what to do with all of that summer produce

Having grown up in Maine, I get super excited when the peak of summer hits and farm stands pop up all over the place.  There's nothing better than fresh produce.  The only problem is: what do you do with it all?

Dan and I have been trying out some different recipes, in addition to the obvious salad.  There's something about a colorful salad that just makes it so much more appealing.  I really do feel bad for people who think that salad is just lettuce.  They have no idea what they're missing out on:

Don't you just wish you were eating those salads right now?  Yeah, you know you do.  And there's not even salad dressing on them yet.  It's amazing what a little color can do.  Next up: summer squash.  We had had enough of sauteed summer squash, so we made a casserole.  I was in the mood for mac and cheese and found a recipe for Cheesy Squash Casserole on foodnetwork.com from Paula Deen's Uncle Bubba.  I'm pretty sure if you want something cheesy and slightly unhealthy, Uncle Bubba, whoever he is, probably has a gosh darn good recipe for it. We altered it a little to jazz it up, but all in all it was pretty good.

Cheesy Summer Squash Casserole - Adapted from Uncle Bubba's Recipe

2 tbs butter (divided)

2 cloves garlic, minced

3 large summer squash, thinly sliced

1/2 vidalia onion, diced

cayenne pepper, black pepper, salt to taste

1/2 cup grated parmesean

1 cup grated sharp cheddar 

1/2 cup sour cream

1 sleeve crackers, crushed (preferably ritz, although i think crutons or other yummy flavored crackers would be delicious...none of that healthy wasa stuff though.)

Preheat the oven to 350. Grease a 2 qt casserole pan (if you use butter to grease it you might need more than 2 tbs).   Sautee the squash, garlic, onion in 1 tbs butter in a frying pan. Season with salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper if you like a kick. 

When the squash is relatively soft/the onions are translucent, move to a mixing bowl and combine with the cheeses and sour cream.  Pour this into your greased 2 qt casserole dish.  

Sprinkle the crackers on top. If using Ritz, or a relatively dry cracker, add a tbs of melted butter to the top too, so the crackers don't taste like cardboard. 

Bake for about 20 minutes. 

This is the only "after" picture we have of the squash casserole.  For all my hyping up the color of fresh produce, this certainly isn't a very colorful plate.  Oh well.  You win some, you lose some.  We had the squash casserole with chicken breasts stuffed with goat cheese and basil.  This was a Barefoot Contessa Recipe.  Ours was kind of dry.  Her recipe actually calls for chicken breast with the skin on...that would have helped ours retain some of its moisture in the oven.  Oh well, again.

Next up is a Raspberry Brown Sugar Gratin from Smitten Kitchen.  We had an abundance of blackberries, so that's what we used.  Deb really talked up this recipe on her blog, but I didn't think it was as good as she said.  I may have made my layers of berries and cream too thick, so they couldn't heat through enough.  It's really easy to make, so it might be worth trying again with a thinner layer.

Basically, to make this, you combine equal parts berries with either sour cream or greek yogurt (I did one of each to see which I liked better...and I liked them both the same, just depends on what kind of a mood you're in).  You spread that in the bottom of a baking dish.  Then you sprinkle an even (as even as you can get it) layer of dark brown sugar over the top.  Stick it under the broiler until the sugar starts to caramelize.

And finally, we have some purple green beans.  I had never seen these before, but my mom brought us two pounds of them last weekend.  She said that when they are cooked, they turn green.  I really love their purple color, so I've been trying to eat them raw.  But curiosity got the best of me and I decided to cook them to see if their color would, in fact, change.

To cook them, I first cooked 3 slices of bacon in a frying pan.  Once the bacon was on the crispy side, I removed it, added half a vidalia onion and however many beans I trimmed before getting bored. When those were cooked, I added the bacon (now crumbled) back into the dish.

They were really good! In the picture above, you can see them changing color from purple to green.  Dan said he likes them better cooked than raw.  I really can't understand why he would feel that way...I mean, it's not like cooking something in bacon fat makes it absurdly delicious or anything...

Anyway, that's what we've been doing with our produce as of late.  Get ready for more produce posts, because our garden is on the verge of having a tomato explosion!