Squash, Tomato, Chicken Casserole

 I've been reminded that it's been awhile since I've blogged so posting a new recipe that I made up last weekend and is now a family favorite.  I found a recipe online for Zucchini Gratin with layers of zucchini and tomatoes topped with cheese that sounded good and a way to use more of my farmer's market produce.  I changed it up quite a bit to satisfy the 2 carnivores in my family (John and Aubree) and added a layer of chicken in the middle.  I made a medium and small casserole instead of a big one in order to have enough for 2 meals and room in my frig.  I usually do my cooking on Saturday for Sunday lunch and for the week so these are a nice size to pop in the microwave for 10 minutes after church or work. They loved it so much it was gone by Tues so I made more today.   We've been loving all the home grown tomatoes I've been getting all summer at the farmer's market, so another way to cook tomatoes is a winner in this family. I also used 3 varieties of squash, yellow, zucchini and zephyr but any summer squash will do. The recipe also called for Italian dressing but I've been buying some awesome homemade tomato dressing at the farmer's market so used it, really any dressing will do.  I also sneak in eggplant, sorry Aubree.  I peel and shred it and cook it with the onions, garlic, sweet peppers and chicken.  You can't really taste it, it pretty much acts as a filler.  I try to add as many vegetables that I can to pretty much any dish I make.  This makes Tabitha and I very happy, Aubree and John not as happy which is why I add meat. I don't do exact measurements so these are approximate and I use what I have on hand.  Here's the recipe.  Enjoy!

      Squash, Tomato, Chicken Casserole

4 medium summer squash, such as yellow and zucchini thinly sliced (enough for 2 layers)
4 large tomatoes, sliced (2 layers as well)
4 cups of shredded cheese
4 boneless chicken breasts (or equivalent to 3 to 4 cups of chicken)
1 cup peeled and shredded eggplant
1/2 cup chopped sweet peppers
1/2 cup chopped onions ( I used 1/2 green and 1/2 purple onions), chopped garlic (about 2 to 3 cloves)
1 T Italian or tomato dressing, 1/2 cup sour cream, 1/4 cup cream cheese, seasoned salt, pepper, oregano, parsley, garlic powder or garlic pepper 1 to 2 teaspoons each.

Slice squash and tomatoes and set aside in separate bowls as well as shredded cheese.  In a skillet, cook chicken, eggplant, sweet peppers, onion and garlic (I also added 2 tablespoons of subfrito, recipe for this is in an earlier blog) with seasoned salt, pepper and garlic powder or garlic pepper in a little olive oil and about 1/2 cup of water (cover) until chicken is done,  25 minutes or so.  Take chicken out and cut up into bite size pieces then return to skillet.  Add dressing, sour cream, cream cheese, oregano and parsley and stir until blended and creamy. Assemble casserole in layers starting with squash, tomatoes, chicken mixture, cheese, another layer of squash, then tomatoes and top with last of cheese.  Bake covered for 45 minutes in 350 degrees oven. 

This works great made ahead of time and reheated in microwave to 10 to 12 minutes.  Serve with salad and or fruit.  We ate ours with watermelon.  I've been buying watermelons each week at the farmer's market alternating each week between yellow and red meat.  Loving our farmer's market. 

Homemade Pesto

fresh pesto in blender

I love herbs, I love growing them, buying them and especially cooking with and eating them. I have been growing herbs in the yard for years and making homemade pesto.  This year we have added more herbs to our yard and they have been growing like weeds.  The more you cut, the more the plant grows and gets bushier.  My daughter, Tabitha, who is my garden buddy informed me a couple of weeks ago that it was time to pick herbs and make pesto so I did. It smelled so good that I mixed a half of jar of Alfredo sauce that was in the refrigerator, made some pasta and had myself dinner and leftovers for lunch the next day.  I usually make 2 to 3 cups at a time and freeze it in small amounts (about 1 cup) in Ziploc bags.  I use it for pizza, spaghetti sauce, Alfredo sauce and sometimes dip.  It makes jar sauces taste more homemade for those nights you need a quick dinner idea.  Spaghetti is one of our go to quick suppers so I try to have a variety of homemade sauces in the freezer but sometimes it's a bought jar sauce kind of night. The girls and I also really love to make veggie pizzas so the pesto is great on that.  Pesto is so easy to do and very adaptable. I use whatever fresh herbs I have, basil, thyme, oregano, marjoram, sage, and parsley plus a few dried herbs.  I don't put nuts in mine, mostly because I never have pine nuts on hand.  If I have pretzels I have chopped those up in the pesto but not always. The hardest part is de-stemming all the herbs, which isn't really hard just the most time consuming. You can also add leafy lettuce, especially arugula.  I have made it with only dried herbs but it's not as good, you really need at least 1 kind of fresh herb.  I've made 2 batches so far this year and the way my herbs have been growing, more to come. So if you haven't made pesto before, get out the blender, olive oil and herbs and try it.

Pesto recipe
1/2 to 1 cup of water in bottom of blender
2 to 3 cups of fresh herbs off of stems, parsley, oregano, basil, sage, thyme, marjoram,
1/2 to 1 cup olive oil (add in stages as needed)
1 to 1 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
seasoned salt and pepper
dried herbs, especially parsley or any Italian blend

Puree in blender until smooth, should be slightly thick.  Season to taste. Freeze in small amounts in Ziploc bags.  Enjoy.

The joys of fresh lettuce

mixed lettuce from seeds growing in old wash tub in front yard

 We are growing our own lettuce again this year. We have several different kinds and growing in the front and back yard.  Most we grew from seeds that we started in milk jugs back in February but we did buy the leafy lettuce that we planted.  We have rocket, mixed leafy lettuce, arugula, bib lettuce and leafy lettuce, plus Swiss chard which is great in salads.  We tried spinach but didn't have much luck this year so we have been buying that and adding it to our mixture.  We've had salad several times this season and it's always so yummy. Now that the farmer's market it open we get all kinds of yummy veggies to add to our salad like carrots, radishes, tomatoes, plus fresh eggs hard boiled. I went out last night and picked this bowl of fresh lettuce for chef salad. I also made pasta salad and added our fresh basil.
Tabitha and I finished off the pasta salad for lunch today.  More pasta salad definitely in our future along with more chef salad.  I won't be buying iceberg

fresh picked for chef salad

hydroponic lettuce

lettuce anymore.  After eating fresh it's hard to even eat a salad at a restaurant that's mainly iceberg lettuce.  We bought this beautiful hydroponic lettuce from Murphy Farms this morning outside of Coop.  I snacked on it by itself it is so good.  More salad this week. I love this time of the year. We are having so much fun with our victory garden plus hanging out at the farmer's market and buying fresh produce. We have picked our first green bean and banana peppers. I added the green bean to the ones we bought at the farmer's market last week that I snapped and put in a baggie and froze. I cut the
banana peppers up today and they went into succotash chili which is on the stove cooking for later this week. I added yellow squash, turnip, garlic, zucchini, and onions all from the farmer's market plus corn I had cut up in the freezer and fresh tomatoes. Eating healthy at the Beckman house. Enjoy.

banana peppers from garden

leafy lettuce and rocket in back yard

1st green bean harvested

Farmer's market road trip

Edmond farmer's market

Our farmer's market loot

Another market shot

My daughter, Tabitha, and I decided since our farmer's market hasn't opened yet we would take a road trip to one already open.  We drove to Edmond this morning to check theirs out.  There were a lot of vendors for this early in the season and a great variety of items from cheese, breads, plants, dips, eggs and produce.  We had way too much fun.  We got 2 different kinds of cheddar cheese, 2 kinds of spreadable goat cheese, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, whole wheat bread, green onions, green and purple asparagus, basil, spinach, a marjoram plant and scones that we ate there. The weather was a little chilly but not too bad.  We will probably hit this one again but there are several that are on our field trip list.  We made wraps for lunch when we got home with the garlic and herb goat cheese spread on a flour tortilla with spinach, sliced cucumber and swiss cheese and cherry tomatoes on the side.  For dinner we had paninis with our bread, goat cheese, cheddar cheese, tomatoes, spinach, ham and basil. Tabitha and I had bought a panini grill last weekend at a church garage sale for $5 so wanted to try it out. I made each of us 1 1/2 sandwiches and tried a different cheese on the 1/2 ones. They turned out really good, more paninis in our future. Everything was so good.  Hooray for farmer's markets.

We were so hungry that we started eating before picture taking

One, Two, Three Ham

I decided to cook my Easter ham in the crock pot this year because I didn't want to leave the oven on while we were at church.  Let me say that it was so easy and delicious that I won't be cooking ham in the oven any longer. It was juicy and tender and the pineapple wasn't overcooked.  I love, love my crock pot and cook the majority of my meat in it, especially beef and pork roasts.  I just throw them in, sometimes frozen, with my seasonings, some water and 6 to 8 hours later have fall off the bone tender meat.  I've never tried cooking ham, not sure why, but since I've been cooking my Sunday meals on Saturday I didn't want to do the ham early and reheat in the microwave. I Googled ham in crock pot and got some ideas then did my own thing.  I love Google, you can type in anything and find what you want. So for those of you that haven't thought about ham in the crock pot here's my easy 1, 2, 3 recipe

One, Two, Three Ham

picnic ham (with or without bone, mine had a bone in it)

1 large can pineapple slices

1/2 cup plus a little more brown sugar

pepper

In bottom of crock pot place 1/2 cup brown sugar, place picnic ham cut side down on top of brown sugar.

Score fat and skin with knife and rub with a bit more brown sugar, pour over pineapple slices with juice and sprinkle with pepper.  Cook on high for 4 hours. Slice and enjoy.

my ham was bigger than my crockpot

I discarded the liquid but saved the bone after cutting all the meat off. We put it in a large Ziploc bag and put in the freezer for a pot of beans later. Another option is to add whole cloves, studded in the scored fat/skin.  Be sure to take out before slicing. This last time I made it, I had caramelized onions in the freezer so added some in the bottom with the brown sugar.  Also if you get a ham that's too big for your crockpot just cover with aluminum foil and cook as normal.  

Enjoy,

Bamah



aluminum foil to the rescue 



Easter dinner yumminess

Family traditions and food, St Patrick's Day

Evolution of Cajun Fish Corn Chowder

It's been awhile since I posted and after making Cajun fish corn chowder this past weekend decided to share the story of it's evolution of becoming a family favorite.  I'm known as the Soup Queen at our house. I have been making soups for years and can throw just about anything together and make a soup out of it.  Our family favorite comfort food is potato soup so I have several variations including a corn chowder in which fresh or frozen corn is added to potato soup.  I was visiting my youngest daughter, Aubree, several years ago when she was going to Baylor University in Waco TX and we went to eat at one of her favorite restaurants called Buzzard Billy's. We had a Cajun crab corn chowder that was fabulous. The basic soup was like my corn chowder but with Cajun seasoning for a kick and crab meat.  The next time Aubree came home for a visit we experimented with making our own and it turned out really well. Our local grocery store had crab legs on sale so we cooked them up, cracked them and added the meat to the soup. I visited Aubree a couple of years later when she was working and living in Boston and she wanted to make the soup since we could get really fresh seafood.  We got whole crabs instead of crab legs that neither of us had cooked before and they didn't quite turn out like we planned and we didn't have enough meat for the soup.  She had tilapia in her freezer so we sauteed that up and added it to the soup. It was fabulous and a new cheaper version was born.  This past summer Aubree was living and working at home and wanted fish corn chowder so I went to get fish from the store but accidentally picked up swai instead of tilapia.  We liked the swai so much better, it's a larger fillet and meatier fish so now that's all we use. So that's the evolution of Cajun fish corn chowder.  That's the beauty of soup it is so versitile.  I usually just eyeball and throw stuff in when I make soups so these aren't exact measurements.  I use instant mashed potato flakes to thicken most of my soups instead of flour or cornstarch.  It works really well and is stirred in at the end. Now to the recipe.

Cajun Fish Corn Chowder

8 to 10 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed, sometimes I use red or new potatoes and don't peel them
water
1 stick butter
1 pkg frozen corn or 2 to 3 cups of fresh corn
1 onion chopped, any kind, we really like red onions or 1/2 to 1 cup of green onions
1 sweet pepper or bell pepper chopped
1 to 2 Tablespoons minced garlic
4 fillets of fish, swai or tilapia
1 to 2 tsp Old Bay seasoning
1 tsp each salt and pepper, (seasoning salt is great added as well or instead of salt)
1 Tablespoon parsley
1/2 to 1 tsp Cajun seasoning
1/2 tsp turmeric
instant mashed potato flakes
1/2 to 1 cup milk
2 to 3 Tablespoons sour cream
2 Tablespoons subfrito (see recipe in Oct post)


Put cut potatoes, salt and pepper in large pot with enough water to cover and boil for 20 minutes or until tender.  Meanwhile in skillet saute onion, sweet pepper, subfrito and garlic in 2 tablespoons of butter with salt and pepper until tender. Add fish fillets and sprinkle each side with Old Bay, Cajun seasoning and pepper and cook until fish is done on both sides. When potatoes are done, add corn, rest of butter, turmeric, parsley, Old Bay, and Cajun seasoning.  Break up cooked fish and add mixture to potatoes.  Thicken soup with instant mashed potato flakes, about 1 cup or so then add milk and sour cream.  Add more butter, salt and pepper to taste. This makes a thick chowder, just add more milk if desire.

Enjoy