Home Grown Beet Salad

Heading out to jazz in the park, and we quickly needed to find a picnic friendly dish where we already had the ingredients.

Luckily for us, we have a bunch of beets ready for the pulling.  This is the first year I've planted beets in the garden, since I'm not, typically, a beet eater.  However, my mom loves them, and I know they're relatively easy to can, so I thought I'd give them a try.

I planted Chioggia beets, primarily because they had cool stripes in the picture.

Also, because they were available when I wanted to plant them in my garden, so it worked all around.

Sure enough, when you cut off the tops - there are some really fluorescent stripes!

Ingredients:
6 large beets
2 T chopped parsley (I used cilantro since it was in the garden)
2 1/2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 T olive oil
Minced red onion, salt, and pepper to taste

I was surprised how many of the stripes remained after cooking!

Directions:
1. Boil beets until tender.  Remove from water, then remove skins when cool enough to touch.
2. Cube the cooled beets.
3. Mix with remaining ingredients.
4. Let marinate in the fridge 1 hour (up to 24 hours), before serving.

As a non-beet eater, I was really surprised how sweet and amazing these were.  Definitely will do this recipe again!

Summer Salsas

I was trolling the internets in search of a more non-traditional sauce (read non-traditional as no-tomatoes), but something that was still good on a corn chip or pita chip.

Who knew that Oprah could solve my issues??

Luckily, these two base recipes are actually the same, it's just the two main ingredients that change, so let's put it up this way, shall we?

Ingredients:
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
1/2 C chopped cilantro
1/4 C fresh lime juice
1/4 C cider vinegar
1 jalapeno, deeded and minced
kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Variation One:
2 C chopped papaya
2 C chopped banana (slightly firm, underripe)

Variation Two:
2 C chopped, seedless cucumber
2 C chopped jicama

Directions:
Combine all ingredients*.  Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

*With variation one, add banana just before serving

Variation One: Banana Papaya Salsa

Variation Two: Cucumber Jicama Salsa

Crock Pot's Finest

 Okay, Crock Pots hate me.

True story.

I'm the only person in this world that could mess up a crock pot recipe, unless it's for an apple butter or chutney.

However, I found this recipe for Cilantro Lime Chicken, and it looked so good I could resist.

 I also couldn't resist tweaking it a bit.

First off, instead of plain salsa, I used a generic brand of Peach Pineapple Chipotle Salsa, still 24 oz.

And instead of 2 jalapenos, I used 1 and 1 bell pepper.

And then it looked super chunky - like the picture to the right, so I added a can of Rotel Tomato and Chili sauce.

 Once the mixture looked more liquidy, I added the chicken.

Oh, but I used 8 chicken thigh tenders instead of 4-6 breast halves.  I just like dark meat more, okay?!

And then I put it on high, because I wanted it done in two hours.

HAHA!  Didn't happen.

 Our Crock Pot, well this one, rather (we have 4 or five of various sizes) has a timer function where it cooks for the time you set it for.

I set it on high for 4 hours, and by the time I had prepped everything and added it to the pot, it was at 3:47 remaining.  That's an easy prep, yes?

Ended up with that as the cooking time, too.

However I had eaten by then, so it made 6 hearty lunch/dinner portions when added to my cilantro brown rice.

Sorry, no pretty shots, just Tupperware.

But when I did eventually try it, it was completely worth the wait!  I can't wait to have this again, and maybe serve it with tortillas next time, too.  So juicy and tender, you should try this one ASAP!!

Two-fer Tuesday!

In order to celebrate my benevolence today (Thomas is coming home, how could I not feel in great spirits?!), I'll doling out two recipes for the price of none!  Yay!!

The first is an easy and relatively healthy Thai Lime Chicken.  I love a good peanut flavored dish, so this was a no brainer for me.  Plus, it only has five ingredients, of which I just needed to buy the lime, so that was a HUGE bonus.

 Of course, I also had the added bonus of being able to use my Pampered Chef Citrus Press...  It always makes my life so much more simple!

You juice the lime over the chicken (top and bottom), and then coat the chicken with your peanut/ginger/garlic mixture.

How easy is that?!  Plus, it doesn't take terribly long to cook, so it's an easy dish all around.

Bake it at 375 for about 25 minutes.

Oh, but that other dish?  The side dish for this one?

Yeah, I might have made it with Brown Rice, so in this case, the side took longer than the main.

Ah well.

For my side, I threw some peppers on a skillet to cook them through.  Didn't add oil, salt or anything, just cooked them to an al dente.

But the long rice dish I made, that was a skinny knock off of Chipotle's Cilantro Lime Rice.  I used barely any oil, and only salted the water.  We're trying to be more heart healthy, so this was an experimental dish.

 I used barely any oil, and only salted the water.  We're trying to be more heart healthy around the house, so this was an experimental dish.  However, it was still tasty, and the brown Jasmine rice held up well again.

Definitely impressed.

So that was my two-fer.  Thomas gave them all a thumbs up, and the flavors complimented each other nicely.  Plus I made a double batch of the rice to sue as a side dish for weeks to come!