Vegetable Chili

I told you I had some catching up to do. I recently made some vegetable chili. I got the recipe from my Penzey Spice Magazine that I get every month. This isn't the first time I've posted a recipe from that book. I'm really having some good luck with some of the recipes I'm finding in these magazines. All I did was buy a jar of Penzey spices and every month I get this magazine.

Anyways, here is the recipe. Thanks to Jordan Goldstein who's recipe got posted in the Summer 2010 Penzeys Spices Magazine.

My husband said he liked it a lot better than most meat chili's he's had.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 large celery stalks, sliced
1 medium crrot, diced
1 small red or yellow pepper, diced
1 tablespoon ground ancho chili pepper (I just used regular chili powder)
1-2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tsp oregano
1/2-1 tsp ground chipotle pepper. i used 1-2 peppers from a jar called "chipotle peppers in adobe sauce". Watch out, these are spicy.
1 large or 2 small zucchini's. I used eggplant instead
1 11oz can of corn kernels, rinsed and drained. Or kernels from 3 fresh ears of corn.
1 14 oz can of kidney or black beans, rinsed and drained. I had no corn and I used black beans.
1 14 oz can of chopped tomatoes with juice (or 3-4 large tomatoes, peeled, cored and chopped)
2-5 tablespoons of water or red wine.

In a large frying pan, heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the onion, celery, carrot, and bell pepper and saute until cooked through. sprinkle the spices on. Add the zucchini slices, corn, beans and tomatoes. Add water/wine. Cover and simmer about 20-30 minutes.

Serve with grated cheese, sour cream, or yogurt on top if you desire.

Picture didn't come out too great!!!

Garlic Scape Pesto

A few weeks ago, I had some garlic scapes from the farmers market.

My friend Trina was very nice to send me this wonderful recipe called Garlic Scape Pasta. She shared some of her tips as well. : )
I made it and mixed some of it with pasta. As I mentioned before, I love the site this recipe came from.

Note*, A little sauce goes a long way. I froze some of the sauce for later use.

I also took her recommendation and tried the brown rice pasta made from Tinkyada. My husband is watching his grain/gluten intake and these are great. There better than the whole wheat pasta's you find.


Garlic Scape Pesto recipe:


I grilled up some pork chops, cut them into pieces and added that to the dinner. Chicken will go well with it.

Bean, Kale and Flounder soup

I belong to a CSA and picked up some Kale this past week. I tried making Kale chips, but was unsuccessful. I than decided to make this. WOW I am so glad I found this. This was yummy and my husband gave it a huge! thumbs up. I broiled some flounder, broke it into pieces and added it to the entire soup.

I also halved the recipe. I only had cherry tomatoes, so I put a whole bunch of them in the food processor. I had white beans, but decided to use a can of black beans instead. I'm so glad I did. My husband loves black beans.

See original recipe for Bean soup with Kale.

Update: I made this again, since I picked up more Kale. I served it at a Beach Party luncheon that I hosted. I live on a Lake and the beach is across the street, so luckily I didn't have to carry the soup too far "LOL". My friends loved it. I didn't add the fish in this time.

Pulled Pork Sandwiches, Baked Beans and Cole Slaw

I went all out for fathers day. Had the family over and made Pulled Pork sandwiches, baked beans, and coleslaw all homemade. Served that with corn on the cob as well.

The family gave this meal a pretty big thumbs up. LOL. It is well worth posting.

I bought an 8lb boston butt from Hannaford. I made a dry rub. I rubbed it with vegetable oil and than put the dry rub on. It sat in the Refrigerator for about 8 hours. It is recommended that you let it sit over night. Put rubbed shoulder in a roaster with a rack and into the oven it went (uncovered overnight). Start time was 11pm. Total cooking time was 16 hours. The oven was on 225, however I upped it to 275 around noon time, as it was getting closer to eating time. I also loosely covered it with tin foil the last 5 hours or so. Out of the oven it came, and I shredded away. Put some of the juices from the pan on the stove and boil some of it out. Add at least one bottle of bbq sauce and heat up. Mix shredded pork into the sauce.

On fathers day it was served with onion rolls and plain rolls. Today, I decided to make a little bbq ranch sandwich. As you can see in the picture, I used lettuce leaves instead of bread. Very Yummy. I grated a little cheese on it too.


DRY RUB:

Ingredients
3/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup paprika
1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup garlic powder
2 tablespoons ground black pepper
2 tablespoons ground ginger powder
2 tablespoons onion powder
2 teaspoons rosemary powder

These baked beans came out great. I got rave reviews.
I did follow the advise I read about on some other recipe sources - and continued to cook the beans for a total of 6/7 hours. I continued to add more broth or hot water as needed. I never made baked beans from scratch so it was neat seeing the process.

See recipe here: Click here!

**** If you can wait for the pork to register at 190/200 degrees at a long and low heat - the better the pulled pork is suppose to be. It will still be great shredded pork if you take it out early. I took mine out at at 175. Oven times vary based on different conditions. Estimated time frame would be between 10 and 18 hours.

I got a lot of reviews about the cole slaw too. Click HERE for recipe I used.

A HUGE thanks goes out to discusscooking and allrecipes. I have had a long relationship with allrecipes.com. That is the first site I started using for recipes years ago. Although I haven't used them as often as I used to - I have never been disapointed after choosing a recipe from there site. I love the review system they have. I don't think I've talked about it too much in my blog so I figured I'd give thanks on this one. I get a lot of help from people over at discuss cooking. I can't begin to explain how nice these people are and the amazing knowledge they have about food and cooking. They helped me through a few questions I had about making the fathers day meal.

Mediterranean Meatloaf

This meatloaf recipe is awesome. I really!! enjoyed this tonight. My last few meatloaf attempts have been a little bla. I like to call this Stuffed Mediterranean matloaf.

I did make this once before and remember enjoying it. Of course today I had to experiment and make one change. I added about 2/3 cup of oatbran. The original recipe actually doesn't call for any kind of breadcrumbs or oatbran etc. Personally, I think that is great, especially if your cutting down or not eating grains. I didn't quite have a cup of mushrooms - so I thought it was best to add the oatbran so that it stayed together.

I only used ground turkey for the loaf I made today. For my fillings I peeled some egg plant and threw that in the food processor. To the food processor I also added, a few baby carrots, a boiled egg, and some spanish olives. You can see from the original recipe, you can do what you want for the fillings.

I also put some BBQ sauce on the top before cooking. I'm thinking next time - I might try adding a little bacon and maybe even some cubed cheddar cheese into the mix. Although, more calories when those items are added.

I didn't have 2 lbs of meat - I think I had a little over 1 1/2 lbs. Because of this I only ended up using one egg and less sun-dried tomatoes. I don't think more or less of something in this recipe is that big of a deal.

Once again, Galya has a winner recipe!!! Here is the link to the recipe:

RECIPE HERE