Chickpea & Feta Salad and Other Good News

I got this recipe from Weight Watchers and made it today for tonight's dinner with some substitutions.

2 cups canned chickpeas, rinsed
1-2 garlic cloves minced
3 green onions thinly sliced
1 green pepper (recipe called for 1/2 red pepper)
2 T minced basil (recipe called for parsley)
7-9 green or black olives sliced
1/2 cup feta cheese (I used the basil and tomato flavored)
1 T olive oil
3 T lemon juice
black pepper to taste

Mix all the veggies and the feta cheese.  Mix oil and lemon juice separately then pour over veggies and mix well.  I've refrigerated it until dinner time so the flavors will blend.  I did do a taste test and it was good.

So I went out to the garden to get the basil and green pepper I needed for this recipe and came back with a nice zucchini, a cucumber and this beauty:

 Unfortunately in picking the first Goldie a green one sharing the same stem came too.

 Don't you have to love heirloom?  They have such interesting bottoms sometimes.

There are other posts from other bloggers participating with Robin for Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard.

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard

 Tuesday's dinner came from the crock pot.  I went looking for a recipe in my Crock Pot Cookbook called "Crockpot: The Original Slow Cooker" as I sat down to lunch.  I knew what I had in the freezer so had to find a recipe that would finish by 6 o'clock using ingredients I had or that could be substituted easily.  This is the one I picked.

I had frozen peppers and frozen zucchini which even though the recipe didn't call for I added anyway.  It got mushy but it was chili so that was fine.  I also used 1 tablespoon of chili garlic sauce for the salsa.  At the end I added the black beans but also one can of corn.

 Before cooking.

 After cooking but before the beans and corn went in.  

Sorry no serving photos.  When it was time to eat taking photos slipped my mind.  I served it over brown rice with a dollop of sour cream on top.  

Spicy and good.

See other recipes over at Robin's Garden of Eden for Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard.

Chili

I'm coming up to the end of some of my stored produce from last season.  I think there's one more bag of tomatoes in the freezer.  On Wednesday I made chili.  Here are the  things that came from my stores:

bag of frozen tomatoes

 last head of garlic

 habenero pepper (grown in 2009)

 a mixture of frozen vegetables that I had labeled for soup

 I used 96% fat free ground beef, onions, garlic, cumin, salt and pepper.  Here the vegetables are added.

 Then the tomatoes.  I supplemented with a can of diced tomatoes.

 I used canned Northern beans, dark kidney beans and not pictured black beans.  Also added molasses, chili powder, habenero pepper, and worchestershire sauce.

 The finished chili served with grated cheddar cheese.  It was spicy and good with corn bread muffins.

See what other cooks have made from their stores at Robin's Garden of Eden

Zucchini & Tomato Pasta Sauce

From my freezer this week I pulled out a bag of frozen zucchini spears and a bag of frozen tomatoes to make a sauce for pasta.  I sauteed an onion first then added the frozen items. 

 

Once they were cooked down I added a piece of my frozen chopped basil (not pictured), a teaspoon of sugar, salt and pepper.  Using the stick blender I pureed the whole thingand served it over angel hair pasta and meatballs.  It was delicious.

Joining Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard over at Robin's.