http://www.lawrence.com/users/photos/2012/aug/26/240095/

If you’ve followed my blog for awhile, you’ll note that in the winter, I’ll cook, bake and take the immersion blender out for a spin while making soup. In the summer, though, I tend to avoid any recipe that uses my oven.

That seasonal culinary flip-flop helps a bit with the “rut-like” nature of my cooking style. Yes, I like to have the same foods over and over again and it doesn’t bore me in the least (Well … it does take a very long time to bore me. Like months.) But, just about the time I get sick of something (FINALLY), the season changes enough to where I’ll get the consistent urge to try something new. Or at least pull out old recipes I haven’t made in a year.

Which makes this time of year a bit strange for me. It’s still hot enough to be summer, but I’ve found myself craving, and eating, very fall/winter-type staples like sweet potatoes and butternut squash. Heck, last weekend I even got out the crockpot and made a big pot of garbanzo beans. Yes, I used the slow-cooker a month from the end of summer. This is very weird for me.

But it actually turns out that my sudden late-summer obsession with wintery foods pairs nicely with what happens to be available from our CSA. Or, at least this week it did.

So, to refresh, last week we received the following from Rolling Prairie: Pears, two baby melons, spicy peppers, sweet peppers, mushrooms, grapes and basil.

The melons, pears and grapes were devoured easily by our little fruit-loving tyke. Shocking, I know. The basil also had a home in topping sandwiches and green juice.

The peppers posed a different challenge. Yes, I love peppers to death, but this week we had so many peppers from our CSA and from our personal home garden that we had to really work to get through them all. Between the CSA peppers and the ones from our garden, we had probably 20 peppers to use. I’m not exaggerating.

So, we got creative with old favorites. First, we had a pizza night, where our toppings included not only a few of the peppers, but local red onion, homegrown tomatoes and a crust that had both local whole-wheat flour from Moon on the Meadow and local garlic from Maggie’s Farm. You can see the (unbaked) results above. We tend to use this pizza dough recipe (with lots of added garlic plus a half-and-half mixture of bread flour and local whole-wheat flour).

A few nights later, we took the remaining peppers and all the CSA mushrooms and made a batch of our rut-making veggie fajitas. But instead of serving them on tortillas with all the accompaniments of regular fajitas, we repurposed them into a Buddha bowl.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/photos/2012/aug/26/240096/

You may remember that this winter and spring we were constantly making Buddha bowls, which basically consist of a grain plus veggies and sauce, mixed in a bowl. It’s customizable, and we often would top quinoa or millet with [our favorite roasted vegetable][5]s or sweet potatoes and some avocado.

Well, the Buddha bowl is still one of my favorite dinners, and I can’t believe it took me this long to make a summer version, but I did and it was fantastic. The ingredients:

– Fajita vegetables (We used an onion,
mushrooms and a peppers)

– Cooked quinoa

– Cooked garbanzo beans

– Squirt of lime juice

That’s it. And it was delightful. Perfect for a nice, hardy dinner after a long run. Brown or white rice and black beans would also sub nicely in this dish, and if you don’t like mushrooms, leave them out. All in all, it was a great “new” way to enjoy one of our summer favorites.

What’d we get this week? Edamame, bell peppers, frying peppers, grapes, apples, pears and cherry tomatoes. Yum!