Garden Sides and Salads

I've been harvesting up like a fiend, and was entertaining last weekend.  Being as I didn't want to buy anything (or much of anything), I pulled together what I could find from the garden and pantry and made due.

1st Dish: I made beet salad.  But, I've made (and you've read) that before, so I won't bore you with those details again.  But, for the record, it's good EVERY time you make it.  And people don't seem to bore of it, so double bonus.

2nd Dish: Yellow squash casserole.
Ingredients:
3 medium squash, sliced
1/2 stick of butter (4T), melted
1 small sweet onion, diced
about 20 saltines, crushed

Directions:
Saute onions.  Boil squash until al dente (not soft).
Combine veg with about 1/4 of the cracker crumbs.
Place in greased 8x8 dish.  Top with remaining crackers, then top with melted butter.
Bake at 350 until the crackers turn golden.  Everything is already cooked, so it's just to combine the flavors so nicely.

3rd Dish: Cucumber, Tomato, and Feta Salad

Ingredients:
4-6 Roma Tomatoes, diced large-ish
2 Cucumbers, diced large-ish
1/2 C Feta crumbles
Dressing Ingredients:
2 T red wine vinegar
3 T olive oil
Salt and Pepper to taste




Directions:
Combine first three ingredients in a bowl.
Whisk dressing ingredients.
Toss everything together just before serving.

Thirsty Thursday: Wendy's Frosties!

 Here's a low fat (but not low calorie) easy copycat recipe for Wendy's Frosties.  The best part about this is that it's three ingredients, you can use anything generic, and within about a half hour (with a good ice cream machine) you can enjoy Frosties with your besties in no time.

Ingredients:
1 tub whipped topping
1 can sweetened, condensed milk
1/2 gallon of chocolate milk

Add all ingredients to a large bowl.

Blend.

Add to your cold ice cream maker (or follow whatever instructions that have come with your maker).

When you hit the right consistency, remove, pour, and serve.

My machine could only hold 1/2 batch at a time, but I do have two drums, so I just did them back to back and froze the second batch for later.

Super simple, and super amazing!

Quick {Pumpkin} Muffins

Oh, Pinterest.  Must you make my days so full of longing for amazing food?

The bigger problem?  Dieting.   It's not that I hate dieting.  At least, no more than the next guy. 

The problem is when you start to scroll Pinterest.  You can enjoy all of these beautiful looking recipes, but then you remember you're in a death match with two friends to see who can lose a certain percentage of body mass the quickest.

The result?  Really random dieting foods.  As we all know by now, breakfast is a problem for me. As in, I don't ever eat it, and that's where your daily diet is supposed to start.

The solution, however, is seemingly more simple than I imagined.  And it tastes SO GOOD.

Imagine the buttery flavor of a classic yellow cake.  Or the more savory richness of devil's food cake.  Now, put those into a muffin.     Bam!  Done!  That's right, no pumpkin flavor, just the box mix.

Ingredients: 1 box mix, 1 (15oz) can of pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie puree, just pumpkin)

Directions: Mix dry cake mix and pureed pumpkin.  Place in greased muffin tins.  Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes (use a toothpick).  Serve and enjoy.

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!

Pineapple Spread

Here's a simple spread or dip that I was pleasantly surprised with.  It's easy, goes well on crackers, or celery, and we also served it with Tomato Basil Wheat Thins.

Ingredients:
2 packages (8 ounce size) cream cheese, softened
1 can (8 ounce size) crushed pineapple, drained
4 tablespoons finely chopped green onions (more finely than my assistant did in this pic, preferably)
1/2 C finely chopped green bell pepper
Mix and serve.

Fruit Pizza

Here's a simple, refreshing dessert that you can modify however you'd like.
Ingredients:
Sugar Cookie dough
Assorted fruit of your choice (I used white peaches, raspberries, kiwi, and blueberries)
Large tub of Cool Whip
8 oz cream cheese, softened

Directions:
1. Roll sugar cookie dough into 1" balls.  Place balls in greased mini muffin pans and bake according to package directions.  They will (most likely) finish under time since they're small, but cook them until lightly browned.  Cool, then remove the little cups.
2. Blend Cool Whip and Cream Cheese with a hand mixer.  Place a dollop in each cookie cup.
3. Slice, dice, or chop fruit of choice, as necessary.  Top each cookie cup with at least 3 fruit slices, if possible.
4. Serve as close to assembly as possible.

Polynesian Curried Shrimp Dip

When I read this recipe, I expected more than a dip, but it turns out you just have skewers of  shrimp, pineapple, and/or mixed olives and serve this dip in a hollowed out pineapple.  It's easy, but impresses everyone, I guarantee that.

Ingredients:
1 pineapple (hollowed, insides sliced into bites)
72 ripe, pitted olives
72 deveined, cooked shrimp
2 C sour cream
1 1/2 tsp curry powder
1/4 tsp salt

Directions: Skewer first three ingredients.  Mix last three and serve inside pineapple.  Serve immediately, or wrap and refrigerate until serving.