Chicken and Eggplant Parmigiana Sandwich

We've had some lovely late summer vegetables in our CSA boxes lately - sweet peppers (finally!), eggplants and squash (more on this later). We've also harvested the last of our tomatoes and what hasn't been frozen has been made into some delicious tomato sauce-based pasta dinners. So last night I decided to use some of our leftover pasta sauce and some deep fried goodness to make parmigiana sandwiches.

Our sandwiches consisted of eggplant parmigiana, chicken parmigiana, mozzarella, roasted peppers and homemade marinara.... plus some La Bomba sauce for a hot and delicious kick.

Butter Dipped Radishes

Saw this trick a while back on Bon Appetit and thought that I would try it since we get a decent amount of radishes with our farmshare. It's basically a spin on radishes with butter and salt. The radishes are dipped into tempered, salted butter and then left to harden - almost as if they were chocolate dipped.

From Scratch: Green Curry Chicken

So I have a lot of thai basil in the garden right now and it's just perfect for making green curry paste. But what to do with the paste? Here's the obvious solution: green curry chicken.

From Scratch: Green Curry Paste

One thing I always grow in my gardens is basil. It's easy to grow, so much better when it's fresh and a real cost-saver considering that you pay $3 or more for a small bunch at the store. This year I was lucky enough to find organic sweet basil and thai basil seeds, so I have a lot of both growing in the garden... Just ask anyone I know if I've been in the business of dealing zip-top baggies of herbs at every recent girls' night-out.

Future Kings and Queens... Update

My tenuous hold on my queendom has further eroded. The reluctant acceptance of my claim to the crown has been rescinded and the knight charged with my safe-keeping refuses to recognize my royal lineage.

Eldest son, E: "Baba, on October it's going to be Halloween and I'm going to be a knight and [little brother] is going to be a prince and [baby sister] is going to be a princess and you're going to be the king and mommy is going to be a pumpkin."

Me (flabbergasted): "A pumpkin!?! Why do I have to be a pumpkin?!?"

Hubby: "Yeah, why is mommy a pumpkin? Why can't she be the queen?"

E: "Oh... Well... then she can be a ladybug."

Me: "A ladybug? Where do you get these ideas?"

E (explaining slowly as if to a small child): "I'm... the... knight... Baba... is... the... king... And... you... can... be... a... ladybug."

Royal family history - A summary of ascension and overthrow

1. Meteoric rise from "nothing" to "ahh.. ok... queen"
2. Fall from grace to "pumpkin"
3. Slight redemption to "ladybug"

Future Kings and Queens...

Continuing in the Medieval and fantasy theme that has intrigued boys of all ages for all time, I've been tasked by my eldest to make him into a knight ("don't forget the sword, mommy!"). His little brother will be a prince ("because the prince and the knight protect the King") and our baby girl will be a princess ("because she looks like a princess, mommy").

Last year's dragon costume.

I've already decided that both boys will have more or less the same costume. They'll just have different accessories to complete the look because the last thing we need on Halloween is "But I want to be a knight like 哥 哥 [big brother]!"

When I asked what Baba and mommy should be, he replied, "Baba is the King because he's the biggest."

"What about mommy? What am I going to be?"

"Umm, nothing."

So hubby asked, "If I'm the King, shouldn't mommy be the Queen?"

Boy, reluctantly with a groan, "Ugghh... okay. Mommy can be a queen."

I guess the monarchy doesn't usually permit the peasantry, royal seamstresses included, into its ranks :P

Beet Rainbow Slaw

Success!!! I found the key to beet love... okay, maybe not love, but at least it's beet like.

Hubby thought beets were pretty good in this raw shredded slaw. I had long suspected that it was probably a bad batch of canned or processed beets in the past that had him so turned off beets. So I figured that raw beets would be my next attempt at changing his mind.

Strawberry Blackberry Yogurt Pops

Oh man, I thought I would be able to finish some posts up before we went on vacation and schedule them to publish automatically while we were gone. Boy was I wrong! As usual, 10pm the night before we planned to leave at four in the morning, I was still awake and packing up food and clothing... sigh. 

Anyway, we're back now and after a brief absence, the posts begin again with this mouth-watering pic...

Okay, stop thinking about how cool it would be to have Wolverine claws and start thinking about how cool and refreshing these yogurt pops were after taking a long, hot walk last Saturday.