Egg and Tomato Salads - Bounties of Summer

Today is the last official day of my venture in kid friendly, low heat recipes (thank goodness!) but i will have one more recipe next week that is sure to please most kids, and my desire to avoid processed foods. One of our few food vices are Morningstar Farms' 'chicken' nuggets. They're vegetarian and taste just like chicken, without the grease, nasty animal parts, or other questionable textures of real chicken nuggets - but clearly they're highly processed. So, next week i'll be trying my hand at homemade nuggets using ground turkey. One day we'll have our own poultry and goats to grind up into nuggets and sausage, but baby steps, baby steps: my first try will be with store bought ground turkey.

Anyhoo, today i've got two recipes, both utilizing my Summer's bounty. This is the time of year i long for all Winter! The time of year where i can walk into my yard, suffer a million mosquito bites, and enjoy a fresh dinner comprising solely of homegrown veg and herb. Since it's never quite the same, thrown together based on what is ripe, i don't usually post the recipe - but last night's dinner was just so yummy and beautiful i thought i'd post it. All the veggies can be interchanged to some degree, but what's better than freshly picked homegrown tomatoes and cucumbers??? I can't think of anything.

Summer Salad

• Freshly picked homegrown tomatoes. I used Porter Improved and Japanese Black Trifele (which tastes a lot like Cherokee Purple, very rich and meaty, but is way more productive. Always pick at blush or with green shoulders, and eat with green shoulders or they taste almost rotten)
• 1 freshly picked lemon cucumber. Could use 2, i only had one ready.
• Nice bunch of lemon basil
• Pinch garlic chives
• 1 small  red onion
• Several cloves of  garlic
• Salt and Pepper
• Cayenne and Chilly powders - could use fresh or dried peppers
• 1 cob fresh corn, boiled lightly, kernels removed
• Splash balsalmic
• Very light drizzle olive oil
• Optional chunks of homemade cheese, or feta or mozz

Simply chop all the ingredients - finely or chunky depending how you like it. Add vinegar and olive oil and seasonings and stir it up. I served mine with some pieces of sausage - mostly for the husband. I just can't get enough of dinner stirred up from Summer sunshine!!
This is similar to salsa, so if your kiddos like salsa you could chop all of these ingredients finely and serve as such, or just add cucumbers to all your favorite salsa recipes.

Egg Salad Plus

• 4 boiled eggs, chopped and mushed
• 1 very small onion finely chopped - may omit for kid friendly version
• Pinch of garlic chives, scallion, or one clove garlic - may omit most of the raw veg for kid friendliness
• Fresh Genovese basil, about 3 leaves finely chopped
• Dash cayenne
• 3 strips turkey bacon cooked and chopped fine
• Smoked paprika - hot or sweet, good pinch
• Spoon full of homemade mayo (which tastes very mustardy)
• Two spoons of mustard - dijon or brown
• Note: you don't need much mayo or mustard and can omit the mayo completely and just spread mayo on the sandwich bread for mayo likers
• Salt and Pepper
• Sundried tomatoes would also be really good

Cook the bacon to desired blackness. I added half the onions in with the bacon to absorb the bacony goodness and cook a little which both softens and mellows the onions. In the future, i may do this with all the onions as the raw onions add an in congruent crunch and a little too much zesty-heat. Mush all together and mix in bacon. That's about it! Will keep a few days so you can double the recipe to have more on hand in the fridge. We're going out of town this weekend, so this batch is for travel lunches or snacks on crackers. I love how brightly colored my egg salad is - gotta love those Summery hens - prolific layers! I'll miss those fresh eggs when they stop laying as much later in the season.

So, off we go to celebrate our first anniversary as a wedded couple! It's been a wonderful year so far, and i look forward to many more in the future. It is so wonderful to spend ones life with ones best friend: especially when he loves my cooking as much as he does! Have a great weekend, everyone. I'll be back to posting on Tuesday.

Stuffed Jalapenos!

Woo hoo! My jalapeno plant is giving forth an abundance of fruit in a delicious and very spicy sort of way. This is a great surprise, as most my hot peppers of the past have been small and not so spicy. These guys are big, big enough to stuff, and very flavorful as well as hot.

I've been making a lot of salads these days. I eat them as a main course rather than a meager side dish, but it's fun to spruce them up with their own side of something exotic. Last night i made a mexican themed salad with a side of stuffed jalapenos wrapped in turkey bacon. It was too delicious, so i'm making it again tonight.

The salad could be any combo of lettuces and veggies you like - i used:

• half large head Romaine
• half cucumber diced
• 3 small yellow bells from the garden, diced
• about 1/2 cup frozen corn
• about 1/2 cup canned black beans
• one carrot, chopped
• handful black olives, chopped
• few leaves of cilantro, chopped
• green onions, chopped
• 1/2 or a whole avocado, diced (avocado dicing tutorial to follow)
  
• didn't use, but would be great with: jicama, black eyed peas, shredded cheddar cheese, etc
  

Toss with some cumin, salt, pepper, and lime juice. Serve with some fresh salsa spooned on top. Perfectly delicious, with a complete protein and low cal. Serves two as a main course, 4 as a side salad. The avocados add a really nice feeling of oily satisfaction, but are better for you than most salad dressing oils.

The Jalapenos:

To be fair, I usually stuff my jalapenos with things like refried beans, fat free cheese, healthier stuff. But i sent the husband to the store and ended up with cream cheese - which is delicious, just a bit more decadent.

(this stuffed last night: 4 decent sized jalapenos, plus one large Giant Marconi bell/ tonight: 2 jalapenos, 3 small poblanos, and 1 small marconi - would probably be enough to stuff about 6 regular sized jalapenos (about 3 inches long or so)

• Jalapenos (also works with small poblanos, or just about any thick walled bell pepper, preferable slender in shape)
  
• about 4 oz. light cream cheese (half a small tub)
• half can of black beans, drained
• 4-5 cloves garlic, finely minced
• several dashes cumin
• salt
• finely chopped cilantro - about 1/2 tablespoon
• Turkey bacon
  

Mush filling ingredients together until well blended. This filling is great when it's super garlicy, so don't skimp on the garlic! Put on some thin rubber gloves (trust me) and carefully cut the top end off of each jalapeno, cutting out the seeds and membrane and knocking out any remaining seeds. Do this carefully so that you don't pierce the walls of the pepper - you can leave some membrane/seeds in, but watch out: if you're peppers are as hot as mine, you'll want to be conservative. The heat is in those seeds and membrane - so use your judgement and leave as little or as much in as you want to risk. Stuff each pepper with the filling with a skinny spoon, filling the cavity.



Now that your peppers are filled, preheat your oven (i again used the toaster oven on the convection setting) to 375 (convection) or 400 (regular). Now take a strip of turkey bacon per pepper, sometimes you can use only a half strip depending on the girth of your peppers. Wrap the bacon around the pepper and secure the ends by piercing a toothpick through.
Note: you can also prepare these on a grill, it's super delicious - just keep an eye on them and turn as needed.

Alternative wrapping - holds the filling in better.

Set your peppers out on a cookie sheet and heat til bacon is cooked to your liking and peppers are softening. It's okay if the peppers blister in places. I also flipped the peppers once every 5 or so minutes to get good crispness on all sides, about 15-20 minutes.

Enjoy! And keep a glass of water (or some dairy product) handy!