Greek Pita Wraps

What are we going to eat for dinner this week?! The persistent question in all our homes, right? Well, hopefully this recipe can be your answer for at least a couple of days. 

Also, full disclosure: I love cooking without a recipe. Of course, I use recipes while baking, and when I am trying a new dish, but I get some sort of thrill from improvising in the kitchen without a script. Sometimes this yields questionable results. (My husband, who is a precise recipe follower and a talented cook/gardener often reminds me of this :) However, I do occasionally come up with some delicious dishes. Plus, I get annoyed when recipes go into WAY too much detail, i.e. I am not going to tell you how many tablespoons of hummus to measure out onto your pita sandwich. I think you can figure that out by yourself. Hope you enjoy my not-so-specific instructions!

Greek Pita Wraps

Servings: depends on how much you and your family eat and how much squash you have in the garden.

Ingredients:

1 lb. ground beef

1 white onion, diced

2-3 zucchini or yellow squash

1 can diced tomatoes, or 3 fresh tomatoes, diced

salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste

Toppings:

pita bread

plain hummus 

diced black olives

feta cheese

diced cucumber 

plain Greek yogurt

Instructions: 

Saute the onion in olive oil and add ground beef and seasoning, brown. Add squash and tomatoes, sauté until tender and beef is cooked, about 12-15 minutes. Serve over warm pita bread with desired toppings. 

Cooking lessons from my Grandma

In the kitchen with Audrey

My Grandma was an amazing cook. She taught me many things about life, but I wanted to share a few lessons I learned while in the kitchen with her. 

1. Never measure seasonings over your mixing bowl. 

2. Put away ingredients right when you are done with them. This will make cleaning up much easier. 

3. Taste everything as you are cooking, season accordingly. 

4. You can stretch out soup or chili to last another day if you add noodles or rice. 

5. If someone complements your cooking and says "Wow, this is really great!" you should respond by saying, "Well, I meant for it to be." 

This is one of the reasons I love cooking: the art of feeding yourself and your loved ones can be passed down through generations in the form of tradition and family practice. This knowledge of cooking was passed down from countless generations before, to my great grandmother, to my grandma, to my mom, and to me. I have grown up in the age of processed foods and pre-packaged dinners, but I feel so grateful that my family taught me to grow, cook, and consume real, quality food that was prepared with love and care. I love you Grandma! 

Do you have cooking lessons or traditions you've learned from family members or friends? Share them by commenting on this post!  

 

Shrooms

Farm Lesson #6: Wash dried mushrooms before you cook them

Everything seems to grow in Oregon, everywhere, all the time. This includes a variety of different mushrooms that are very popular in this region. Some people go "mushrooming" in the nearby forests to forage for hidden fungi treasures. We stuck with Market of Choice to begin our mushroom experimentation. The above picture shows some re-hydrated morels that I used in some paella (recipe to follow soon). Apparently, the hot water used to re-hydrate the shrooms can into a delectable broth to use in cooking. It was fragrant and nutty and rich, and full of dirt and sediment at the bottom of the pan. Hence, the reasoning behind my new rule. 

Why look! These popped up in the yard! Maybe we'll try some and see what happens! 

Mushrooms aren't the only thing growing in our yard. There is a patch of ground which was occupied by some petunias this summer outside the kitchen. I have great plans to convert the bed into an herb garden, but while I have been procrastinating this endeavor, a mountain of plant species have voluntarily sprouted up without warning. It is like a jungle in there - honestly, it kind of scares me. I have no idea what most of the plants are, but I do know the light green leafy guy on the left side of the picture is called hemlock and it has an ancient claim to fame: it was the plant used to poison Socrates! Woah. We have really got to clean up the herb garden. 

          

There was seriously only dirt here before!

 

Pumpkin Manicotti

This recipe is from Country Living and was the perfect opportunity to try out our galaux d'eysines squash, pictured below... I also added kale to the ricotta mixture and used manicotti instead of big shell pasta. 
A link to the recipe: http://www.countryliving.com/recipefinder/pumpkin-ricotta-stuffed-shells-recipe-clv1011 

Blending the squash for the filling

The October Garden

The clover cover crop is already growing

Squash squash and more squash

The pumpkin patch

Planting shallots in the raised beds

Kale Pesto

How to use this much kale??!

Kale Pesto!

A couple years ago, Cole and I went to a Kale cooking class at Whole Foods where we got this recipe. The original however, was meant to be super healthy and included no salt, no garlic and (gasp!) no olive oil. So, I added a few ingredients to increase the flavor. The pesto can be placed in an ice cube tray for freezing, or used in pasta, rice, or potatoes.

Kale Pesto

Ingredients:

2 cups basil

1 bunch kale

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon lemon juice

3 cloves garlic

1/4 cup almonds or walnuts

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup green water from cooking kale

Instructions:

Tear and clean kale. Cover the kale with water in a saucepan and steam for about 5 minutes or until tender. Reserve 1/4 cup of the green water. Put all ingredients in blender and process until ground into a paste.

Kale pesto with orzo, olives, white beans, roasted red peppers, and feta

Pressing Cider

Last weekend some friends from Corvallis brought over a few boxes of apples from their tree. Last year Cole bought this cider press so we got to try it out!

After slicing out bad spots, we throw them in here to be ground into pulp

Then the pulp gets pressed through a cotton bag and the juice comes out of a tube

Ray enjoyed the afternoon too!