Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers

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.

vegetarian_stuffed_pepers

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Refrigerator Dill Pickles

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!

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Slow Cooker Pesto Ranch Chicken

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.

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Flank Steak Skewers with Chimichurri

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!

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Slow Cooker Chicken Shawarma with Toum

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.

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New England Steamed Clams

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. 😉

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Summer Sausage

Summer Sausage has always been one of my favorite snacks, but there’s all kinds of weirdness that goes into preserving some of the (admittedly delicious) grocery store brands.  About a year ago, I looked into whether or not we could do it ourselves, and it turns out it is very easy!  I’ve yet to make this sausage look pretty, though I did a better job of shaping them this time, but they would be nice in a gift basket.  While there is still some curing going on, it’s controlled and it’s nice to know what’s in it.  And we can make it with a leaner meat and spices to taste.  It freezes very well, especially if you vacuum seal it.  The measurements below are what we like, but you can absolutely adjust them (except for the curing salts to meant ratio).

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Dill Relish

The cucumbers keep on coming!  Not that I’m complaining. 🙂  Relish seemed like a fun use to preserve them, beyond another batch of pickles.  This was pretty easy, though needed a lot of improvising.  I liked the final results, but we’ll see how they are after a few weeks.

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Mini Greek-Style Meat Loaves

I saw this recipe in an old Cooking Light, and thought it was worth a try…definitely glad we did.  We’ll be making it again, and actually it would be worth doing in bulk – great for lunches.  The recipe called for more beef than lamb, and I ended up doing equal parts (with very lean beef).  Next time I actually think I would do all lamb.  We made these in mini loaf tins with a cucumber-tomato salad from our garden. 🙂  The sauce actually made it!

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Herb Rubbed Pork Chops with Pesto

This was another grilled pork chop recipe (and we have yet to tire of grilled pork chops!) that we liked a lot.  Very easy for a weeknight dinner.  There were no bone-in chops at the store, but the thick boneless were actually fine.  I did do a quick brine of these before the herb rub/grilling.  The pesto was from our basil, and we grilled some of our squash as a side.  This came from Serious Eats.

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