Peanut-y noodles

I'm so far behind on posting recipes here.

I've been doing a lot of cooking lately, much of it with my fresh veggies from the CSA farm.

This dish was my first time using bok choy. It was adapted from a recipe included in our weekly farm newsletter. The recipe was for a cold noodle salad, but I used it to make a hot pad Thai-type dish.


THAI PEANUT NOODLES WITH BOK CHOY
8 oz Pad Thai noodles
1 head/bunch of bok choy
1 bell pepper, thinly sliced
2 medium carrots chopped
4-5 green onions sliced
1/2 cup chopped cashews
For the sauce:
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 lime, juiced and zested
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon seasoned rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoon soy sauce
3 tablespoons honey or molasses
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1/2 cup roughly chopped cilantro (stems and all)
2-3 teaspoons curry powder
2-4 T water

Soak noodles as directed on the package.

In the meantime, chop up the veggies and make the sauce.

For the sauce: Put the ingredients in the blender and blend, or, just mix by hand. (Use warm water to help soften the peanut butter.)

In a large wok, stir fry the bok choy. Add the other vegetables. When the noodles are done soaking, add them to the wok. Pour the sauce into the mix and stir fry everything until the noodles are soft.

The veggies have arrived

On Friday, I picked up my second batch of farm-fresh vegetables.

This summer I signed up for a CSA share from a near-by farm. If you're not familiar with Community Supported Agriculture, the basics of it are people buy shares of a farm and then throughout the growing season receive vegetables as they come in to season.

Our first two shipments of vegetables have been mostly salad greens with some kale and chard. Last week I ate all my veggies as fresh salads, and I'll likely do the same this week.

A while back I decided to quit buying salad dressing. Basically, I was in the store, reading the ingredients on a bottle, checking for gluten, and decided store-bought dressing has way too  many ingredients in it to be healthy, plus it's expensive. I'd rather just drizzle a little oil and vinegar on my salad.

Recently though, I've started experimenting with making my own salad dressing. This week's newsletter from the farm included this salad dressing recipe, which I can promise is delicious.

DILL DRESSING

3/4 cup plain yogurt
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tsp paprika
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
1 bunch dill, chopped

Mix all ingredients together. Enjoy on salad or as a dip.

The dressing recipe came with this salad recipe, which I haven't tried yet, but look forward to:

GREEK GREENS SALAD

1 large head or bag of lettuce
1 can black olives, halved
1/2 to 1cup crumbled feta cheese
1 cup shredded kale
1 cup shredded chard
3-5 green onions, chopped (or a 1/2 a red onion thinly sliced)
1 can or 2 cups cooked garbanzo beans and/or
2-3 chicken breasts, marinated with Greek marinade, grilled, then sliced and placed on top of salad (optional)