Today feels more like October than the end of August! Although I love this weather – it always reminds me of field hockey season when it gets chilly outside! Sadly, no one plays anywhere near where I live so I only see random games on t.v. every once in a while!
I used the last of our steak last night and made steak breakfast sammies for me and Tony.
Then Tony and I made our last trip to the CSA farm. We both agreed we would much rather hit up our local farmers market – that way we get what we want and in the amounts we want. Seriously, the last three weeks we were limited to just 2 ears of corn! Really?? So in 8 weeks of CSA I got 6 ears of corn, maybe a pound of broccoli, 2 pounds of zucchini and probably 6 pounds of tomatoes and a bunch of little stuff. I will miss the sweet dog who greeted us every week!
I was not kidding when I said we had a garden growing in our gutters! And we just cleaned these out about a month ago! I was brave and got on the roof for the clean up. Sadly I threw our hose down on the drive from the roof and the nozzle shattered to pieces! Oops! And the funny thing is that I kill almost every plant that comes in my house – instead of a green thumb I have a black thumb!
I didn’t realize Tony was taking pics!
After the roof cleaning and lunch, Hannah and I went to the store to pick up the last needed things for my SIL birthday party at our house tomorrow.
The Menu!
- Chicago style bbq ribs
- Baked potato bar with sour cream, bacon bits, chopped green onion and whipped butter
- Fresh corn and black bean salad
- Garlic green beans
- Insalata Caprese (fresh mozzarella with CSA tomatoes and basil)
Dessert: Spiced Carrot Cake with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting
My mouth just watered when I typed that – this is definitely NOT a low cal dessert, it calls for 1 1/2 cups of vegetable oil – but damn, its really good!
For appetizers I decided to tie in the BSI challenge this week to include figs. This weeks hostess is Elizabeth from Guilty Kitchen. I was too scared to even attempt to do anything with fresh figs. I think the only fig I’ve had before today was a Fig Newton! I bought a package of dried figs – only $2.79 for this ring!
I cut the stem off and opened it up. Looks like the inside of a Fig Newton! 😀
I chopped up 6 figs and then added 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon of olive oil and salt and pepper. I let it sit to kind of rehydrate the dried fig.
Next I added goat cheese – by far my favorite cheese out there! This one is a garlic herb blend.
Then I placed a slice of prosciutto de parma on my board, and added about a teaspoon of the goat cheese mixture then wrapped it up like a purse.
I have green onions for our baked potato bar tomorrow, and thought to blanch some of the stems to wrap up my cute little packages!
All wrapped up! I love the combination of the sour creaminess of the goat cheese with the salt from the prosciutto and slight sweet from the fig.
And then I hit “focus” on my photo editing software (Picasa) and it only colored in the green onion. I thought it looked cool!
Dinner was simple – I had ground beef I needed to use up and Hannah felt like pasta – so pasta and meatballs it is! The secret to a great meatball is to get a good crust on the outside, then let it simmer in the pasta sauce until cooked through.
Italian Meatballs
- 1 pound ground chuck
- 1/2 cup Italian style bread crumbs
- 2 teaspoons minced garlic
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
- salt and pepper
I pan fry my in a combination of Pam, 1 teaspoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon of butter. This mix makes 8 big balls (that’s what she said!) and 8 meatballs a little bit bigger than marble size.
Let them set before moving them around, otherwise they fall apart. Keep turning until all sides have a crispy crust.
This sauce is one I made last week – it has an orange hint to it because I made the sauce from both red and yellow tomatoes. Just let the meatballs cook while the pasta cooks – it only takes about 20 minutes for these size meatballs to continue cooking in the sauce.
My plate – 3 meatballs, sauce, 1/2 ounce mozzarella cheese and a cup of pasta. I did kick my plate up with crushed red pepper flakes though! 😀
Hope everyone had a great Saturday! I think Tony is going to watch some fights on t.v. so Hannah and I will probably rent The Soloist – never saw it when it came out in the theater! See you tomorrow!
yummmmm.. meatballs!! i love italian meatballs!
um, whats up with the CSA? bad crops this year?? good thing you went to the farmers market..
Your CSA doesn’t sound that good! 🙁 I was too late for ours this year, but I’m still on the email list and they’ve been getting TONS of stuff. They were limited on the corn, too – but the rest of the items sounded so great.
I bought fresh figs, but only found them last night, so too late for the BSI. haha I’ll just eat them 🙂