Weekend Cooking 10/27

Each weekend, Beth Fish Reads hosts Weekend Cooking.  This is perfect for me since I love food and cooking almost as much as I love books!

Wow, it's been over a month since I've written a Weekend Cooking post! I was sick for a few weeks, and weekends are also very busy with family stuff. So, this week, I'll just highlight a few of our better meals from the past few weeks. Weekdays have also been very busy, with soccer games and practices almost every night (games are almost always at 5 pm - right at dinnertime!). So we have been relying a lot on take-out, left-overs, frittatas, and other super-quick meals. On game days, when my son grabs a quick dinner at school (lots of pizza!), my husband and I sometimes eat at 4:30 pm! I just don't do well when I wait until after 7 pm to eat. So, anyway, here are some of our recent highlights:

We've had some nice late-season lettuce from our local farm CSA pick-up, so we've had a couple of dinner salads this past month (recipes mostly from Cooking Light, of course - my favorite!). When all three of us were home for dinner one night, I made Fried-Chicken Salad, something I was hoping would appeal to my son. He wasn't thrilled with it and said he preferred the Mexican salads we've had instead. Friday night, before a soccer game, I made use of some lovely beets from the CSA, and my husband and I had Winter Salad with Roasted Beets and Citrus Reduction. I made it into a full meal by adding sliced steak and carmelized onions, and I subbed blue cheese for the goat cheese. Fabulous! It was a great combination of flavors. (I really need to remember to take photos - just imagine this salad with steak on top!).

We've gotten kohlrabi in our CSA pick-up the past three weeks. I had never even heard of this vegetable until last year's CSA, and I still have a limited repertoire of recipes for it. I chopped some of it up in vegetable soup. Another night, when I had kohlrabi, radishes, and bok choy on hand, I made Poached Chicken with Salsa Verde and Bok Choy, which uses all three. Actually, I didn't make either the chicken or the salsa in this recipe (I did try the whole thing together last year and it was good) - I just used the vegetable part of the recipe and made some simple pan-fried cod with lemon-white wine sauce to go with it. The cod was a big hit, and my husband and I enjoyed the vegetables (my son, not so much!).

One dish that was a hit with everyone - even my college-aged son who was visiting - was Roasted Chicken Thighs with Mustard-Thyme Sauce, accompanied by Roasted Potatoes and Green Beans (in the magazine, these two recipes were featured together as a single meal). It was simple and delicious!

I've also made two big pots of Sausage-Vegetable Soup - a stand-by when I'm not able to go to the grocery store! We always have several varieties of low-fat chicken sausage in the freezer, and we had all sorts of fresh veggies from the farm...but not much else! I just saute chopped onions, bell peppers, and celery, then add chicken broth, canned tomatoes, sausage, and whatever veggies are in the fridge. The best version of this recently included smoked sausage (not low-fat but I only needed a small amount for flavor) with turnips and spinach, among other things - we all loved it!

Hope you are enjoying cooking and good food this week!