We are back in the kitchen for the continuing mini pantry challenge! This week’s goal remains to reduce the stack of recipes to test and keep working on the soon-to-be-stale items in the pantry. After a month of basically maintaining my weight I am looking for some healthy options to try the next couple of weeks. Leave your suggestions in the comments, please! So, here were the new recipes:
Time stamp 00:00 Introduction
02:19 Bruschetta Grilled Chicken
07:01 Ricotta Gnocchi
10:41 Creamy Pesto Shrimp
14:02 Pork Chops
16:54 Recipe Recap
https://www.food.com/recipe/bruschetta-grilled-chicken-zoodle-bowl-532637
https://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/250500/pork-chops-with-creamy-mushroom-sauce/
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/geoffrey-zakarian/ricotta-gnocchi-2707052
https://www.eatingwell.com/creamy-pesto-shrimp-with-gnocchi-peas-8598661
Famished Farm is our little slice of 8a (new revised zone!) Heaven in Northwest Alabama. We are a tiny farm or a “farm-ish” as I like to say! Our goal this year is to simplify and minimize while keeping an eye to sustainability. We don’t have hundreds or thousands of acres like the farmers in my family tree. But we do have a love of making the best in any situation–which now means learning to grow in clay soil.
We hope to grow the garden bigger and greener every year. Join us for the journey and leave any suggestions, ideas or just say HI in the comments. I appreciate YOU,
Jackie
hi guys Jackie with famish farm and
we’re cooking again this week we’re
going through the recipe stash trying to
find healthy recipes that will help me
get down to my goal weight and support
someone with heart disease in the family
and somebody with diabetes so that’s
kind of our goals on our when we audit
new recipes when I go through look at
the ingredients that’s what we’re
looking for healthy so this week we have
four new recipes uh first up from
eatingwell.com pork chops with creamy
mushroom sauce from two new recipes cuz
I’m going to make ricotta noi uh for the
pesto shrimp with noi and peas one of
those recipes is from foodnetwork.com
the other one from eatingwell
again.com and finally our Bretta grilled
chicken zoodle bowl and I have some
leftover zoodles in the freezer so
that’s good to use them up that’s from
food.com and what else are we having
this week our favorite meatless Monday
recipe the spaghetti pie we made several
weeks ago um I’ve got that in the
freezer we’re having a a family favorite
that came from my sister a chicken
sandwich that’s grilled our family
favorite barbecues which you would know
as Sloppy Joe’s made with brown turkey
and then we’re just going to grill hot
dogs it’s it’s it’s hot here I’ve been
working out in the garden so it’s a
perfect time to you know pull out the
grill our Grill goes you know all year
round but Rod is uh he’s gearing up into
his grill
Meister um role this time of year when
I’m working a lot um he is not so I’ll
plan what to have for dinner and he’ll
throw it on the grill for me anyway
that’s our new recipes this week and I
hope you try some of these we’ll let you
know in the recipe recap which ones are
worth doing and we’ll try to have
everything Tim stamped so you can skip
right to the recipes you might be
looking for thanks for joining me thanks
for watching and we hope you’ll stick
around and leave a leave us a comment
thanks so
much first up we have the Bretta grilled
chicken zudo bowl found at
food.com and we are going to prepare a
marinade for the chicken in just in a
Ziploc bag this is a reused Ziploc bag I
have and I’m going to just peel these
garlic cloves and crush them and then
throw them in the bag with the chicken
and I have about a breast and a
half of chicken breast calls for two
chicken breasts one of them was really
humongous so I just did a small
part I think I thinly sliced the the big
one and then just took maybe a half of
another
one so we also are going to add some
olive oil and some
balsamic and they have the olive oil
divided between the marinade 2
tablespoons and then a 2 tspoons of
balsamic the rest of the olive oil we’re
going to use later and then we salt and
pepper
and this calls for fresh basil I still
don’t have basil in the garden so I’m
just going to mix that all up and put it
in the fridge I do end up throwing it in
the freezer later on though
because life happens so we had this a
couple days
later so then we’re going to prepare
what they’re calling
Bretta and which to me looks like a
tomato salsa and we’re going to take a
small I think I just used actually I
used two small cloves and mince them and
then we’re going to also use three Roma
tomatoes and just dice them up um dice
chop however you want to cut them up I
just use my trusty steak
knife and then add that to the bowl and
this is just a small
bowl for our
Bretta and once we’ve got that done
we’re going to add again 1/4 cup of
chopped red onion and I may have gone
just a little light on the Red Onion but
you do you if you like it you put a lot
in or whatever you like calls for fresh
basil I do not have fresh basil so I’ll
just use my dried basil and then some
olive oil
and some more
balsamic and mix that up and then we’re
going to let this kind of the flavors
marinate in the
refrigerator oh don’t forget to season a
little salt and pepper um I went very
light on the salt because of the
balsamic over on the stove top we’ve got
our pan heated up and we’re going to add
some olive oil and then I had a probably
a large zucchini already spiralized from
the other last week’s cooking and it
says to cook that for 3 to 5 minutes um
I did the 3 minute end of things because
the freezing angle took a lot of the
juice out of it I just drained that
moisture from the
zucchini and brod has grilled our
chicken so I’m just going to slice this
I probably if I did this again I would
probably go ahead and chop it not just
slice
it and we are not going to do bowls on
this we’re going to just serve this for
dinner over on the stove top the
zucchini is getting some color to it I’m
going to add back the chicken just to
warm it
through as I just said I’m not going to
do bowls but the recipe says divide the
zucchini noodles between the two bowls
and then place the chicken on top of
that and then spoon the Bretta over it
but we’ll just put it in serving bowls
and this is a wonderful summertime fresh
recipe pretty easy a little bit of
chopping but really all in all a pretty
quick recipe to come together and
delicious and
fresh our next recipe is a creamy pesto
shrimp with noi and peas and I’ve never
made noi and I happen to have a recipe
for a ricotta
noi and so I’ve got ricotta in the
fridge not enough but I’ve got cottage
cheese too so I decide to kind of make
it with what I’ve got and it’s a very
easy um recipe so I recommend it um this
made enough for about 24
oz so this recipe called for 12 oz of
noi so I froze the other
portion now you will see here I’m doing
half one cup cottage cheese one cup
Ricotta and then it calls for a half a
cup of Parmesan and I’m going to use
mainly parmesan but I’ve got a little
block of um siago cheese I’m trying to
use up so it’s really a combination of
two and then we’ve got a tablespoon and
a half of olive
oil then we’re going to add a teaspoon
of salt two eggs and whisk that
together and because I’m using cottage
cheese I decide to use my hand mixer to
kind of Whip or cream the cottage cheese
into the dough totally unnecessary I
would not do that again then we’re going
to add our cup and a/4 of allpurpose
flour just split it into three parts to
add it in and mix it between
each half cup or so that you add in and
then we are basically your dough is
ready to start
forming and the form that noi takes is
basically you’re going to take about a
quarter of the dough at a time and form
it in into a log or they call it a dowel
shape that’s about 5/8 of an inch thick
mine was probably closer to 3/4 of an
inch thick during most of this but
you’ll need to dust with a little bit of
flow they suggest using semolina um I
just don’t have semolina so I’m just
using allpurpose flow and then you’ll
cut them into little 5/8 in squares
roughly and you are going to repeat this
for all of your
dough which you’ll see me speed through
here now the noi recipe does call for a
Panetta tomato sauce and for actually
cooking the noi and boiling water we are
going to completely skip the boiling
water cooking stuff and making The
Panetta tomato sauce we are going to go
right into our pesto shrimp recipe but
first i’m going to separate out my 12 oz
of noi for the pesto shrimp recipe and
then the
other uh 12 oz roughly of the noi will
go into a freezer bag actually first I’m
going to I’m going to put it on a cookie
sheet I’m using my silicone mat just to
transfer it to a cookie sheet so each of
these little pillows can freeze
individually and after they’re frozen
solid I put them them into a freezer
bag so our next recipe then is the
creamy pesto shrimp with noi and peas
and that is an eatingwell.com
recipe and it calls for taking your noi
and in a hot pan with some olive oil
you’re basically going to pan fry them
until they’re golden brown and plumped
up and it does say that it will take 8
to 10 minutes and that is probably a
very accurate time so this is a little
for me a little tedious um I’ve not
cooked with noi this way before I
usually just throw a bag from the
freezer into a pot of chili but um you
do want to flip these over so all the
sides get nicely browned they do brown
up beautifully it’s just it’s kind of
tedious like I said it makes me want to
be able to use the pan and flip them up
in the air like you see on Food Network
but I don’t have that capability so I’m
just individually turning these over in
the pan one by one plan like I said
about 10
minutes this recipe is build as a speedy
recipe that they claim in 20 minutes you
can have dinner which if you’re using um
already prepared refrigerated noi easily
um the shrimp Cooks quickly this is the
most timec consuming part of the recipe
is Browning these noi so once we’re done
with this Browning phase we are just
going to move the noi the cooked noi
onto a plate and keep them
warm now I almost mess up here um but I
recover I’m just getting the peas ready
for the next Next Step but our first
step is going to be to take our thaw
shrimp and heat those cook those and
because I’m making this for another
night I’m only going to cook these till
they’re about half done so it they
shrimp cooks very quickly though so in a
couple minutes your shrimp are going to
be done perfectly then we’re going to
add our peas and cook them just for
about a minute you just want them to
have that nice dark green color
and then we are going to add back in our
noi stir that up and then we will once
we stirred add in A3 of a cup of half
and half and some
pepper you once you’ve got those
ingredients in it just calls for cooking
that for a couple minutes to slightly
thicken but you’re just basically
heating everything through
and before adding the pesto it does say
to remove it from the Heat and it calls
for a/4 cup of basil pesto
I probably used about that I think it
could have been slightly less so start
with two tablespoons and go higher if
you need to it could just be that my
basil was really strong last year so I
don’t know but it was good like I said
this is another
great summertime dish um and it is very
quick and our final recipe pork chops
with creamy mushroom sauce and it starts
with um calls for four pork chops I use
two and these are bone in very thick
they’re probably closer to an inch thick
the recipe calls for half an inch to 3/4
of an inch um use what you’ve got now I
am
modifying this recipe somewhat so I’m
salt salting and peppering which is
basically what the recipe calls for but
they want you to
cook the pork chops completely in this
step and because I’m doing this earlier
in the day I’m going to eat these later
tonight I am just going to sear the pork
chops so the cooking time they say five
to seven minutes per side
um it’s more like I’m cooking them I
think I did about 6 minutes 7 minutes
for both sides so 3 and 1/2 minutes
roughly on both sides and then once
you’re cooked through if you’re
following the recipe just set those on a
pan and keep them warm that was what the
foil was for and then we’re going to add
in our mushrooms with a um tablespoon of
oil and it calls for shallots um I
that’s green onions that I’m adding I’ve
got those in the freezer so I’m just
adding those because I don’t have
shallots and you’re just going to cook
these until the mushrooms are browned
about 2 to 4 minutes and then you’re
going to add a half a cup of dry white
wine little bit of
salt and then you’re going to just stir
up the font on the bottom of the pan and
cook this until the liquid’s almost all
evaporated takes from 1 to 3 minutes and
then add in your half and
half and whatever fresh herbs you have
and of course I don’t have any fresh
herbs so I’m just going to use some
dried parsley which is fresh from my
garden last year and then add back in
your pork chops and
serve now what I did is I put the I
turned my oven on at 350
and covered the skillet my cast iron
with foil and put those into that 350
oven and then I turned the oven down to
300 for
probably I don’t know an hour something
like that and then I just kept it on
warm for the rest of the afternoon and
these were deliciously tender
this Bretta grilled chicken zudo bowl
from
food.com was a great spring summer pick
it’s very healthy um really the only
thing that I would change is probably to
add a little bit more salt in the
marinade uh the chicken was slightly
under
seasoned and that’s just my mistake um I
always cut the salt way back because of
Rod’s heart condition but this was so
good
um other than that I wouldn’t change a
thing it’s nice that it can be grilled
so that keeps the heat out of the
kitchen and two thumbs up for
this I picked a noi
recipe because I’ve never made it and I
knew I had some ricotta in the fridge
that I wanted to use up and this just
just looked like a really good recipe so
I was impressed easy to make delicious
I’ll make it
again this 20 minute creamy pesto shrimp
with noi and peas was really fast
and would have been even faster for me
if I had not made the noi from scratch
but I just wanted to do it so there you
go um what would I change the recipe as
written was very good I would probably
cut the pesto in half uh from a/4 cup to
a couple tablespoons and try that uh
before adding the other two
tablespoons two thumbs up was
delicious this pork chops with creamy
mushroom sauce really really hit the
spot we hadn’t had pork chops for quite
a while I will tell you that our really
thick inch thick pork chops W one of
them them was enough to feed both of us
so we’ve got one in the freezer for a
leftover night now as written this
recipe was very good although I did not
use shallots because I don’t have them
and I didn’t have fresh herbs so I just
used some dried parsley at the end to
finish um we love wine and mushroom
sauces the little bit of cream in it was
just put it over the top highly highly
recommend um the main change I made was
not cooking the pork chops um in the
pan and instead finishing them in the
oven and that was a really good
technique if you can’t sit and babysit
something um throw it in the oven cover
it throw it in the oven turn the heat on
low uh turn it turn the heat off and
just warm it and that worked out
perfectly delicious