Weekly Menu

Labor Day weekend is the start of apple season for Lynd's Fruit Farm near our house.  Every week they open a different section of their orchard to the public for picking and each section is a different variety of apple.  Families come from all over to pick apples with their kids, some even bring their dogs (Snoop would be eating all of the apples and would look more like a pig by the end).  I always associate apples with autumn and usually forget to check the apple schedule until the last week.  This year is the first time we got apples that weren't winesap or goldrush... we actually got some of their honeycrisp apples which are fully picked from the orchard within 24 hours!

So with about 30 pounds of apples, I have some baking to do!  My husband is requesting apple crisps and I will definitely be making some fresh apple juice with my juicer.  Here are some other apple recipes to try out... slow cooker applesauce, apple pie chips, apple cider caramel cookies, and personal apple pies.

Last week was a busy week making for a hectic, on-the-go dinner schedule.  This week might be a little more low key and get us back on track.  So here is this week's menu...

sloppy joes with salad
chicken pomodoro with garlic pasta
turkey apple and cheddar grilled cheese
stuffed shells
quesadillas

Broccoli Stuffed Chicken - total time 35 minutes

I used to buy those premade stuffed chicken breasts from the freezer section of my grocery store.  That used to be one of my "I'm in the mood to cook so I'll put these in the oven with some potatoes and we'll have a gourmet dinner that I slaved over a hot stove for".  How times have changed!  I don't even want to know what all was in those little plastic pouches.  I'm sure it was still better than going to a fast food place, but I would rather spend a little more time and energy on what is fueling my body.  Plus, I get to pick the filling... and I pick gouda!

This really is pretty easy.  If you start out with chicken cutlets, you really just lay out the chicken and filling, roll it up, and tie it closed.  I like to use really thick freezer bags covered in a towel to flatten meat... it keeps everything nice and clean.  And then another trick... instead of using toothpicks which can be hard to find once cooked and easy to find when you're taking a big bite... use baker's twine.  At the end you just give it one snip and the twine is easily peeled off.  Plus, it is usually in bright colors and easy to see once cooked.

This recipe is pretty versatile too.  Try it with turkey, pork, of fish.

Sauteed Zucchini Parm - total time 20 minutes

Zucchini season is winding down, so maybe you're working with a bumper crop or just noticed that zucchini under all of those leaves that is practically the size of your leg.  This recipe is a quick one that could be a great afternoon snack or part of your lunch or dinner.  It's like mini pizzas, just without the carbs!

Weekly Menu

Happy Labor Day!  The unofficial end of summer when school starts up, pools close (at least in Ohio), and you start bringing out your sweaters and jackets.  It's also time for Fashion Week in NYC where designers show off their latest designs for Spring... so Labor Day is kind of the launch of Spring depending how you look at it!  :)

Outside of those couple unofficial things, I wasn't really sure what Labor Day was really celebrating.  We get a day off work for a holiday that sounds like we should be laboring away working on something.  So I looked it up... gotta love the Information Age... which, on a side note, I just read that we created 5 exabytes of information between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days according to Google's former CEO, Eric Schmidt.  Craziness.  Any way, back to Labor Day... we are actually celebrating the eight hour work day (or really, the 40 hour work week).  Before 1886, Americans would work 10-12 hours six days a week to make a living wage and keep their jobs.  After some legislation, some rioting, and then more legislation we now have "eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will!".  So it is interesting the fast food minimum wage protest is making headlines right now.  Not sure where I stand on the minimum wage issue since I understand where both sides are coming from.  If you raise minimum wage across the board, which labor is every companies largest expense, prices will have to increase to maintain margins and profitability (if the company isn't profitable, it can't employ workers).  On the other hand, if someone working in the fast food industry has to maintain at least one additional job and still live paycheck to paycheck... well that it awful and makes me appreciate what I have.

On to less serious topics... after my post last week about easy ways to preserve summer's bounty, I spent some of this weekend doing just that.  Canned a bunch of tomatoes, froze some peeled and chopped peaches, froze some corn on the cob and off the cob, and made some lemon ice cubes... perfect for adding to a drink or using in a recipe.  My freezer and pantry are getting rather full!

Now it is time to plan another menu for the week.  It's going to be an easy one because it is a short week with a couple nights of on-the-go eating.  And even though a lot of people rioted almost 240 years ago for my right to only work 40 hours a week... my project at work goes live this weekend, so there will be a few late nights where my work day will definitely be over eight hours.

turkey burgers and crispy roast potatoes
ravioli
ginger soy salmon filet and green beans
pizza

Canning Tomatoes - total time 2 hours

Canning tomatoes is like storing a little bit of summer and getting to open it up again when the ground is covered in snow.  It is also pretty easy to do.  As long as you have a large pot, some mason jars, and lots of tomatoes... you can do water bath canning.  Tomatoes are high enough in acidity that it doesn't require being canned in a pressure cooker.  There are only a handful of things you can can this way, and even with high acidity, you still need to be careful and follow every step.  You're not putting the preservatives and additives that food producers use in their canning process.  So follow the steps and make sure your kitchen is nice and clean before starting!

Weekly Menu & Preserving Summer's Bounty

As much as it pains me to think about it... the end of summer is near.  Don't get me wrong, I love autumn with the crisp air, the beautiful colors in the trees, the bonfires, hiking and camping... so many great things.  But.  I love summer more!  It also means summer harvests are coming to an end as well.  That can often mean there is more produce on our counters and gardens than we can eat.  There are several ways to easily preserve these fruits and vegetables so you can bring them out again during the dead of winter to unlock some of those memories of summer in the soul warming meal.

Freezing.  
This is the easiest way to save fruits and vegetables for a later date.  You can cook them first or freeze them as they are.  I love to freeze fruit!  You can easily use them in smoothies or bake a dessert or add them to muffins or pancakes.  I always freeze some berries and peaches from the summer... just peel and cut up your peaches and spread evenly on a baking sheet, freeze, then transfer to a freezer ziploc bag.  Same goes for berries, although you can skip the peeling and chopping part!  

I also like to freeze corn, both cooked and uncooked.  I cut some ears in half and toss them into a freezer bag.  I'll boil or steam those later as a quick side.  Then I'll roast several ears on the grill, cut off the kernels, freeze them on a baking sheet, and then into the freezer bag they go.  Those kernels will end up in soups and stews.  I also freeze uncooked peas and green beans.

Canning.
This method saves room in your freezer and can really be store anywhere in your house giving you flexibility and the ability to store a LOT of food.  Ever since I learned how to do water bath canning (which requires a high acidity), I have been "putting up" enough tomatoes to make home made sauces and soups all winter long (I have eight jars so far and my tomato plants are still going strong).  I'll share the steps to can tomatoes later this week.

I also pickle cucumbers and peppers in water baths.  The vinegar makes it possible to can these without using a pressure cooker.  

Now that were stocked and ready for fall vegetables, lets move on to this week's menu...

mexican stuffed shells
zucchini soup
asian meatballs with rice and edemame
enchiladas of some sort
ordering food in while canning a lot more tomatoes!

Eggplant Manicotti - total time 1 hour

It is eggplant season... and if you're like me, eggplant is one of those vegetables that you don't use often.  There aren't a lot of recipes out there for eggplant.  At least not like there are for zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, or other home garden vegetables.  Outside of eggplant parmesan and ratatouille, it can be difficult to find something to make for dinner.  And if you have a bumper crop of eggplant (or just want to try something different) that can be a problem!

One thing you will find with all eggplant recipes... it calls for "sweating" the eggplant.  If you have had eggplant before and didn't like it, maybe it tested bitter, it is probably because they didn't take the time to sweat the eggplant.  Essentially it is just letting salt remove some of the moisture from the eggplant before cooking it.  The larger the eggplant, the more important this process is.  If you pick your eggplant young or select some of the smaller asian varieties, you can get away without it, but miss an opportunity to really add some flavor with the salt.

This recipe uses sauteed eggplant essentially as noodles.  You could do steps one through two and make a number of noodle dishes, like lasagna or slice into strips for spaghetti.  I always felt eggplant seemed like an Italian vegetable and this may be why!  The eggplant noodles take on a buttery flavor and the filling is creamy and garlicy.  This will be a new summer recipe staple at our house!

Eggplant Parmesan - total time 1 hour

The first time I gave up meat for Lent, I thought it was going to be difficult to find enough recipes to keep from getting bored.  That part ended up being pretty easy.  It was eating at restaurants that ended up being complicated.  If there were any vegetarian options, it was usually limited to something super cheesy and probably pretty unhealthy, which seems like an oxymoron... unhealthy vegetarian.  Most menus (at the time) didn't have vegetarian selections, so I would ask the waitress for something without meat.. and they would always give me a blank stare and then ask me if I wanted a different kind of meat instead.

Now when I go out to eat at restaurants, I notice there are more vegetarian sections in the menus... and they usually have more than one item listed... and some of them are actually healthy and not loaded with cheese.  I'm not sure if I am just noticing it more frequently now because I am looking for it more often, the restaurants I go to now are more likely to have vegetarian, or if it really is a trend (probably helped by Meatless Mondays).

So back to that first time going meatless...  We were welcoming a new associate to our team and went to this family run Italian restaurant.  It was a Friday during Lent and the only vegetarian item on the menu was eggplant parmesan.  Nearly everyone at our table ended up with this dish.  It made me wonder if everyone really liked eggplant parmesan or if there had been other meatless dishes would there have been more variety at our table.  And really, why weren't their more vegetarian options at an Italian restaurant?!  There are so many to choose from... baked ravioli, tortelini soup, gnocchi, baked broccoli alfredo, manicotti... just to name a few.

I haven't had eggplant parmesan since that day, not because I don't like it, actually I do really like it.  There are just so many recipes out there!  So, with it being eggplant season, I decided to make this vegetarian Italian classic.

Weekly Menu

After going to the Tomato Festival that I mentioned yesterday, I noticed a lot of red in my garden.  Look at all the tomatoes!  This has to be my largest single harvest of tomatoes yet (not to mention some more over-ripe maters I had to throw out) including the largest tomato I have ever grown!  This brandywine variety is producing some huge fruits, thanks to the very rainy July this year.  But until this week, all of the ripe tomatoes have cracked and burst before I could pick them (also thanks to the heavy rains).

There was no way I could eat all of these tomatoes... so I canned them.  More on that later.  But I was really excited to stock the summer away to enjoy again during the dead of winter in something warm and comforting.

So this week we have a little bit of mismatched travel in our schedules.  It is making it hard to plan dinner for the week since we'll only both be at home one, maybe two, nights this week.  

eggplant rolls
pan ravioli
jerk chicken and mexican corn on the cob
eggplant parm
turkey burgers
kale chips

Fried Green Tomatoes - total time 15 minutes

It is Tomato Festival time in my town this weekend.  A little bit of rural fair fun close to the city.  And there is a little bit of history behind it too.  Down the street from where they set up the festival every year is where Alexander W Livingston grew the first hybrid tomatoes through hand selecting which plants to cross pollinate to encourage beneficial traits.  He would select plants based on their disease tolerance, fruit flavor, shape, and color to create the "perfect" tomato plant.  Bees have been cross pollinating flowers since the beginning of time, but this was the first time humans involved themselves in the process.  Just like how some siblings can have a trait, like blue eyes, while the other siblings do not... it took many attempts to get the desirable traits from multiple plants to come through in one plant.

So, as we celebrate tomatoes in the "birthplace" of the commercial hybrid tomato, our tradition is getting fried green tomatoes at the festival (which we did today!).  But some times you have some green tomatoes at home, especially right before the first frost, and it is very simple to fry them up at home too.  If you have some meaty ripe tomatoes, those will fry up just as well.