Veggies, veggies and more veggies

The produce baskets we have been purchasing every two weeks really are a good deal - and they have sparked my joy of cooking. I admit I had been in a real rut with my meal planning - frozen entree, frozen veggies and maybe a packaged salad. Getting the fresh veggies forces me to look for recipes we might like and pull out some old ones.
The zucchini in this week's basket sent me to my recipe boxes (I have 3 of them) and searching for some old recipes I knew I had. The recipe boxes were in a terrible mess so I spent some time this morning sorting and rearranging them - but did find the recipes I was looking for and another one that looks hopeful for the next time we receive zucchini.


For lunch I made Italian Zucchini Pie. DH was at work and DD#2 is away for the weekend at a retreat, so I decided to pamper myself with some home cooking instead of the cold sandwich and salad that I had planned. You can find my recipe here,
Italian Zucchini Pie


I added a bowl of fresh fruit (the kiwi was also in our produce basket) and had a very nice meal. I did not let it sit for the full 10 minutes so fell apart a little when I served it but the second slice (yes, I had a second one) served up just as pretty as could be.


The other zucchini recipe that I dug out was a Cucumber Salad that had a note at the bottom that you can use zucchini instead of the cucumber. DH loves cucumber so I thought I would see if I could get him to eat this. I had a medium cucumber in the frig so I combined the zucchini and cucumber. The recipe can be found here, Cuke/Zuke Salad. (I think if I used all zucchini it would taste different. The cucumber taste spread throughout the salad so it was pretty hard to tell which was cuke and which was zuke when we ate it).


We also got some fresh asparagus in the basket. I have never cooked fresh asparagus. I grew up on canned and have recently cooked frozen quite a bit. I like it and DH eats it although not his favorite side dish. I planned to make an asparagus risotto but with all the pie crust I ate at lunch thought I should try something lighter and the orange asparagus appealed to me because we also have a bunch of oranges to eat up from the produce basket. Fresh orange zest and orange juice sure do make a difference in a recipe. The asparagus tasted so fresh and almost like summer (considering the temps are frigid and we had a dusting of snow this morning - that was no easy task). Here is a link to the Orange Asparagus recipe.

Our lovely supper consisted of the Orange Asparagus, Cuke/Zuke Salad and a Turkey Mignon (okay - so I did use a frozen entree - these are Schwan's and we love them - turkey wrapped in bacon complete with a little pop-up to let you know when it is done - super quick on the George Foreman!)
And - what did DH think of the meal - he loved the cucumber salad and could not tell there was zucchini in it. After he ate it I confessed and he was shocked. He told me he would eat it if I fixed it like that. ( He also promised to try the Zucchini Pie - maybe lunch tomorrow).
He loved the way I dressed up the asparagus - so I would say the meal was a big hit.