making your own carrot juice blends

I actually don't have my own juicer, but borrow one from my neighbor because she hardly ever uses it. I juiced about 10 pounds of carrots and ended up with two of these large mason jars. Once you've juiced your carrots and any other fruit you may want to use for blending, this is how you start. This is for 1-2 servings.
Start with 1 Cup Carrot juice

½ C Pineapple juice
½ C Apple juice

Add different juices and play around until you find one you like the best and adjust to desired level of sweetness. Other juice options are:
½ Cup orange juice, pear, strawberry juice, grape juice, grapefruit juice, mango, peach, berries, the combos are limitless.

If you are not a fan of the carrot juice flavor, pineapple juice covers the flavor. If you want to add more veggies to your carrot juice, the most popular additions are 1-2 celery stalks, 1/2 of a fresh beet root, and/or 4 inches of seedless cucumber. Some people add fresh grated ginger, but I don't like that..

spring rolls

I don't know why I didn't take a picture of the entire package so you know what it looks like, but this is rice paper, or spring roll wrappers. You can purchase at any Asian market most likely.

They are thin and hard, but very delicate. Once you wet them in water for 2-3 seconds, they become almost transparent, soft, and filmy. This makes it easier to roll up burrito style.

These are the ingredients I used: green bell pepper, chopped lettuce, chopped mint (mixed with lettuce), bean sprouts, shredded carrots, fresh basil, and bean thread (a kind of noodle).

chicken with a teriyaki marinade.

This is all on top of a rice wrapper, but you can't really see it. Pretty, huh.

A close up of the spring roll all wrapped up. I'm still working on my wrapping technique.

You can get really fancy and put leaves of cilantro, basil, and/or mint so that when you roll it up you see pretty, whole green leaves showing through. That was too hard for me. . .

There are endless possibilites what to put in these, but here are the basics:

Rice wrappers for spring rolls

1 pound chicken breast, cooked and diced

2 ounces rice noodles (vermicelli)

1 cup chopped lettuce

2 Tablespoons Thai Basil, chopped

2 Tablespoons cilantro, chopped

1 Tablespoon mint, chopped

1 cup bean sprouts

1 cup shredded carrots

Boil vermicelli for just 3-5 minutes, or let soak for 20 minutes. Drain. Chop and prepare all ingredients and place in rows on a tray. Fill a pie pan with water. Soak a rice wrapper for 3-5 seconds (the package will tell you how) and place in front of you on a clean work surface. Place a small amount of chiken on lower half of rice wrapper. Then place equal small amounts of the remaining ingredients on top of chicken. Fold like a burrito (package will also show folding instructions). Let rest a few minutes under damp cloth while you continue to roll the others. These are best eaten right away and do not make for good leftovers. Eat with your favorite peanut dipping sauce. I like this one: Peanut Love Sauce.

asparagus parmesan

Asparagus was one of those foods that I couldn't stand growing up. We ate it ALL.THE.TIME. My mom grew up picking asparagus out of the ditches near the farm where she lived. We ate it the same way for every meal. Always steamed with salt and pepper. As the time grew near for me to leave home and go to college, I began to appreciate asparagus. Now, I love it a number of ways, including in soup and wrapped in, what else than bacon. I mostly prefer it steamed with a little salt and pepper, but my second favorite way is sprinkled with parmesan cheese.

1 Tablespoon butter (you can leave this out)

1/4 cup olive oil (I use a little less)

1 pound fresh asparagus spears, trimmed

3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese (use the real stuff, not from the shaker bottle)

salt and pepper to taste (I usually leave the salt off because there is plenty from the parmesan)

Over medium heat, melt the butter with olive oil over medium heat. Add asparagus and saute for about 10 minutes or until desired firmness. Remove from pan and place on serving dish. Sprinkle with parmesan, salt, and pepper, while still hot.

*If you want to prepare this in the oven, you can spray a pan with Pam, then you line up the asparagus and shake it a bit so all sides are coated with the spray. Then sprinkle with kosher salt and pepper. Bakes at 450 for 5 minutes. Then sprinkle with paremesan when you pull the pan out of the oven.

**If you want to use the microwave to steam it, place one pound of asparagus in a microwave-safe dish with 1/4 cup water. Cover and cook on high for 5-7 minutes. Sprinkle cheese, salt, and pepper when you remove from the microwave.

how to use up the tomatoes

One of the places I miss eating at in Santa Barbara is Woodstock Pizza in Isla Vista. I'm sure there's better pizza in the world, but for some reason I loved eating there. I especially loved their cheesy wilde bread with Ranch dip and whenever we ordered pizza I would have them put fresh tomatoes on top when it came out of the oven. So good. So that's something I've been doing with our tomatoes when we have pizza. Good stuff.
Homemade tomato soup! I used this recipe here. This is actually HF's favorite meal. Grilled cheese with tomato soup. It didn't make a lot of soup. This was really good though. I think I am going to double or triple this recipe and freeze it flat in gallon freezer bags to enjoy in the next few months. I would for sure recommend putting it through a sieve after you puree it. I don't like chunky tomato soup. We get our kids to eat it by sprinkling goldfish on top, handing them a spoon, and saying, "Go fish!"
This was probably one of the best ways I've ever had pork roast in my life. I browned the picnic roast (it was about 3 pounds) on all sides in a little olive oil. Then I added a couple of freshly chopped tomatoes, a handful of fresh cilantro, a sliced green pepper, and a quartered white onion. I poured in 1-2 cups of water, and a cup of brown sugar and let it simmer all day. SO GOOD. I was just trying to use up what we had and use the stuff from our garden.
Homemade pico de gallo. I used Elise's recipe at Simply Recipes.
My favorite: The BLT. We spread mayonnaise on both sides of the toasted bread, put on 3-4 slices of bacon, 2 thick slices of tomato, and a lettuce leaf. I always add sliced avocado, coarse pepper, and then place the remaining slice on top. TO DIE FOR.

What have you been doing with your tomatoes? Any suggestions?

fried zucchini

The zucchinis that came out of our garden this year were humongous. It was amazing to check them one afternoon and see that they were still fairly small. The next day they had grown by leaps and bounds it seemed. The giant ones I shredded up for later use and stuck in the freezer in freezer bags. The smaller ones I cut at an angle into coins for fried zucchini. They were delicious! The measurements for the ingredients are just a guess. You may need more or less of the flour, milk, and bread crumbs. You will notice I didn't use any egg. It didn't need it at all.

1-2 zucchinis
2 cups milk
1-2 cups flour
1 cup plain breadcrumbs
oil for frying

First cut your zucchinis into desired thickness. Not too thin, but not very thick or it won't cook well. Place coins in container along with the milk. I let them soak for a few minutes, making sure that none of them are stuck together. Next I put the flour into a gallon ziploc bag or a large bowl. I remove the zucchinis from the milk using a slotted spoon and dump them into the bag of flour to coat evenly. You will probably have to break some apart as they like to stick together. Once they are coated evenly, you will dip them one by one in the milk once again and immediately coat with the breadcrumbs. Once all the zucchinis are breaded, they are ready for frying. Place a couple of paper towels on a plate and place a few zucchinis in hot oil. Fry on one side until golden brown, then flip over and fry the remaining side until golden brown. Drain on a paper towel covered plate. Serve with ranch dip if you like.

Here are some other zucchini recipes I might try to mix things up a bit.

Zucchini and Rice Casserole from All recipes
Zucchini Cakes from the Pioneer Woman's friend, Ryan. I think these are also called Zucchini Fritters.
Spinach and Zucchini Soup from 101 Cookbooks.
And last but not least, it's the Zucchini Weenie as seen on Al Dente. Fair Food. I think it actually looks pretty tasty! It would have to be a Hebrew National hot dog for me to eat it though. . .

garden produce coming out of my ears

This is about what we get 3 to 4 times a week from our garden. And that's divided between 3 families. An amazing garden this year. So i'm going to be featuring a few things we've done with the produce.
This is usually what one side of our sink looks like. Full of vegetables.
I love our little carrots. They are so short and fat. I did not expect them to turn out like this. Did we do something wrong?! They still tasted good.

elote

locally grown sweet corn

mayonnaise and cayenne pepper

This is my favorite way to eat corn. I think it was made even more popular by the movie Nacho Libre which we happen to love as well. One of the characters, Esqueleto is always eating elote.

We usually grill it inside the husks and then pull the husks back when they are charred and use the husk as a handle. It's just as good boiled though. I found two recipes online. I've tried them both and they are good.

Nacho Libre-style corn from Chow

Here's a recipe from all recipes

My way is much easier I must say. Even the cooking the corn part. Here's what you need:

• 4 ears of corn
• 1/4 cup- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 teaspoon or more to taste of cayenne pepper
• 1 lime
• freshly shredded parmesan cheese

1. Remove husks and silk from ears of corn. Rinse.
2. In a large pot, filled 3/4 with water, bring to boil a boil on high heat. (some people put sugar in their water to boil, but we never do because our local corn is fresh and sweet).
3. Once the water is boiling, lower cobs into the water. Boil rapidly for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and drain. While corn is cooling down, mix mayo with cayenne. (must use mayonnaise. No miracle whip, or reduced fat recipes. It is best withplain ol' mayonnaise.
   
4. Place corn holders on each end of your cob and then slather mayonnaise mixture evenly over cob. Sprinkle or roll in the parmesan cheese (cotija cheese is the most commonly used cheese for elote, but I like it a little more mild. That's why I use pamesan. I also leave out the butter, salt, and garlic. It doesn't need it!).
   
5. Serve with lime wedges. I usually squeeze the lime evenly over cob and then dig in!
   

This is so good! At least I think so. But here's what our kids did when we tried to get them to eat it.

roasted summer vegetables

Our first produce from the garden. The strawberries are all eaten and the cherry tomatoes are not pictured because Luke gobbled them up. The top 2 cucumbers are weirding me out though. One's dark and long and the other one is light and smaller. Maybe that's normal, I don't know. Some of this will be used for baby food puree and the cucumbers for snacking. The rest. . .
tossed with olive oil, coarse salt, and coarse pepper, and a little bit of grated parmesan cheese.


30 minutes later, hot roasted vegetables from our garden.
HF doused his with more parmesan cheese. Delicious. Especially with the tomatoes and zucchini.

This can be done a number of ways and with a number of vegetables. We used tomatoes, green bell peppers, yellow squash, and zucchini. I saw a recipe for splashing Italian dressing on it and then roasting. It's a nice way to use up garden produce. We baked it at 450 for 30 minutes. You could broil, or take it outside to the barbecue.

summertime eats

It's very exciting to me to have summertime here. I like to pretend that I'm living in California again and if I concentrate really hard, sometimes I think I even smell the ocean. So we are taking advantage of the summer like never before. Lots of picnics, grilling, playing outside, swimming, and pretty much anything that has to do with the outdoors. HF even has poison oak right now! Poor guy is itchy and blistery and is now taking some kind of a steroid. Poison Oak is a not-so-good thing about Summertime, but this is my new favorite time of the year for sure. I could definitely do without snow. On today's menu.

Nacho Libre-style corn at Chow.com. I never thought about using the husk as a handle. Pretty smart. Rolling it in the Cotija cheese isn't absolutely necessary, but a good 'n tasty idea.

*(note added later: I would only use 1/4 tsp. of cayenne, 1/4 to 1/2 tsp. of the salt, and half the garlic it calls for. It was pretty over-powering. Otherwise it was totally delicious)

Elote is the official name for the nacho libre-style corn. Here's a recipe from allrecipes.com

Sirloin Tip steak with yummy marinade that I posted previously. Tasty stuff.

Mini sweet peppers from Costco pictured above. I'd like more recipes to make with these, so if you know of any, please let me know. For now, we are eating them raw with ranch dip.

Fresh, ripe cantoloupe. Choosing, and storing melon at HGTV.

Thinking about making Strawberry Freezer Jam. I've never done anything like that before but I would like to. I've never even made homemade bread. (everytime my mom hear's me say that, she practically kills over, doesn't think she raised me right). I want to fill cute mini jars and containers, maybe give them as gifts. On the hunt for a healthy recipe. Every recipe I find has SO MUCH sugar. Suggestions and recipes welcome! One idea: Freezer Jam for Frances at Familyfun.com