Shaved Fennel Salad

Being an adult can be pretty awesome.  You can buy fancy beer, even though I sometimes still blush when they card me. I really should stop doing that, I've been "of age" for a while now.

You can eat pints of blueberries and bunches of carrots from farmers markets and call it lunch. No one is judging.

You can fly your best friend (since the age of 11!) up from Texas just to make her go on a hike with you. No, we did other stuff but really, who are we kidding…

A few days later you can hike up the side of a mountain and stay up late.  Did I mention I did this all in the past few days? No? Yeah, sometimes being an adult is cool.  These are some of the major pros.

Other times, I eat popcorn sans pants and call it dinner when I don't have much time on my hands. Don't judge me.  When you're an adult you'll see all things are possible.  This salad? One of the awesome parts of being an adult. One week I got a surplus of vegetables I don't usually cook with in my CSA box. I had eaten fennel before but had yet to cook with it. Adult arugula? POUNDS of zucchini? Good thing a few days before I finally purchased Heidi Swanson's "Super Natural Everyday."

Anyone who is even slightly acquainted with me knows that I have a slight addiction to cookbooks.  Some I rarely use and others that every page is splattered in stains. Already this one belongs in the latter category. As the name of the book implies, all of the recipes are as natural as possible and relatively free of "additives" (sugars, refined grains, etc).

Moral of the blog post: this salad is easy to put together, you can make it ahead and everyone will think you're a super fancy adult.

Spanakopita (Greek Spinach Pie)

Happy Halloween!  It would be more appropriate to post a recipe that had pumpkin as an ingredient or was somehow shaped to look like a ghost.  But this spanakopita recipe is good enough to make up for the lack of a holiday theme.  When I first started using this recipe (about 3 years ago), I compiled a few aspects of different spanakopita recipes for this one.

Spanakopita

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 large onions, chopped
• 2 (10 ounce) packages frozen chopped spinach - thawed, drained and squeezed dry
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 (4 ounce) packages feta cheese, crumbled
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 1/2 (16 ounce) packages phyllo dough
• Olive Oil
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Directions:

1. Heat vegetable oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Slowly cook and stir onions until softened. Mix in spinach, dill and flour. Cook approximately 10 minutes, or until most of the moisture has been absorbed. Remove from heat. Mix in feta cheese, eggs, salt and pepper.
2. Lay 1 sheet of phyllo dough in prepared baking pan, and brush lightly with olive oil. Lay another sheet of phyllo dough on top, brush with olive oil, and repeat process with 10 more sheets of phyllo. The sheets will overlap the pan. 
3. Spread spinach and cheese mixture into pan and fold overhanging dough over filling. Brush with oil, then layer remaining sheets of phyllo dough, brushing each with oil. Tuck overhanging dough into pan to seal filling.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes, until golden brown. Cut into squares and serve while hot.

Cucumber and Feta Salad (and too much of it)

First and foremost - sorry for the photo quality. I usually don't have to do food photos shoots at about 9 at night - so I had to shoot inside with my tripod. Second, the pictures should be able to capture the disturbing amount of cucumber and feta salad I had to make. I think the easiest way to explain why I ended up with so many cucumbers (resulting in so much cucumber/feta salad) is to say it was the farmers fault. Well, that's not entirely true and I shouldn't totally blame the farmer. I was at the farmers market on Saturday where I purchased a copious amount of fruit and veggies. One very kind farmer was even nice enough to (essentially) give me a bunch of free apples - so many that I had to go into the Bivouac and pass them out because I wouldn't have room for them in my fridge! Anyways, I wanted to buy some zucchini because I wanted to make a savory Zucchini Ricotta Cheesecake. So I went up to a farmer (who was selling zucchini), asked to buy a basket of zucchini, and I though he sold me a basket of zucchini. Jump to this evening when I started peeling what I thought were zucchini's... and they were cucumbers. A lot of cucumbers. I have no need for this many cucumbers - so I had to improvise. After some browsing on the internet and a quick trip to Kroger later, I give you: Cucumber & Feta Salad!

I am surprised by how good this is! When I take a bite - feel like I am nibbling on Greece. I think I will make some pita chips tomorrow to eat this with... but I will also bring A LOT of this into work tomorrow because there is no way I can (or will) eat all of this. Please see this photo of reference (and note the size my camera lens cap) to see HOW MUCH I have:

I will post the normal, feasible sized recipe. I had to quadruple and a half the recipe just to use up my cucumber stash.

Cucumber and Feta Salad

Adapted from David Lebovitz

Ingredients:

• 1 large cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced into pea-sized pieces (I did small cubes)
• coarse salt
• 8 ounces feta cheese
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoons freshly-squeezed lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon water
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1 small red onion, peeled and finely-diced
• 1 tablespoon (each) chopped fresh mint, parsley and fresh dill

Directions:

1. Place the cucumber pieces in a colander, mix with a light sprinkling salt, and let drain 30 minutes to an hour, shaking the colander from time to time.
2. Crumble the feta into a bowl and mash together with the olive oil, lemon juice, water, and a few turns of black pepper.
3. Mix in the cucumbers, onions, and herbs. Taste, and add more salt if desired.