Cooley Family Farm

Kevin started harvesting garlic so I decided to give green garlic pesto a try. So glad… what a yummy treat. The green garlic is milder than dried garlic. If you love garlic you will love this recipe. We made some whole wheat pasta and tossed it with a little butter and added the pesto. It was great. The pesto also tasted wonderful on the veggies. I was out of french bread but I have a feeling it would make fantastic garlic bread as well.

I made a full batch of the pesto which yielded about 1 1/2 cups. A little can go a long way so next time I plan to cut the recipe in half. What I’m posting below is the full recipe, so be sure you want a lot of pesto if you make it as is.

5-6 shoots of green garlic, trimmed of tough dark green parts and cut into 2 inch pieces
2 oz. Parmesan Cheese, cut into small cubes
3/4 t. coarse salt
1/2 t. pepper
1/2 C. extra-virgin olive oil

Put everything except olive oil into a food processor or blender. Process until it is fairly smooth. You may need to stop and scrape the sides a couple of times.

Next pour in the olive oil until you get everything is pretty smooth. If needed scrape sides again during this process.

You can be flexible with the ingredients too. I used about 1/2 Grana Padano and 1/2 Parmesan for the cheese. I also was about out of olive oil so I ended up using 1/4 cup olive oil and 1/4 cup plain sesame oil (not toasted). It was still great and no one knew I altered it. Also… it is very common to use pine nuts when making pesto. I prefer mine without but you could put some pine nuts in as well.

Best of all this is simple to make and you can be creative when spicing up a meal.

Tracy

Well… I’m hoping the picture says it all!!! When Kevin told me he was going to start digging potatoes and picking green beans I was so excited. I’ve been craving them! And then it was so easy to decide how I was going to fix them. One of my favorite ways is to just put them in foil on the grill. Kevin also found an onion in the field so I knew it would be complete.

Ingredients
New Potatoes
Green Beans
Onion
Butter
Salt
Pepper

Wash the veggies. Cut the potatoes into bite size pieces, snap the end off of the green bean. Put it all in foil. Dot with butter. Add salt and pepper to taste. Place on the grill till tender.

It’s so easy and one of the most delicious dishes ever. Besides… an added bonus of no messy kitchen. The only bad thing is that we had no left overs.

Hope you enjoy!
Tracy

Kevin brought a couple of beautiful beets to me last Friday. It honestly took Kevin a few years to get me to cook beets. I thought I didn’t like them…. until I found out that you don’t have to boil them to cook them, and that they can be pretty quick to make, and that they can taste sweet without any “earthy” taste. All this with just 1 ingredient other than the beets. So healthy!!

First I cut off the greens and peel the beet. Then I cut the beet into chunks that will fit into my food processor for ‘fine’ shredding. With the food processor the beets are shredded very quickly. Personally I haven’t tried to shred them by hand. And I think for the best texture they should be finely shredded.

I was working with two good sized beets which was about a pound of beets. After they were shredded I tossed them in my skillet with 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice. Using fresh squeezed lemon juice is important for the best flavor. Make sure you don’t heat the skillet too hot, then you can do other things while they are cooking and just stir them every once in a while. I’m not exactly sure how long I cook them. I’m terrible about keeping track. But I do believe it’s about 15 minutes or less. You don’t want them to be crunchy, but don’t cook them to mush either.

Now… for the greens that I cut off the beets. I was looking at them thinking of how many times I’ve read or heard that the greens are healthier than the actual beets. My first thought was to toss them in with our salad. We always enjoy that. But then my conscience kicked in as I remembered my first blog where I said I was trying to improve on my ability to cook greens. So here is what I made:

Spiced Beet Greens and Pears

Greens from the pound of beets (approx. 1/2 lb. of greens)
Olive oil
1 small red onion, sliced
1 pear, peeled and thinly sliced
cinnamon
nutmeg
Sea salt
Water
1 1/2 Tbsp. Toasted Walnuts, chopped

Wash the greens and spin them in the salad spinner, then cut them into thin strips or small pieces and set aside. Next chop the walnuts and put them in a skillet over low to med heat. Watch them closely so you don’t burn them like I did (luckily they weren’t ALL burnt). After the walnuts are toasted put them in a bowl for later.

I cut the onion into very thin strips. I then used the same skillet that I used to toast the walnuts to finish this dish. I put just a splash of olive oil in the pan and added the onion. Cook the onion until it is soft and smells yummy. Then I tossed in the beet greens and pears along with a splash of water ( about 2 Tablespoons at most). Next I added the cinnamon and nutmeg. I put more cinnamon in than nutmeg. Maybe a little more than 1/8th teaspoon of cinnamon and about 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg. You can always add more if you want a stronger flavor. Also add a dash of salt. Stir the mixture well and then braise by lowering the heat to low or medium and putting the lid on for about 8 minutes. Stir occasionally.

When the greens were done cooking I put them in a serving bowl and sprinkled the toasted walnuts over them.

This turned out really good. Even if you don’t try this recipe.. make sure you use the greens at least in a salad!

-Tracy