Our San Marzanos took a long time to mature this year, but when they did, it was on! This recipe requires 20lb of tomatoes, and I was about 5lb shy so I threw in some sweet lemon boys I picked up at the store. I thought they would go well together. This is a versatile, every day tomato sauce for pasta, pizza, or anything you like.
I admit that I was as skeptical of this as I was about crock pot Shawarma…pho at home is difficult at best, and pho in a crock pot? That said, this was AWESOME. Seriously. Chicken pho is always easier to pull off, and this was pretty great. Leftovers were equally awesome. This originally came from Eating Well, and I didn’t make too many changes (though we used Shirataki noodles in place of rice noodles).
We have been trying semi-successfully to make sure we have at least one meatless dinner a week. I say “semi” because we keep aiming for Monday, and something happens, we get busy, and we end up grabbing something fast (and not veggie). This worked out well, though – our first go at stuffed peppers in the crock pot, and we used Morning Star crumbles in place of ground beef or turkey. We loved this! I have always worried that stuffed peppers in the crock pot would be kind of mushy, but no problems. We also used quinoa in place of rice and really liked that as well. A do over for sure.
We have endless cucumbers. Endless. Not joking. No complaining, of course. We went to visit Missy and John and they’d tried this Smitten Kitchen recipe and it was ridic…so it was clearly next on the list to get “rid” of the latest cucumber hoard. I diverged from the recipe and added a lot of spices – these are pretty puckery even 6 hours later! I imagine they’ll be awesome in a day or so!
This was a super easy and REALLY tasty slow cooker meal – get a quick veggie side ready and you’ve got a fast weeknight dinner. It was perfect for a horse show night when I’m home late – either one of us could have dinner whenever we roll in. I thought this was interesting because a) it was a way to use the huge amount of pesto we have from our garden, and b) I like the flavors of ranch, but I don’t like salad dressing. It was great! We’d make it again for a quick dinner anytime, and this would probably be really nice with a whole chicken cut up – just skin it and you’d get light and dark meat in a very flavorful dish. You could really do any chicken with this, and I bet a pork loin would do well with the same seasoning.
I received a Food Network Magazine subscription as a gift, and it does have some very fun (if caloric) ideas. I saw this flank steak on skewers idea and thought we could definitely do something with it, with some tweaking (and it happened we had a flank steak around 😉 ). We really like this! We used a marinade from Serious Eats, and a Chimichurri from Chow, and there you have it. Flank steak was pretty tender and flavorful and the Chimichurri was great and used up herbs from our garden. We served this with our summer squash as a side – great, fast dinner that I was able to prepare ahead of time and Shawn could grill while I finished with the horses (aka got home late). A win-win!
So I’m not going to lie…I was skeptical about this one. Shawarma in the slow cooker? But we love the dish, and with a crazy horse show schedule, wildness at work, life, and the universe, the slow cooker is our friend right now. So we gave it a try and were pleasantly surprised! This is not traditional shawarma, but it is a close approximation in the flavor category. We gobbled it up for sure. We made this with toum and Moroccan spiced steamed carrots (our own from the garden!) as a side – pretty delish dinner! I’d do this one again with very little tweaking beyond double the amount of chicken at the start for more leftovers, and decrease the liquid a hair. I might also try bone-in chicken next time for a bit more flavor.
There is probably no more iconic summer dish for me than steamers; it’s what my family made for most summer holidays, and I could never get enough of them. And now as an adult, you can’t go wrong. It’s easy, it’s relatively healthy (you don’t need THAT much butter) and you it’s even better if you eat it outside. It is hard to find long neck, softshell clams in the DC neck of the woods, so we have to improvise. But it’s STILL good even with littlenecks. And if you happen upon a place to get long necks in DC? Please let me know! 😉 We’ll make do in the meantime. 😉
Om nom nom! 