Jonas was out of the country for three weeks in February, and this is one of the recipes I tried while he was away. It's one of four simple variations on a basic recipe in the book.

I had trouble finding smoked almonds (not even at Byerly's!), so I used roasted almonds instead, and it was pretty tasty, like a more adult version of macaroni and cheese. That said, the only drawback was that since I was eating alone, the prepared batch lasted me a good six days -- more than enough time for anyone to be thoroughly tired of macaroni and cheese.


Ingredients ready to go!


Macaroni with Gouda and cauliflower

Recipe source: Rachael Ray's 365 No Repeats: A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners

This was one of the last recipes we made together before Jonas decided to start eating seriously healthy. We might not open up the RR cookbook for a while.

Like the lamb I mentioned in a previous post, I had some qualms about preparing veal, but I got over it by refusing to think about it. Although there are a lot of ingredients requiring prep time, the recipe was a piece of cake. It just boils down to frying up some burgers and mixing together some potato salad. The burgers were yummy, although we may have overcooked them slightly. The potato salad was unexpectedly vinegar-y in a startling but not altogether unpleasant way. We ate off the leftovers for several days.

Tip: When preparing to mix burger ingredients by hand, let the meat warm up a bit. I quickly discovered it is painfully cold to begin digging one's hands in ground meat at fridge temperature.


Ingredients neatly arranged

Potato salad with capers and celery

Potato salad with capers and celery

Sorry there are no photos of the finished meal. We were so excited to eat it we forgot!

Recipe source: Rachael Ray's 365 No Repeats: A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners

Although I'd been making my way through RR's book more or less from front to back, I'd skipped over this recipe with some apprehension about the lamb. I've just never dug the idea of eating baby animals. (Veal also gives me some consternation.) Yeah, I know, eggs. Anyway...

Eventually, it was time to give it a go, and I was able to pretty much tune out the details and just concentrate on enjoying the experience. The recipe called for green bell peppers, but we used red. It also called for grape or cherry tomatoes, and we used quartered Roma. Both of these substitutions were because Jonas can't be trusted to do the grocery shopping. :)

The lamb was really tasty, really tender, and reminded me of filet mignon. I've come to the conclusion that lamb might be OK as long as it doesn't have a big bone sticking out of it, as it often does in photos of "a rack of lamb."


Sautéed tomatoes, red bell peppers and onions

Seared lamb with veggies	Garlic and mint couscous
One delicious serving, coming right up!

Recipe source: Rachael Ray's 365 No Repeats: A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners book

Our CSA box contained some butternut squash, so we were excited to try this recipe. (And since this initial endeavor, we've made it a second time!)

It's super easy. The most time consuming tasks are dicing up the squash at the beginning and patiently waiting out the risotto absorption process at the end. Chopped sage added just before serving gives the dish such a distinct flavor that I can't smell or taste sage nowadays without thinking of this recipe.


Beautiful butternut squash

Diced squash	Browning the squash
Cooking the seeds and innards	Waiting for the liquid to absorb
Heavenly

Recipe source: America's Test Kitchen

Our CSA box held a bounty of miniature bell peppers the past few weeks, which we did not want to go to waste. Luckily, I found this recipe (sourced below) on a cooking blog, and they just looked too adorable not to make.

I suspect our peppers may have been slightly tinier than the ones the recipe creator used, as we had a somewhat difficult time stuffing them, but the filling was so delicious that it didn't matter if we made a mess of them all over the place. The two peppers in the photo were two of the more presentable examples. Great recipe!


Stuffed mini peppers

Recipe source: TheKitchenSink

I'd never prepared celeriac before, but we received some in our CSA box. Some cursory internet searching suggested it was popular creamed, mashed and in soups. I found a celeriac soup recipe (sourced below), and the photo looked pretty tasty.

It was simple to prepare, perfect for a Saturday afternoon lunch, and BOY was it tasty! As in so many dishes, bacon is the perfect garnish. I'm looking forward to making it again sometime.


Creamy, heavenly celeriac soup

Recipe source: Serious Eats

I had a lot of cabbage, and other than the somewhat unappealing thought of boiled cabbage, couldn't think of what dishes cabbage is typically used in except for coleslaw. So coleslaw it was! I used an ATK recipe I remembered seeing on TV, and it was totally yum.

In hindsight, I probably should have opted to thinly slice the cabbage with a knife, rather than shred it with a grater, in order to get the ideal size shreds. They were pretty tiny, even using the largest side of the box grater.


Creamy buttermilk coleslaw - yum!

Recipe source: America's Test Kitchen

Our meal planning of late often revolves around a single ingredient that we need to use up before it's too late. This time, the key ingredients were cucumbers and sweet peppers, so this recipe had our name all over it.

There are a lot of ingredients, but most of them are staples, and a food processor was required for some puréeing.

The end result was a light- and healthy-feeling flavorful bowl of noodles.


Sesame noodles with sweet peppers and cucumbers

Recipe source: America's Test Kitchen

Other than a recent animated film, I don't think I ever actually knew what ratatouille was until we decide to make this dish. And even then, it only occurred to us because our CSA newsletter said, "Hey, now you have all of the ingredients needed to make ratatouille!"

We do? Yay!

You don't need much; the primary ingredients are eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes and onions. The eggplant and zucchini get roasted first, then added to cooked tomatoes and onion in a pot. Add a few spices and voilà!

Cooked eggplant admittedly doesn't look very appealing, being a sort of mushy tan color, but the vibrant tomatoes and bright green parsley and basil help make up for it. Tasty!

Roasted eggplant and zucchini	Sautéing large onion pieces
Cooking tomatoes, onion and garlic	Adding roasted eggplant and zucchini to the tomatoes

Ratatouille!

We had been receiving a boatload of green beans in our last few CSA boxes, and needed some new and different ways of preparing them. Jonas found this recipe on ATK's website, and it fit the bill perfectly. In addition to ground pork and some classic Asian spices, we also added baked tofu and served it with rice.


Stir-fried Sichuan green beans with rice

Recipe source: America's Test Kitchen

A simple meal whipped together with ingredients we already had on hand.

This was a very pretty dish with the rainbow chard, so it's unfortunate that it didn't pack very much flavor. In the end it was simply kind of bland and was lacking a sauce component. Maybe more parmesan or garlic would have helped.

Chard and greens sautéing

Penne with rainbow chard and Spanish onions

Recipe source: Harmony Valley Farm's newsletter, Volume 17, Issue 16

My friends, this is the dip of dips, especially if you like your dips a little bit spicy!

Generally, I'm not a huge fan of dips, perhaps partly because I don't find raw veggies all that compelling. I think I could live off of this one, though. All you need are mayonnaise, sour cream, onion, a chipotle in adobo and a lime. We've now made it twice at home, and I've brought it once to work for a potluck.


Chipotle lime veggie dip

Recipe source: Harmony Valley Farm's newsletter, Volume 17, Issue 15

This was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of meal. We picked up a box of Asian noodles -- you know, the kind that comes with a sauce packet -- and added some baked tofu.

We had received amaranth greens in our CSA box recently and weren't quite sure what to do with them, but I read somewhere that you can use them as you would spinach. We stir-fried them up with the tofu and it worked pretty well, with the exception that everything adopted a somewhat pinkish hue. Still tasted good, though, especially topped with peanuts!


Asian noodles with tofu and amaranth greens

Recipe source: Winging it

This recipe came in one of America's Test Kitchen's periodicals, which contained dozens of recipes on pull-out rectangular cards.

Super easy. All I can say is you can't go wrong with asparagus and prosciutto!


Penne, asparagus, parmesan and prosciutto

Recipe source: America's Test Kitchen

This potato salad can definitely be a stand-alone dish. Hey, it does have meat in it! I'm not a huge fan of sausage, but the kielbasa was actually quite good. We used Swiss chard instead of kale (what's the difference?), and it was definitely a keeper.

Julia chopping bacon	Sautéing Swiss chard
Boiling potatoes	Boiling potatoes

Recipe source: Rachael Ray's 365 No Repeats: A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners

You'd think ziti wouldn't be difficult to find in any old grocery store, but you'd be wrong. We stopped at two different places and neither carried ziti. It boggles the mind. We substituted rigatoni for the ziti instead, since it has a similar size and shape, and everything turned out fine.

The Vietnamese kohlrabi salad was born out of a desire to find a use for a few bulbs of kohlrabi we had received in a previous CSA box. It was eye-wateringly spicy but extremely flavorful.

Skillet baked ziti rigatoni

Vietnamese kohlrabi salad

Recipe sources: America's Test Kitchen for the ziti, and Harmony Valley's newsletter Volume 16, Issue 9 for the salad

This pasta was awesome. The original recipe called for Swiss chard, but we had just received some red kale in our CSA box. They seem fairly interchangeable, so we opted for the kale. It also called for a pasta called cellantani, which we'd never heard of, much less could find, so we used campanelle (bellflowers). When served, the lemony ricotta is spooned first onto the bottom of the bowl. Then the pasta is added on top of it and you stir it all together in your bowl. Yum yum.

The baby white turnips were also from CSA, and we simply steamed them and their greens as a veggie side dish.

Sautéing red kale and bacon in chicken stock	Julia sautéing kale
Pasta with red kale, bacon and lemony ricotta cheese	Steamed white baby turnips and greens

Recipe sources: Harmony Valley's newsletter, Volume 17, Issue 10 for the turnips, and Rachael Ray's 365 No Repeats: A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners for the pasta

Rabarberkräm directly translates from the Swedish as rhubarb cream, but it's more like what we call rhubarb sauce in English. In Sweden, it's typically served in a bowl with cold milk poured over, but it's also great warmed as an ice cream topping.

The rhubarb we used came this week in our CSA box from Harmony Valley.

Slicing fresh rhubarb	Boiling the fresh sliced rhubarb
Boiling the fresh sliced rhubarb	Homemade rabarberkräm

Recipe source: The Swedish Rutiga Kokboken

Like the hon tsai tai from the previous dish, we wouldn't have been sure what to do with pea vine unless given a hint. Thankfully, the kind folks at Harmony Valley provided this delicious recipe in their newsletter.

Essentially, it consists of toasted English muffins topped with crumbled bacon, eggs cooked over-easy, a cream sauce and pea vine. Presentation was difficult on this one due to the inherent messiness of the components, but believe me -- it was tasty!


Open-faced breakfast sandwich topped with sautéed pea vine

Recipe source: Harmony Valley's newsletter, Volume 17, Issue 9

Jonas picked out this simple spinach salad recipe for dinner, and then we accompanied it with tortellini, which is one of our favorite, simple go-to meals. To make it seem slightly healthier, we added broccoli to the boiling tortellini.

Frying bacon for the salad	Wilted spinach salad with warm bacon dressing
Quartered boiled eggs to top the salad	Broccoli florets and tortellini cooking
Wilted spinach salad with warm bacon dressing, topped with boiled egg	Tortellini with broccoli, served with artisan bread

Recipe source: America's Test Kitchen