Striped Bass, Beans and Greens

This was a quick and easy weeknight meal.

Ron sauteed some purple spring onion from Greensgrow and added cannellini beans, salt, and pepper. I sauteed the kale (also from Greensgrow) in olive oil with garlic, salt, pepper, red pepper flake, and some red wine vinegar just until it was tender but still bright green. Ron seasoned the bass with olive oil, salt and pepper and threw it on the grill. I topped mine with a few cherry tomatoes from our tomato plant.

That's it! Quick, easy and super good for you.

Birthday Cake!

I'm always looking for a good reason to practice my baking because having giant cakes and whole batches of cookies in the house when it's just me and Ron can be dangerous! But special occasions like birthdays are the perfect excuse. When we got invited to a friends birthday BBQ this weekend I immediately volunteered to make a cake. I've been wanting to make this Pink Lady Cake since I saw it on Smitten Kitchen. I'm not a huge cake fan but this batter has a whole cup and a half of pureed strawberries in it - taking it from ordinary to perfectly summery. I even decorated it a little bit without making a gigantic mess!

Deb suggests adding some dye to make the cake pinker, I didn't mind the not-so-pink color because the strawberry flavor was so great. But if you're going for super pink, by all means add a few drops of food coloring.

The birthday girl really liked it and so did everyone else - this recipe is a keeper! Here are the remains:

Bring this cake to your next birthday party but be warned - this makes A LOT of batter. Like, cake batter spilling over the top of your mixer a lot. You might even curse a little bit and throw the parchment paper on the floor in a mini-fit. Not that I did that, but I just wanted to warn you that it's a definite possibility. I want to try adding a different fruit puree next time - maybe blueberries? Would that make it a Blue Lady Cake?

Froggy Chicken

We recently stumbled on a new way to make chicken on the grill. I think it's technical name is Leaping Frog Chicken but we've been calling it "Froggy Chicken" for short. We got the step by step instructions from Last Night's Dinner.

Ron used a chicken we had from our CSA share a few weeks ago to make this guy:

But...he didn't take a picture of the finished product. Oops. Believe me it looks like a frog - a delicious, evenly cooked, giant frog. Make your next grilled chicken a froggy chicken.

**UPDATE: Here's a picture of the finished product!

CSA week #4

This week was the best yet! Yum...corn season.

Basil - Greensgrow Farms and Spring Thyme Herbs, PA
Peaches - Fifer Orchards, Wyoming DE
Blueberries - Hasmmonton, NJ
Romaine Lettuce - Flaim Farms, Vineland, NJ
Cucumbers - Lancaster County, PA
Corn - Gaventa Farms, Logan Township, NJ
Red Scallions - Landisdale Farms, Jonestown, PA
Onion Rolls - South Philadelphia, PA
Cheese - Mozzarella Balls - South Philadelphia, PA
Dairy Option - 1 dozen Free-Range Eggs
Meat Shares - Angus Burgers - Buck Run Farm, Chester County, PA

Ron made blueberry ice cream, we had lots of cucumber salad and those peaches were so good in my morning yogurt.

We used the mozzarella and basil in this salad:

Eggplant dredged in egg then bread crumbs and baked for 40 minutes at 350 until it's crunchy (or...fry it!). Layer the eggplant with tomatoes and fresh mozzarella and sprinkle with balsamic and basil. We've made this twice recently - one time with the addition of grilled zucchini. It's a nice twist on the regular tomato mozzarella salad - not that there is anything wrong with a plain old tomato mozzarella salad!

A Very Belated 4th of July!

I've been neglecting my blog again. Sorry! I've been meaning to write about our 4th of July tailgate since, like, July 5th. Like last year, we had a huge tailgate party at the Phillies game with way too much food and plenty to drink.

There was the normal cast of characters - hot dogs, burgers, sausage, beans (made by Mike), potato salad and pasta salad. A few not so normal additions - bean dip and layered taco dip (made by MB), stromboli (from Gary), and rice krispy treat (by Katie).

I made peanut butter cookies and oatmeal, cherry, pecan, white chocolate cookies. I must say the oatmeal ones were a big hit - I used this recipe from Smitten Kitchen and used a cup of dried cherries, a cup of pecans and 12 oz of white chocolate chunks. These are a new favorite!

My friend Andrea made this Texas Sheet Cake. I've never heard of Texas Sheet Cake before this one but it was chocolaty, nutty, 3 sticks of buttery goodness. Yum.

Andrea also brought popcorn - it ended up being thrown by the handful at Bert! None of it really ended up in his mouth, it was really windy! Hmm...I wonder how all that popcorn ended up in my car?

Good times, good times.