Grilled Goat Kebabs & Farro Salad, Chicken Meatballs with Peaches, Summer Salads, Soup & More!

We got our grilling on this week with some delicious goat kebabs and squash and we had another pizza night where we repurposed some of the leftover toppings (Italian sausage and shrimp) into rice bowls, salads and soup for meal prep for the week. Plus there was some delicious chicken meatballs with the last of the peaches of the season!

Grilled Goat Kebabs with Summer Squash, Farro Cucumber Feta Salad & Sumac Onions

It’s a whole thing to be grilling with our animals that we’re raising for meat grazing a few feet away. Some people of course think it’s weird and want the mental separation, but to me, cooking meat from our own farm with the livestock in view is kind of special and helps you not take for granted how lucky we are to raise and eat this nutrient dense food!

And… the pigs and the cattle were in the house field closest to us, but we were grilling goat and the goat herd were about 300 yards away at the woody edge of the property! ;-)

In any case, I did a quick dry rub on these goat stew pieces, just sea salt, sumac, coriander, turmeric, black pepper and a fresh grind of coriander, mustard, chili and garlic flakes. Grant threaded them on skewers and took care of the grilling. He did a high heat to get a nice char and cooke them to a medium internal temperature. They were tender and absolutely delicious as can be!

To go with it a made a farro salad. I toasted Marsh Hen Mill’s farro in a pan with butter before adding the water to steam it.

I let it cool and added diced Armenian cucumbers, fresh apple mint from my garden and Southern Maids Greek marinated feta cheese, plus some oil from the marinated cheese and lots of lemon juice.

I also sliced some of Two Dog’s summer squash mix and Grant grilled those, too. We rounded out the meal with some quick sumac pickled red onions, steamed green beans with butter, onion salt and nutritional yeast and Nur’s Kitchen hummus. It was an awesome combination and made great leftovers for lunches, too.

Skillet Chicken Meatballs with Peaches & Basil + Creamy Cucumber Salad

I have been meaning to make this New York Times Cooking recipe for months and since the peaches we had last week were the last of the (long) season, it was now or not til next summer!

I used ground chicken even though it calls for ground pork and we raise pork and not chicken! We actually don’t have a ton of ground pork left until we process again in November or December and there’s plenty of ground chicken!

I did not have broth defrosted or any white wine open, so I just used water to deglaze the pan. I was kicking myself for forgetting to bring home some of Rose Wagon Ranch’s peach infused vinegar, because that would be been amazing here. And since I had lemons already cut, I used those instead of limes.

Plus with the bounty of cucumbers right now (Armenian, English, pickling and more seedless slicing ones coming tomorrow, too!), I made a classic creamy cucumber salad with a combination of yogurt and mayonnaise, a little honey for sweetness, red onions, dill, lemon juice and Meyer lemon vinegar.

We ate the meatballs over basmati rice and topped everything with a little more lemon, torn basil and chili flakes.

Rice Bowls with Crispy Tofu, Sautéed Shrimp, Cucumbers, Avocado & Nori

Big time protein going on in these bowls. American is in the midst of such a protein craze and I can’t help but question if we all really need as much as all the influencers and food companies trying to add protein to packaged foods say we do.

From what I’ve seen, many doctors and researchers believe most Americans get plenty of protein in their diets as it is. But the one thing that does resonate with me research wise, is the need for more protein as you get older because of natural loss of muscle and strength and the body becoming less efficient at utilizing protein.

So anyway, I try to count my protein and it never seems like enough!

These rice bowls are delicious regardless of your level of protein obsession.

I made two pounds of my go to baked tofu, battered with nutritional yeast, cornstarch, soy sauce and avocado oil. I also sautéed two pounds of gumbo shrimp in part because I wanted shrimp as a topping for a pizza night with guests, but if I was going to do that, may as well make two pounds for meals for the week.

And I made some basmati rice as the base and then rounded out the bowls with nori seaweed, arugula, cucumbers, avocado, crunchy jalapeños and tempura nori crisps, too.

The rest of the shrimp got used in other meals and once the avocados ran out, I made a quick peanut sauce and ate the rest of tofu and rice with peanut sauce and kimchi instead.

Pizza Night Leftovers for Salad (with Blistered Okra & Shishitos)…

We hosted another pizza night with family and I didn’t get pictures of all the pizzas because:

A. It’s a whirlwind of rolling them out and getting them in the pizza oven, then keeping them warm in the regular oven and cranking out the next one so we can sit down to five pizzas and salads and dips all at once!

B. Y’all have seen a lot of pizza pictures since we got the pizza oven this spring. You get it.

But I did want to mention how I manage proteins and toppings for so many different pizzas. I love variety so we want a bunch of different pizzas. But then what do you do with the rest?

Often I make meals and plan to hold a little back as pizza toppings. I’ve done this with Italian beef or Asian chicken style meatballs, chicken thighs and pulled chicken and even sliced and frozen small quantities in zip lock bags specifically labeled for future pizza use!

And then for sausages like Andouille and Italian, I am often taking those out specifically for pizza. Andouille is cured and smoked so it lasts a while in the fridge and I love to use sautéed half moons of Andouille in breakfast tacos or breakfast potato bowls.

For this pizza night, I also made a big Greek salad with cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, oregano and feta cheese, so it’s nice that that keeps well as leftovers unlike a green salad.

The night after the pizza night, we did big arugula salads with the Greek salad on top, along with leftover shrimp, warmed in a pan with sautéed Andouille, my almond cashew sauce as the dressing, plus fermented radishes, Resurrection Gardens chow chow and Rose Wagon Ranch’s cilantro microgreens.

We also quickly blistered some red okra and shishito peppers to have on the side and dipped those in the almond cashew sauce. It was an easy, veggie loaded meal!

… Plus Pizza Night & Veg Leftovers for Soup!

Then the next day, since I still had most of the Italian sausage left that we didn’t use for pizza, plus plenty of tomato paste, frozen tomatoes, the blistered okra and shishitos, a little pesto leftover from the pizzas and even shredded carrots that I didn’t need back when I made carrot cake, I decided to make a summer soup situation out of it.

I also had just made a batch of bone broth with pork trotters and cooked turkey and chicken bones that were taking up space in my freezer.

So I started with onions and garlic and the shredded carrots, added the sausage, tomato paste, broth and frozen tomatoes and cooked all that down. At the end I added some cream from the top of a gallon of milk, milk and sliced okra and peppers from the night before.

I also made some farfalline pasta, a perfect tiny bowtie pasta just meant for soup. I tossed the cooked pasta with the last of the remaining basil pesto from that batch and topped the soup with it. I stored it separately so it wouldn't absorb too much liquid and the soup would actually remain properly soupy as leftovers.

This was great for lunch and dinner leftovers all week! I added some shrimp until it was out and then one day when other proteins were out, I even added some of the baked tofu and that was great, too! Versatile leftovers for the win.