Here are the other three dinners I created last week using the fresh pesto I made.

Night 2: (My personal favorite!) Roasted rack of lamb with pesto crust

Put rack of lamb in roasting pan, fat side up and rub with olive oil. Add salt and pepper. Cook at 450 for 10 minutes. Take the lamb out of the oven and rub the top of the lamb with pesto. Place back in the oven and roast at 450 for another 15 minutes. Remove from oven and let it rest for 15 minute under aluminum foil.

I served the lamb with parmesan risotto and sugar snap peas.

Night 3: Pesto Pizza

For this meal, I used the same chickpea pizza crust recipe I used last week. Once I made the crust, I just added a thin layer of pesto and a layer of parmesan cheese and put on high heat in the oven for a couple of minutes.

Since the chickpea recipe makes enough dough for two pizzas, I also made one tomato sauce, Hormel pepperoni and mozzarella cheese.

Night 4: Pork chops, Yukon gold roasted potatoes, and sautéed spinach (This was the last night of the pesto so we just dipped both pork chops and potatoes in the pesto…delicious!)

Yukon Gold Roasted Potatoes:
Preheat oven to 400. Cut 1 ½ pounds of Yukon gold potatoes (not peeled) lengthwise and into wedges. Place potatoes on baking sheet and mix with ¼ cup olive oil, 2 T. melted butter, 4 minced garlic cloves, 2 T. fresh chopped rosemary, S & P.

Spread out potatoes flat on sheet and cook for 25 to 30 minutes, until golden brown and crisp. Season with S & P.

Pork Chops:
I cooked the bone-in pork chops, very simply in a skillet, rubbing them with olive oil and Bosari Seasoned Salt. (We love this seasoning salt and use it often when cooking.)

Put olive oil in skillet and heat on high heat. Preheat oven to 400. Add pork chops to skillet and cook on stove top, about 4 minutes on each side. (You want to get a nice crust.) Then place skillet and pork chops in the heated oven for about 10 minutes. Let rest for 5 minutes before serving.

Note: Cooking with bone-in pork chops takes a lot longer than boneless chops. David and I have found that bone-in provides much more tender meat so we usually prefer going with bone-in. You can easily make boneless pork chops in the skillet, you’ll just cook for a shorter time. The meat needs to be about 145 degrees.

If you’re looking for something to do on Labor Day, pack yourself a gluten free picnic and support a great cause! Join in one of the Eat Ins in the Atlanta area advocating for better food in schools. I’ll be at the Piedmont Park location, but they’ll also be in Decatur, East Cobb County, Gwinnett and Buckhead. Click on the links below for more information.

Slow Food Atlanta – Eat-In

September 7, 2009
12-3pm
Piedmont Park – Atlanta, GA
Organizer: Judith Winfrey
Email: judith@loveislovefarm.com

Let’s get REAL FOOD in schools. Let’s join over 200 picnics nationwide to support vegetables for kids. Let’s enjoy our city, a great meal, our favorite park, and a great group of folks. Let’s get more money for school lunch programs. Let’s support local farms. Let’s eat!

Here’s the deal. You bring a picnic to Piedmont. You eat it. By showing up, you support better lunches for kids in schools. Easy breezy, right?

Information for Atlanta Slow Food Picnic

Slow Food Atlanta Website

One of my favorite summer foods is squash. You can find squash easily and in great quantities during the summer in the southeast. Last summer I shared a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) with my sister-in-law, Alden, and we were blessed with all of the squash and zucchini we could imagine.

If you love fresh vegetables and fruit, a CSA is a great idea for the summer. You get a delivery each week from the same farm of whatever vegetables are growing on that farm at that moment. It forced me to cook and experiment with unfamiliar produce such as bok choy but I also learned to make my own pesto (due to the unlimited basil we received for a few weeks) and gluten free zucchini bread. I would recommend sharing a CSA with a good friend because then you don’t feel as if you’re wasting food when you’re out of town on vacation and it’s a fun excuse to cook together!

When joining a CSA or going to a local farmer’s market, you’re guaranteed to encounter plenty of squash. There are many ways to cook squash but today I wanted to share two delicious squash dishes that are family favorites. Both of these dishes are great for entertaining because they don’t require much hands on attention once the cooking process begins.

Simple Roasted Summer Squash: This dish is very simple, easy and flavorful and you can make it in small or large quantities (sometimes a CSA will only give you one piece of squash which can be difficult to find a recipe and use for just one).

Ingredients:
Summer squash, sliced into 1/2 inch rounds
Onion, sliced
Olive oil
Salt/pepper
parmesan cheese

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Slice squash into 1/2 inch round pieces. (If it’s a larger squash/zucchini, I then cut the rounds in half.)
3. Slice up an onion.
4. Place onion and squash on cookie sheet and drizzle olive oil, salt and pepper on top. Mix up onions and squash in olive oil. Lay onions and squash flat on cookie sheet.
5. Cook for 15 minutes then using a spatula, flip onions and squash and cook for another 15 minutes.
6. Sprinkle parmesan cheese on top and bake for another 2 minutes.
(Note: I like the squash to be nice a browned before taking them out of the oven, but they also taste good when not browned.)

Dot’s Squash Casserole: This recipe is my grandmother, Dot’s, old recipe. My mom made it last week and I’m going to make it today using squash from my in-law’s garden in Linden, VA that is overflowing with summer vegetables right now!

Ingredients:
3 pounds summer squash, chunked
3 medium onions, chopped
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup water
salt & pepper
2 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
(the original recipe also calls for crumbled crackers on top but we just skip that step now to make it GF! I think it tastes better without it anyways)

Directions:
1. Cook squash & onions with water, sugar, salt and pepper until mashable (about 45 minutes).
2. Beat two eggs lightly.
3. Add milk to eggs and mix well with squash. Add butter and mix.
4. Bake at 325 for about 30 minutes.
This recipe freezes well also!

Enjoy the abundance of squash during the last month of summer! Feel free to add your own squash recipes.

Last week I stumbled upon some beautifully fresh basil and decided to make pesto. David and I love pesto and fortunately, we don’t get sick of it because I’ve incorporated it into four dinners in the past week. I went with the classic, no frills pesto and it was absolutely delicious and super easy to make.

I followed this recipe from Simply Recipes

Ingredients
• 2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano or Romano cheese
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/3 cup pine nuts or walnuts
• 3 medium sized garlic cloves, minced
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• Special equipment needed: A food processor Method

1 Combine the basil in with the pine nuts, pulse a few times in a food processor. (If you are using walnuts instead of pine nuts and they are not already chopped, pulse them a few times first, before adding the basil.) Add the garlic, pulse a few times more.

2 Slowly add the olive oil in a constant stream while the food processor is on. Stop to scrape down the sides of the food processor with a rubber spatula. Add the grated cheese and pulse again until blended. Add a pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

What I made:

Night 1: Chicken pesto pasta

1. Cook GF spaghetti ( Bionaturae Brand: follow instructions on container, but I would suggest not using as much salt as they recommend)

2. Cook chopped boneless chicken breasts on stove with olive oil for about 8 minutes on medium heat.

3. Once chicken is cooked, add cherry tomatoes to pan and cook on low temp to soften tomatoes…I used all different color tomatoes from the Decatur Farmers’ Market to add more color to the plate.

4. When pasta and chicken are ready, drain pasta and put in a serving bowl with chicken and toss in pesto.

I also roasted some fresh okra (400 degrees for 10 min, olive oil, S and P) for the meal as well. Enjoy!

*More details on Pesto Nights 2, 3, and 4 still to come!

Thai food should be gluten free. Rice noodles, rice, spices, it should all be gluten free, right? (Just hold the soy sauce.) David and I love to make GF Thai food at home, but it’s always great to find a Thai place accommodates the GF customer. After a week in Atlanta, I figured why not try searching for my go to Thai place in Atlanta?

Last night we went to Amaryn’s Thai Bowl and Sushi in Decatur. While there was definitely some confusion as to what gluten was, I will say that the management and waiters at Amaryn’s were very nice and willing to work with me. They also knew that soy sauce has wheat in it. When I inquired about the menu, they told me I should be able to get any of their Thai Bowl combos, without soy sauce. Of course you need to have rice noodles, not egg noodles (they contain wheat in addition to the egg).

I ordered the chicken panang which they assured me had no soy sauce in it and they even checked the ingredients on the fish sauce for me. They thought rice had wheat in it but I assured them rice is fine.

When the waiter brought me my meal, there were two balls of fried something in my meal. I was pretty sure those were not gluten free. I explained to the waitress that I couldn’t eat it and that I needed a new meal entirely (they couldn’t just take off the fried dough balls). She very nicely agreed and brought me an entirely new meal. It was definitely an entirely new entrée, which I very much appreciated.

So was I nervous about eating the meal? Definitely…But, I was totally fine afterwards. No contamination! Always a victory when eating out at a new restaurant in a new city. I don’t know if I would give Amaryn’s my highest recommendation to the gluten free diner, but there should be plenty of options at Amaryn’s and other Thai places.

A couple of tips for dining out:
- I find it’s always good to call places ahead and try to speak with a manager. It’s even better to call at a time when you know they won’t be busy.

- There’s an IPhone App called “GF Card” where you can get explanations of Celiac Disease in about 50 different languages, from Bulgarian to Thai to Urdu. This App is great for travel and dining. Just show it to your waiter and they can even take it back to the chef (Of course I left my ITouch at home last night!)

Amaryn’s Thai Bowl & Sushi
265 Ponce De Leon Pl
Decatur, GA 30030-3259
(404) 373-2788‎