New recipes!!

Last week's box brought a host of other veggies in addition to the infamous beets. I had some extra time so went searching for a few new recipes to use some of our veggies in! Here's a quick recap of what happened:

Cilantro
I LOVE cilantro. I put it in everything I can. I know for some people, the taste is too over powering but I think it's the best. Last week, our box delivered a whole bunch to us. It started wilting pretty quick so I wanted to use it all as fast as possible. Since we've been eating SO much salad lately I decided to check out cilantro recipes. I choose this quick and easy Creamy Cilantro Lime Dressing from The Garden Grazer. I spiced it up with a bunch of cayenne pepper, went heavy on the garlic (we still had some left over from a previous CSA box) and lime, and added a little pepper to the final product. The result? A delicious dressing that's lasted us over a week!

Fennel

I thought I had big plans for my little fennel but unfortunately it's been wasting away in the fridge. I pulled it out today and it looked so sad and droopy that I wasn't sure it was going to make it another day. I decided I'd make something with it for lunch (along with the 4 chocolate chip cookies I ate) and came up with this Roasted Fennel with Parmesan Cheese recipe. This blew the last fennel recipe out of the water. I can't WAIT to make this again....seriously. One of my most favorite CSA dishes in a while. So simple, so easy, and SO yummy!

Kale
We were excited to see kale in our box again but not entirely sure what to do with it. So I decided to use it as filling for a turnover. This Spinach and Kale Turnover was the base for my creation. I started the process really excited about these. I imagined beautiful looking turnovers with delicious filling. The picture on the recipe made it look so easy! Alas.... sometimes things don't work out.

I put together the filling no problem. I changed some of the sautéing times to deal with our finicky stove but otherwise kept things simple. A quick taste test got a thumbs up.

However, then came the hard part - dough. Originally I was going to do homemade dough but it's been hot and I didn't want to. So there. Sometimes you just gotta cheat. In this case, I went with Pillsbury artisan whole wheat dinner rolls. Seemed like it would be perfect and the whole wheat looked marginally better for you than the white rolls.

However, when it came time to fill the turnovers I got into trouble. I couldn't get the dough to roll out. It  kept trying to fold back in on itself. It was ripping easily as well. Keeping it cold, letting it warm, putting it on a different surface, and using a different rolling method all failed. My little turnovers looked pretty sad. Several of them cracked open in multiple places and I was afraid all the filling would all fall out in the oven.

That's a shot of the turnovers before they hit the oven. It's a good thing they have parmesan cheese on them or you could see what a disaster some of them were. That one in the middle is really just a ball of dough with kale inside it :)

But, luckily, this recipe didn't have to be totally written off. The end result was turnovers that stayed together and taste pretty awesome. So yes, the dough is a little thick in some places and a little thin in others. And no, they aren't nearly as nice looking as the original picture. But they're just for Bearclaw and I and they're pretty healthy! Overall, I'm calling it a success!

We still need to grill up our corn and use up our last couple green onions but that about does it for this box!