Cooking BONANZA!!!!

Okay, here is my first installment in my cooking paleo on a budget challenge. I mainly cooked a lot of veggies today, since my veggie box arrived on Thursday and I don't want them to go bad before I can enjoy them. Also, (cooking tip here) veggies take me the longest to clean, prep, chop, and cook. I usually like to make vegetable and side dishes on the weekends or on nights when I have more time. Then, I can easily grill a chicken or a steak and jazz it up with some reheated veggie dish!

First up, we have roasted beets and greens. I started with this recipe today since it was going to take the longest.

Roasted Beets and Sauteed Greens Recipe (adapted from Harmony Valley Farm Newsletter)
1 bunch of beets with greens detached
4 Tb of olive oil (divided into 2 Tb)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cippolini onion (or roughly 2 Tb chopped onion)
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 350' F. Wash the beet roots and toss with 2 tablespoons of oil in a small baking dish (I used my 8x8 Pyrex). Cover and bake (roast) in the oven for 45 minutes, or until a knife can easily cut through the largest beet. When the beets are almost done, start preparing the greens.

Heat the remaining 2 Tb of olive oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Saute the onion and garlic for about 1 minute until soft. Strip the washed beet greens into 2-3 inch pieces and add to the onion and garlic. Saute for another 2 minutes until the greens begin to wilt. Toss with sliced, roasted beets (you can peel the beets if you want).

Here's a picture! This was actually quite tasty, considering I don't usually eat a lot of beets, so I wasn't sure if I would like them. The greens are somewhat bitter, but the beets are smooth and sort of sweet-tasting, so it all evens out. I'm going to plate this dish with some steak tomorrow night.

Next up, since the oven was warm, I made some zucchini bread. I got some stuff that LOOKED like zucchini from my CSA, but I was also told there would be cucumbers...who knew cucumbers could be yellow? I cut up my "zucchini" only to find it was a masquerading cucumber!

Yellow zuke on the left, sneaky yellow cucumber on the right!

No biggie, I still had enough yellow and green zukes to make the bread.

Zucchini bread recipe
2-3 small zucchinis, grated
8 eggs
1 tsp cinammon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 coconut oil (or melted butter)
1 cup coconut flour (or almond flour)
1 cup chopped nuts

Preheat the oven to 350'F. Grate the zucchini (I use my Microplane coarse grater) and mix with eggs, spices, and oil. NOTE: if you are using melted coconut oil, it will harden the instant it gets cold, i.e., when it touches the egg batter! I mix my oil in last and very slowly, so that even if it hardens, the chunks are evenly dispersed. Once you get a good zuke batter, sift in the coconut flour and mix well. Then mix in the chopped nuts. TIP: you can easily chop nuts by putting them in a ziploc bag and then taking some frustration out on them. Just beat up the bag and go nuts, so to speak...

Pour the mixture into a loaf pan or baking dish and bake for one hour. Watch it closely and if you see the bread starting to burn on the top, reduce the oven temperature to 200'F and let the inside cook more slowly. Bread is done when a toothpick or a knife inserted comes out clean.

Here's what mine looked like. I ate a small slice with some raw Grade B maple syrup drizzled on top, and I also had a second slice with a little pat of butter on top. The maple syrup slice won hands down! This bread sort of tastes spicy from the nutmeg, but it's not overpowering. It easily can be made into a saltier/savory side bread or into a sweet dessert or breakfast goodie.

Last but not least, I made some sugar snap peas with bacon.  I don't know when I last had snap peas, but it must have been a loooooooooooong time ago. While I was trimming the ends (more like snapping them off), I was reminded that I used to do that when I was a little girl helping my grandma prepare Chinese stirfrys. Ah, the memories...

Sugar snap peas and bacon recipe
5 strips of bacon, cut into inch-sized pieces
2 cippolini onions, chopped (or 1 small yellow onion)
1/2 cup water
1 lb. sugar snap peas, washed and ends trimmed.

In a large nonstick skillet, fry up the bacon until nice and brown. Remove and set aside the bacon with a slotted spoon. Saute the onions for 3 minutes in the bacon grease, then add the green beans and water to the skillet. Cover and cook for 5 minutes (I don't have a lid for my skillet, so I improvised and used some aluminum foil!). Remove the cover and cook uncovered until the liquid is almost gone (that took me about another 5 minutes). Toss with the bacon and enjoy!

I plan on eating this one with some chicken! Although, I'm guessing the bacon won't be as crispy then...