• This Pistachio Asparagus Pesto on Linguine from Serious Eats uses spinach and asparagus instead of basil and pistachios instead of pine nuts. And I can’t wait for asparagus season to start so I can make it.
• I saw blood oranges at the coop last week, and wanted something to make with them. This Warm Rice Salad with Chard, Feta, Walnuts and Blood Orange from Yummy Supper might just fit the bill.
• I see signs of a chard phase on the horizon, because this Peppery Whole Wheat Pasta with Wilted Chard from the Kitchn also sounded delicious to me. And it’s a good excuse to try a new soft creamy cheese to incorporate into the sauce.
• I am totally making this Kale, Carrot and Walnut salad from Vampire Gran once we start seeing more kale.
• We get lots of celeriac from our CSA, and I use it almost all winter in lieu of celery with onions and carrots as the foundation for recipes starring other ingredients. But I look forward to making the humble, cthulu-looking celeraic the star of the show, as in this Celery Root Remoulade from David Leibovitz.
• These Garlic and Sun Dried Tomato Corn Muffins from Eat, Drink, Pretty look like a great side to the zucchini-riffic soup I’ll start making once we start getting a majillion zucchini from our CSA in a few months.

I also enjoy daydreaming about making my own dairy-based, especially after reading Milk. The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages by Ann Mendelson last year. That is the only book that has ever made me miss my bus stop on the way home, and it doesn’t really even have what you could call a plot.This book, and the fact that Minneapolis doesn’t recycle yogurt containers, inspired us (mostly Ian) to start making our own yogurt. The other good thing about library books is that they can only inspire modest heights of insanity with new dairy-based hobbies, because they have to go back to the library before things can get too crazy. Usually, the crazy wears off before I spend money on a book.

Anyway, I was interested to try making the ricotta recipe that is a key part of a larger Capellini with Fresh Ricotta meal idea, also from Serious Eats. A meal idea which I rounded out with caesar dressing, making for a yummy dinner and a Serious Eats grand slam. Weird.

The caesar dressing was more to my taste than my previous attempt, using smitten kitchen’s recipe. I think the key was the anchovies, which surprises me because I don’t think of myself as someone who likes anchovies, but apparently they are the secret to success. And I only used them because they were left over from making Bitty’s pasta puttanesca last week. So, anchovies=key.

It was a pretty fun science experiment to make ricotta (okay, “ricotta”) in the microwave. It really is amazingly easy. And I used the whey to make a smoothy the next day, so no wasted whey. Although I think it would be hard to use up the whey if I made vast quantities of this.

It was also novel to eat non-whole wheat pasta, since either they don’t make whole wheat capellini, or Ian chose not to buy the whole wheat stuff. Either way, the combination of white pasta and a basic sauce, and the super fresh cheese, made for a brightly flavored dinner that came together pretty quickly and easily. This also strikes me as the kind of meal that would work really well for a family with kids who are picky eaters. Not that I’d know from that, since we are a family with dogs who are notoriously unpicky eaters.

After googling my options, I settled on the Pioneer Woman’s recipe as a solid basis from a trusted source. Seriously, go check it out, because the recipe is good, and the pictures are awesome.

Side Note: I seriously think people may devote too much creativity to coming up with mac & cheese variations. I can understand wanting a roux/no roux option (although, really, if you can whisk, you can make a roux), but I found an overwhelming jungle of options, even when I narrowed it down to trusted sources.

My variation included whole wheat pasta (some people don’t like whole wheat pasta, but I really really do) and about a million cheeses. Okay, really, probably 6; the co-op has baskets with smaller pieces of whatever kinds of cheeses they’ve been cutting lately, so I got several different kinds (two cheddars, a gruyere, and a raw milk monterey jack) and added some bits I had at the house (parmesan, mozzarella).

It was so delicious I had to put it away to prevent myself from eating way, way too much. Yummy dinner, yummy leftovers. This is what I live for.

Macaroni and Cheese: A+

In an attempt to balance things out, and also because we got a ton of broccoli from our farm share this week, I tried a recipe I’d heard great things about: Ina Garten’s Parmesan-Roasted Broccoli. I stuck pretty close to the recipe on this one, and man, it is tasty. So tasty that Ian, who does not love broccoli as I do, said it was really good. Which gives me like two broccoli recipes that Ian likes. It’s a start!

Parmesan Roasted Broccoli: A

Side Note 2: Ina Garten may be old news to some, but she only came into my life earlier this spring, when I was flipping through the channels and came upon her making her Spring Green Risotto, which first hypnotized me then compelled me to cook it within the week. I can say with a straight face that this recipe changed my life, since it introduced me to mascarpone, which I had a brief but delicious affair with this spring. But it’s also a great recipe for the first vegetables of the summer. Delicious.

To help me get my game face on, I made this Sesame noodle, Green Bean and Carrot Salad from Epicurious. With a few revisions.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Spicy-Sesame-Noodle-Green-Bean-and-Carrot-Salad-5472

Revisions: I added tofu for protein. My go-to tofu preparation, as someone who is convinced that I don’t need to eat meat constantly, but also as someone who is not completely convinced about tofu, is to cut extra firm tofu into quarter-inch cubes and fry it in a hot, enameled cast iron skillet with a bit of oil (in this case, canola and a bit of sesame oil) and some Sriracha, which adds flavor and seems to make things caramelize a bit better than leaving it out.

I also used a bunch more green beans, because I had a crap ton from our farm day at our CSA farm (Spring Hill Community Farm; they are awesome) and wanted to use them up before they went bad. And I threw in some Sriracha, not solely because I am obsessed, but also because my pantry was shy a hot pepper or two.

The big surprise with this recipe was just how orangey the orange zest made it. Although this won’t make it into the rotation like Roasted Potatoes and Green Beans with Feta, overall, this recipe did what I asked it to: provided good nutrition to counteract the next day’s State Fair gluttony, while tasting pretty good. A solid B.