Quick Stir Fry & CSA Pick Up #1

Ok, seriously. I would have never dreamed of being as excited about vegetables as I am right now. Today was our first CSA pick up, and I feel like it's Christmas. Why have we not done this before now?! Why doesn't the general public know more about these?! I guess that's the beauty of it, it's not commercialized and it's used by people who really care for and appreciate it. I feel lucky. I mean, look at our goods for this week...

This is what we ended up with...

2 lbs. potatoes
1 lb. beets
one bunch of basil (this is more basil than I know what to do with in one week)
a multi-colored array of cute little cherry tomatoes
one sweet beauty watermelon
one head of garlic

You better believe I'll be making use out of these in the next week, until the next batch of goodies comes along! My task for this week, according to Andy, is to get him to like beets (because as of right now, he's not too big of a fan)... any suggestions/recipes you guys know of to make him a converter???

And I don't have much time because I've actually got a volleyball tournament tonight so I'll make this a quick stir fry recipe...

Ingredients:

3-4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into strips
1 bottle Caribbean Jerk marinade
2 tablespoons butter
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 inch piece of ginger, grated
1 carrot, peeled and sliced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and julienned
2 small yellow squash, sliced
1 onion, sliced thinly
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced
juice from 1 lime

In a medium bowl, combine chicken and marinade. Let sit in fridge for about 30 minutes.

In a large skillet, heat 1 tablespoon of butter under medium high heat, and add the garlic and ginger. Stir until fragrant and then add in the chicken pieces. Heat chicken until cooked through, about 8-10 minutes. Transfer to a plate and cover.

Heat remaining tablespoon of butter and add carrot, squash, bell pepper, and onion. Stir fry for about 5 minutes, you want the vegetables softened a little, but still with a crunch/bite to them.

Stir back in the chicken, add lime juice, and stir fry for about 2 minutes longer.

We served this with some simple red rice.

This was absolutely delicious. The vegetables were plentiful and the chicken was flavorful. The shortcut of using a pre-made marinade cuts down on time when you're in need of a quick fix. Enjoy!

Asian Chicken Salad

Now I know you all are probably going to get tired of me talking about my upcoming wedding... but let's face it... this is my blog and I can talk about anything I want to. Haha, but seriously, I think it helps with my stress level if I just dump it down onto here because I think Andy is thinking I'm a little nuts right now. But anyway, we had a snow day from school yesterday and I started a wedding binder. It's mostly consisting of ripped up pages from magazines that "inspire" me or are cool ideas for certain aspects of the wedding. I find myself not doing homework and thinking about wedding plans, so it's a distracting hobby that's for sure.

Anyway, I loved this salad because it's so simple and quick. And I made on a night that I worked until 10:30pm, so I didn't get home until 11 and I was ready to eat. This came together in minutes and was quite delicious.

Ingredients:
Adapted from Tasty Art's blog

2-3 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cooked and cut into strips
mung bean sprouts
1 can of pineapple chunks, drained
1 carrot, grated or shredded (I did both)
1 head of iceberg lettuce, roughly chopped
pinch of sesame seeds
1 tablespoon sesame oil
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
pinch of ground ginger
pinch of brown sugar

Wash all your vegetables (lettuce, carrot, and mung beans) and bring together in a large bowl. Add pineapple and chicken. Toss everything together pretty good.

In a small bowl, combine the remaining ingredients to make a quick Asian dressing. You can either serve the lettuce on plates/bowls and then add dressing or toss dressing into large bowl to get everything coated pretty well. I just added it to the large bowl and combined everything.

Like I said, easy peasy. This was delicious, refreshing, and didn't give me that "I scarfed this down so fast because I was hungry and now I'm bloated feeling" before bed. Needless to say, it was about 11:30pm by this time and I didn't need a full stomach to put myself to bed. Enjoy!

Spinach Pesto Pasta

Talk about easy. This was incredibly tasty and the difficulty level was -3. My dogs could even probably make this. It whips up in a matter of minutes, basically just the amount of time it takes your pasta to cook! And I've been working with the white balance measurements on my camera, and I think my pictures are steadily improving, right? Right.

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted
1-3 cloves garlic
1 & 1/2 cups fresh spinach
1/4 cup fresh basil
salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons parmesan cheese
1/4 t0 1/2 cup olive oil
1 box spaghetti/fettuccine noodles

Bring a pot of water to a boil, add a tablespoon or so of salt. Then cook noodles until al dente, 6-8 minutes.

While noodles are cooking, combine remaining ingredients in food processor. You may have to do the spinach in batches because it's so bulky at first. I'd save the olive oil for last too because you don't want too much olive oil, just enough to get a good consistency out of the rest of the ingredients. Blend until you reach that desired texture.

Drain noodles and return to pot. Mix in pesto or serve pesto on top of noodles. I chose to mix it in because you get those beautifully colored noodles! I served it with some toasted french loaf that I rubbed some fresh garlic on. Yummy! Enjoy!