Food education & shaved zucchini

For as much as we whine (or is it wine? both.) to each other about having to cook dinner when all we really want is to be lazy and throw a frozen pizza in the oven, we make good food. None of it is complicated and none of it resembles the canned veggies, iceberg lettuce, boiled corn, margarine, and baked chicken I was raised on (sorry, Mom!). 

First off, no veggies come from store bought cans except artichoke hearts, chickpeas, and stewed tomatoes. Our corn is always done on the grill with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper (quarter turns every 5 minutes, if you're wondering!). There is only real butter in the fridge and it gets used one or twice a year when I decide to bake something dessert-y. We rarely bake anything. It's steamed, grilled, sauteed, or seared. We haven't followed a recipe, except maybe the first time or two we made something new like chili, shepherd's pie, or curried noodles. Our general method is find a protein: fish, ground turkey, chicken, chicken sausage, shrimp, or on occasion, steak, grab whatever veggies are on hand, and a carb like pearl couscous, basmati rice, pasta, or quinoa and combine it via one or more of the previously stated cooking methods.

It's a challenge to eat this many vegetables in a week. Most of the time we don't succeed.

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Through this amazing bag of produce Matt brings home every week (it's a work perk), we've eaten things we've never tried (some I can't remember what they were) and learned a handful of new veggies. I had no idea what a beat look like fresh-picked or that there was such a thing as a lemon cucumber. Clearly, I need some educating... Portland is a good venue for that. Which reminds me- we have 3 types of squash on the counter and I need to post a picture so I can be flooded with the identities of and recipes for them. I did discover that I love zucchini grilled (it's the only method we've used). This is not a huge surprise because I love yellow squash (mostly, it's nostalgia for my grandparent's farm days), but what did catch me off guard is how much more I like it than squash. 

The first mysterious item in the bag until 20+ Facebook comments later
I learned "It's a beet, silly!" I have yet to try all the suggested ways to eat
them, but they are really delicious!

We ate a bunch of salads the first half of summer when the weekly CSA bag of produce was 50% a half a dozen types of leafy greens.  We didn't have any of that on hand, so when Rebekah, author of PDXfoodlove, posted a link on Facebook about experimenting with zucchini in shaved thin layers for a salad base I had to give it a try tonight. Armed with the potato peeler and a giant zucchini we traded for homebrew I got to work. I was a bit nervous about what it would taste like raw, but I loved that too! Patiently I shaved an entire serving bowl's worth of zucchini and added chopped pepper and tomatoes. Boom. Delicious! We both agreed we like this salad version much better than lettuce varieties. 

The picture below is from PDXfoodlove. I love photography, but photographing food has never been in my skill set. Go check out the post that inspired me here!