Cooking my days away

Over the last few weeks, I've been introduced to some fantastic foods. Most of them are veggies that I've never tried or even heard of (kohlrabi, swiss chard, scapes, napa cabbage). I've had so much fun cooking them and eating them.

I've made some great things over the last week, if I may say so myself. Last Monday, we had braised chicken with tomatoes and leeks. It was so good! I saved the "sauce" and ate it with rice a few days later. I've also been using up some things in our house and made mini pizzas with whole wheat pitas. Toss some sauce, cheese and veggies on one and bake it for 10 minutes and you have a personal sized, healthy, pizza!

My friend Courtney is part of a CSA and gets great veggies every week. She is going out of town, so she offered me some of this weeks crop. She brought me some garlic scape, radishes, napa cabbage and an assortment of lettuce greens. Oh my soul! I've had so much fun with these things!

To use the garlic scape, I made a scape pesto and tossed it with the radishes, some cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini and onions to make a veggie gratin. Then I sprinkled parmesan cheese on top and baked until it was browning. So good! I'm so sad that the scapes are gone. They had such an incredible scent. I'm hoping that I can find more somewhere over the next week or two, but they are a quick and rare crop!

To use the napa cabbage, I wanted to use it all and make sure it was appreacited. I do enjoy cabbage and loved researching this type of vegetable. Not only did I get some great nutrtional info on it, it was the "food of the week" on the World's Healthiest Foods website! I finally settled on some good ole vegetable soup. I threw a bunch of things that I had on hand into a big stock pot and went to town. I used organic chicken broth, water, napa cabbage, carrots, celery, garlic, onions, sweet corn (from last fall that I had frozen), two cans of diced tomatoes, navy beans, pinto beans, fresh parsley and fresh basil. Whew. I let it cook all day and have way more than I anticapated! Lucky for me, I can freeze most of it. (let me know if you want some! ::grin::)

To use up some milk, I made a batch of quick biscuts in my food processor. They turned out great and we had those with the soup. Last week, I used up some zucchini to make Chocolate Chip Zucchini muffins. Do not knock 'em until you try them! They were fantastic and I had to get rid of them because I was eating all of them!


Finally, for good, and cute, measure - here are some pictures of our friend's sweet baby, Micah. We watched him yesterday so she could go to the grocery store. He so precious and is starting to smile a lot. Plus, he's one cute kid. It was fun to entertain him and carry him around while I cooked and cleaned in the kitchen.

As you can see, Patrick is ever so comfortable with small children

You have to tag team to get a smile in a picture. This was as close as I got. :)