Beets. A delicious vegetable, but they turn EVERYTHING red. Including whatever other ingredients are mixed in with them. Unless, the other ingredient is green.
I used my go to stir fry recipe for this; with chicken, broccoli, beets, and carrots. Looks pretty festive, doesn’t it?
What a week! It was busy, full of ups and downs, but, in the end, overall positive. The best news is that I was accepted into an online Doctor of Nursing Practice program!
In all the craziness, we also had our first frost on Friday night. The red bell peppers in my garden mostly didn’t ripen, but green peppers are good, too. I spent most of Saturday afternoon prepping vegetables-the last of the peppers from the garden, plus everything I got in our CSA box on Friday. We picked all the ripe tomatoes, and I’m covering the plants in the hopes of getting a few more to ripen. Amazingly, the squash plants that I thought were done have started producing again, so maybe we will get a few more decent sized ones. The weather is supposed to warm up again.
I was so excited to see that the farm left the tops on our beets this week. (Usually, they cut them off and use them for their juicing box.) I immediately decided to make a stir fry. I found a Thai Basil stir fry sauce in the Oriental foods section at the grocery store, and it gave this an amazing flavor! My husband says this is “a keeper.”
Snap peas and snow peas are my favorite stir fry vegetables. I wish we could grow them all summer, but the hot weather limits us to just a few weeks of fresh peas.
This stir fry is fresh and crisp, with just a little heat. I had never considered using balsamic vinegar in Oriental cooking, until I saw this recipe from Taste of Home. The combination of the vinegar and the crushed red pepper flakes is really good!
Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in wok or skillet. Stir fry chicken in oil until cooked through, about 5 minutes. Remove from pan.
Add remaining tablespoon olive oil. Add snap peas, carrots, onion, and garlic. Stir fry until tender crisp, about 5 minutes.
Add chicken back into pan.
Combine vinegar, soy, ginger, red pepper flakes, and sesame oil. Pour over all. Stir fry for another 2 minutes, until everything is coated and heated through.
I had a taste for a broccoli stir fry this week. I am always on the look out for a new stir fry sauce. The one I used for this recipe is a combination of several recipes I saw while doing research.
The great thing about a stir fry is that you can use a lot of different combinations of meat and vegetables with the same sauce, and it tastes different every time!
Combine ¼ cup each rice vinegar and soy sauce with orange juice in a 1 gallon zip lock bag. Add garlic and pork. Marinate in refrigerator for 6-8 hours.
Drain pork. Heat vegetable oil in wok or large skillet. Stir fry pork. Add onion when pork is about half cooked, and broccoli when pork is nearly done.
While pork is cooking, combine remaining rice vinegar, remaining soy sauce, chili-garlic sauce, and sesame oil. Pour over stir fry when pork is cooked through. Continue to stir fry for a minute or two, until everything is heated through. Serve over rice.
One of my favorite Christmas gifts this year was a new programmable crock pot. No more overcooking dinner when it cooks all day! I’ve been trying all kinds of different recipes while I’ve been off work, just to see how it performs. (So far, so good.) I was looking for something to do with all those oranges in this week’s box, and thought an orange chicken dish would be good. This Food.com recipe for Orange Stir Fry Sauce sounded really good. I added a little ginger to spice it up a bit.
2 tablespoons chili garlic sauce (found in the Oriental foods section)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
½ teaspoon ground ginger
1 pound chicken breasts
2 cups broccoli florets
2 medium carrots, thinly sliced
1 bell pepper, sliced
½ cup chopped onion
2 cups cooked rice
Instructions
Combine orange juice and zest, chili garlic sauce, soy sauce, and ginger. Place chicken in crock pot, pour sauce over. Cook in crock pot on low for 6 hours.
Shred chicken, return to pot. Add vegetables, stir to combine. Turn crock up to high and cook for 30-60 minutes, until vegetables are tender.