Quick Chex Mix

I know the real recipe isn't terribly difficult or hard to find on the internet, but I was too rushed to look it up before we went camping last weekend and came up with this:

INGREDIENTS

1-2 cups each of:
Pretzels
Peanuts
Corn Chex cereal
Wheat Chex cereal

... you can honestly throw in whatever is in your cupboard.  Cherios?  Life cereal?  cheese-its?  Throw 'em in.

2 TBS worchestershire sauce
2 tsp garlic salt
2 tsp onion powder

DIRECTIONS

Mix your dry ingredients together.  Top with sauce & spices.  Mix well.  Bake for 10 minutes in 350 degree oven.  Cool and eat!

CSA Summer Challenge: Grilled Pesto Pizza

Here's this week's haul from the CSA Share:

Lettuce
More lettuce
Swiss Chard
Kale
Raddishes (or are they beets?)
Dill
Sugar Snap Peas

 And I have to admit... I am hopelessly behind.  The lettuce is easy, it gets cleaned, dried, and tossed into a large container for salads immediately.  But the Swiss chard?  I STILL haven't eaten last week's portion.  And the dill?  Into the freeze it went, to be used at some later time.

And since I'm so hopelessly behind, I finally used last week's garlic scape pesto that has been in the fridge just waiting to be tried out.  Remember that?  You can find that recipe HERE.

So back to the pizza.  I love grilled pizza.  Over the last few years since we've discovered that you can grill it we've made numerous little tweaks to make it easier and tastier.  Here are a few pointers we've learned by trial and error:

-keep your heat low- under 200 degrees if possible.  If the heat's too high the outer crust will burn, and no one wants a burned pizza.
-take time to assemble each pizza.  We used to both stand over the grill- him cooking the dough and me slapping the sauce and cheese on in a hurry to get it on there before the other side burned.  Who needs that stress?  Now he cooks one side, brings the dough back in, I top it and take it back out for it's second stint on the grill.
-Make sure all of your ingredients are in place and cut up before you start.
-Let the dough sit out on the counter for 20-30 minutes so it stretches out better when you are ready to flatten it out and use it.

Here's what we used for the Pesto Pizza:

INGREDIENTS

Pre-made pizza dough (the kind from the rolled Pillsbury can is fine, the fresh ball from the super market is better
Pizza cheese, or shredded mozzarella cheese
Garlic Scape Pesto, or jarred pesto
olive oil

DIRECTIONS

Dry dough sticks to everything.  So lather up your hands and a cutting board with some olive oil and roll the ball out, making sure it's evenly coated with olive oil.  Once rolled into a large circle (or in my case, usually an odd-shaped rectangle) cut into smaller workable pieces.

Put each piece on the grill on low heat to cook one side.  Once grill marks appear, turn over and add toppings.  Grill again until cheese is melted and under side is now cooked as well.

VERDICT

Once you've got it down grilling pizza is one of the easiest summer dishes you can make.  We made a mix of green pesto and regular tomato pizza's this week.  Yum!

Vegetable Spring Rolls

 

I'm definitely an appetizer girl.  Give me a party with passed h'ors doeuvres any day over a sit down dinner.  One of my favorite appetizers is spring rolls.  The deep fried kind with spicy peanut sauce.  Since that's probably not the healthiest thing to grab, I searched out an un-fried version.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but we made this on Friday night (appetizer and snack night for dinner night in our house) along with Baked Crab Rangoons and Asparagus Cream Cheese Wanton Fries.

INGREDIENTS

For the Peanut Sauce:
2 TBS creamy peanut butter
1 TBS soy sauce
1 TBS rice vinegar
1 TBS honey
1 TBS siracha (or red pepper flakes work too)
1 tsp sesame oil

For the Spring Rolls:
1 mango, julienned
1 carrot, julienned
1 cucumber, julienned
1 cup spring mix (or any other lettuce will work in a pinch)
Rice paper rounds

DIRECTIONS

For the dipping sauce:
Toss all ingredients together, mix well.  Set aside.

For the spring rolls:
Cut all of the vegetables and fruit up first.  When they're all ready to go get out the rice paper and fill a big bowl of hot water (bowl should be big enough that the papers will fit in easily).

To make each roll, immerse the rice paper into the hot water for 5-10 second.  Remove from water, lay flat.  Add in all of the cut vegetables and mango, and then roll.  As for technique, you're on your own.  Try to roll it like a burrito with all edges wrapped up tight.  I was an epic failure at this technique so I ended up with giant loosely-rolled spring rolls.

Serve with sauce.

VERDICT

I'm just going to throw this out here- this was the best dinner ever!  Aside from the deep fried Asparagus fries it was also pretty healthy.  The key to this entire recipe is essentially the sauce. Because without the spicy peanut sauce, you've basically  just got a bunch of chopped veggies in a wrapper.  But with the peanut sauce... one excellent little side dish.

Tilapia Piccata with Snow Peas

Yeah, I know, two piccata recipes really close to one another.  But I wasn't satisfied with the chicken piccata so I wanted to try again.  With fish.  On the grill.

INGREDIENTS

• Vegetable oil cooking spray
• 4 U.S.-farmed tilapia fillets (5 oz each)
• 1 teaspoon salt, divided
• 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
• 4 teaspoons capers
• 12 oz snap peas
• 1 lb red potatoes, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces
• 1 cup white wine, divided
• 1 lemon, cut into 4 wedges

DIRECTIONS

Heat grill. Fold four 18-inch-long pieces of foil in half; unfold and coat inside with cooking spray.

Season tilapia with 1/2 tsp salt; place 1 fillet in center of 1 half of each piece of foil. Sprinkle each fillet with 2 tbsp lemon juice and 1 tsp capers.

Toss snap peas with potatoes and remaining 1/2 tsp salt; divide evenly among packets. Dot each fillet with 1 tbsp butter.

Fold foil to close and crimp 2 sides of each packet, leaving 1 side open; pour 1/4 cup wine into each packet. Crimp third side of packets to seal; place on grill; close lid; cook until packets are fully puffed, 12 minutes. Carefully cut foil to open.

Serve with lemon wedges.

VERDICT

First of all, let me just say that the potatoes were fully cooked.  I was so skeptical about the potatoes because I figured there was no way they were going to be cooked in 10 minutes.  No way.  They take at least 30 in the oven on 400 degrees!  But they were the perfect consistency.

As for the rest.... it was a quick and easy foil pack dinner.  The taste was fine.  My husband loved it, I was more ambivalent about it.  There was nothing wrong with it, it just wasn't amazing.  But it did have enough capers to make me happy :)

NUTRITION

436 calories per serving, 15 g fat (8 g saturated), 28 g carbs, 4 g fiber, 39 g protein

Recipe Credit:  Self Magazine