of lettuce or in addition to any burger or sandwich.  Just this week I have made it twice already and we used it on top of turkey burgers, and on top of sloppy joes as a slaw.  It was great.

avocado slaw

This was my sloppy joe...got a lot sloppier with the slaw but well worth it.

Quick Summer snack

This is super easy, super yummy and so quick.  This week we had a couple pretty warm afternoons ( I am not complaining) but with the heat it made me want summer snacks.
In about 5 min. I whipped up this delicious frozen fruit treat.

1 cup of greek vanilla yogurt
frozen mixed fruit ( I used strawberries, pineapple, blueberries and mango)
dip frozen fruit in yogurt, set on wax paper and freeze until yogurt is hard.  what a quick snack to grab out of the freezer to help cool off.  Healthy too.

Zaycon Foods

Recently my aunt told us about an exciting opportunity to buy fresher, cheaper meat in bulk.  We looked into the company and just got our first 40 pound box of chicken a few weeks ago.  Let me just say...before tasting this chicken you would have heard me say..."chicken is chicken"  Not anymore.  This chicken is AMAZING!!!!!  All of us who ordered four different households agree...best chicken they have ever tasted. If you are interested in looking into this company I recommend them highly.  They even have volunteer opportunities which Seth and his dad did to earn money towards future purchases.  I can't wait for another sale...I want a fish sale soooooooo bad.
Look them up...read about them...ask me questions.  Remember you can always spilt boxes of food with your neighbors, family,etc.

www.zayconfoods.com

asparagus pasta

Asparagus is one of my all time favorite vegetables.  I wish it wasn't so expensive in the store and such a seasonal vegetable.  I just love it.  I usually roast it with lemon pepper seasoning but lucky enough it was on sale and bought a bunch and thought maybe the mister was getting tired of lemon pepper asparagus every night.  So again, just like the last dish I made this up.  I am finding that it is fun to experiment and I know my family well enough that I tweak recipes I find to make sure everyone eats and enjoys their meal.  Once again the kids ate this...happy family all around.

I used some left over turkey breast meat that I was trying to use up in this dish.  First cook your noodles and while they are cooking saute your vegetables in olive oil and garlic.  Pretty sure the only vegetables I used in here was asparagus and onion.

add noodles once vegetables are crisp...add more olive oil this will be the base for your sauce.

season this dish with basil, oregano, parsley, etc.  and of course the staple at our house parm cheese