Thursday, June 16, 2011

Our Healthy Living Kick

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Ok so about 4 weeks ago, Mother's Day weekend to be exact, Hailey, the kids and I all decided to get our garden planted and on schedule. Hailey actually had us start this tradition two years ago and this will be summer garden number three. I'm not sure when it started, to be honest, probably growing up in Ohio with my own parents gardening, but I have this strange fascination with herbs, veggies and I even want to like eating raw tomatoes this year. Anyway in addition to this vegetable garden thing, Hailey has been consistently working out with her pilates group for a few months straight, but I have been slacking - until this past monday that is. I just started crossfit over at cross fit timpanogos. To say the least it is killing my trash but I am loving it.

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So you can see I am getting back into some healthy lifestyle (hope it lasts) and what is great is we even joined a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) over at Jacobs Cove. Now the way we joined this CSA was kind of a fluke, but I have to say I am glad we did. I heard about it while researching a food truck when the food network food trucks were in town for a reality show and came across the blog at Jacobs Cove. Interested I started reading about how we could get these awesome heirloom tomatoes that all the local top chefs were using and even more, we could get fresh farm produce 365 days a year. Go read about the CSA it is pretty cool, but we bought 1 share in the farm and we get a fresh box of produce every Thursday for the next 26 weeks and will probably go all year round.

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all the pics above are from our Jacob's Cove Bounty- taken by my wonderful wife Hailey

So my hope is to share with all of my fresh food loving friends at least some weekly recipes and pics of what we are making with our fresh food! Our Kandell pebre recipe (one of my favs from Chile) is a hit, and believe it or not, it is made with all fresh stuff. Even some of my "fast food only" friends at work are making it. Below you will see some awesome food I made for dinner tonight with today's batch of fresh veggies. (Zucchini, Kale, Collards, Snap Peas, Purple Basil....)

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So even though we did not cook with veggies from our own garden today (well we actually own part of Jacobs Cove as a CSA member) we did do a completely fresh meal. By the way our garden is way healthy and we are looking forward to some great stuff from it!

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The Pesto was a huge hit with Ady as you can see and I have to say it was awesome. I did not even use or look up a recipe, just wung it! Here is what I did. Took the Kale and Greens that I had no idea what I would do with (ps the idea for pesto came from Jacobs Cove blog links) and threw bunches of them as you can see in the blender. We had some almonds in the pantry and used them instead of pine nuts. I used normal olive oil, salt, pepper and since I did not have lemons I added red wine vinegar. Basically if you have never made pesto before, go get your idea of quantities from a real recipe. Man this was good!

4 comments:

Momma Sue said...

Good for you guys! Your food looks delish! Great job on the pesto! It's also a great way to get your kids eating healthy foods!When YOU eat a raw tomato, I'll really be impressed!

Lovell Family said...

I pretty much think steve is perfect...but if he could cook like you? Yeah, that would be too good to be true! Your family is VERY lucky!

Unknown said...

ya the tomato love will be coming soon!

Jen Tornow said...

Eric, we seriously thought the Pesto was fantastic. Even without parmesan cheese. I don't think it needs it, with all the flavor it has. I'm so impressed that you just threw it all together. I'll have to try that sometime. Our kids will actually eat pesto...:) I hope you keep up with posting your healthy eating recipes. (and we love being taste-testers!)