Farm to fork turns the backyard to a bash

For the past several years I’ve grown something edible in the garden.  It started out with tomatoes, then blackberries were added and this year we threw in zucchini, catnip and basil.  The majority of our family’s food doesn’t come from the side of our house though.

As part of the Memorial Day holiday we participated in the ConAgra Backyard Bash, a promotion designed to educate folks about where food comes from.   Another aspect of it was to think about the future and share great recipes, now let’s talk about the food!

The Zucchini Greek Bake

You’ll need these ingredients:

PAM® Original No-Stick Cooking Spray

3 small zucchini, sliced thin (3 = 3/4 lb)

1 cup fat free small curd cottage cheese

1/4 cup Egg Beaters® Original

1 cup Italian seasoned croutons, crushed slightly

1 can (14.5 oz each) Hunt’s® Stewed Tomatoes, drained

1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese with garlic and herbs

For us it’s important to know where our food comes from. Because our little garden can only grow so many tomatoes we used a can of Hunt’s Stewed Tomatoes.  Yum, I didn’t know that canned tomatoes came in so many varieties and were so tasty.  You can really taste the difference.  Hunt’s tomatoes are also naturally steam peeled and contain no artificial ingredients.

The dish was ridiculously simply to make and had lots of ingredients that aren’t normally used in our kitchen.  That resulted in a brand new arsenal of smells coming from the oven that made the dish even tastier.  15 minutes to prepare, 25 minutes to bake and 5 minutes to cool and you’ve got a side dish that accents a light meal perfectly.  You can find the complete recipe, as well as lots of others here.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

It’s a classic recipe with a slight twist.

• 2-1/2 cups Ultragrain® All Purpose Flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup Fleischmann’s® Original-stick, softened
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup Egg Beaters® 100% Liquid Egg Whites
• 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate morsels

The Fleishmann’s takes the place of vegetable oil, so that is not needed in the recipe.  Cookies are fun to make and if our kids were older they would’ve been recruited to help make them. You can find the recipe here.  You can also follow ConAgra on Facebook here.

I liked the cookies, but in making them I put a touch too much salt and not enough chocolate chips.  User error.  My testing panel didn’t like them too much, however, cookies that don’t taste good, don’t taste that bad if you made them.  So I’m eating the entire batch with the help of a curious toddler.

During the backyard party the kids ate, played and went fishing in the children’s pool catching helpless plastic fish.  The adults sat in the shade in big, relaxing chairs that promptly put me to sleep.

When the afternoon heat got too intense the kids went to play board games and one of the adults started to play the piano.  It was a soft, real moment of family, organic music in the background, snacks all around us and kid’s laughing in the yard.

The Mojo Family was also provided with a box to plant in our garden.  It’s less of a box and more of a time capsule.  Our garden will undergo some harvesting and new additions this weekend.  At that point we’re going to plant it under the bonsai tree.  I’ll write something to our then 7 and 5 year old sons and to my wife.  We’ve got family and personal goals and if you don’t write them down then there is nothing to hold you accountable.

While I don’t want the next 5 years to go by quickly, I know that they will.  This time capsule will give us something to celebrate as a family in the summer of 2017 at a backyard bash then too.

I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Dad Central Consulting on behalf of ConAgra and received products to facilitate my review and a promotional item to thank me for my participation.