This weekend I picked up a lot of vegetables from the market. Everything looked so good, I love this time of the year!

On the menu last night was quesadillas with lots of veggies. I got this awesome garlic dill goat cheese from our CSA that I was excited to use.

For the veggie filling I used green peppers, half of a zucchini and a walla walla onion! A walla walla onion is a sweet onion that got it’s because the seed was found in the Island of Corisca and was brought over to the Walla Walla Vally in Washington State. Source

It was absolutely delicious! Next time I am going to add it more towards the end of the dish so it’s not cooked that long.

After the veggies were cut thinly I heated a wok with olive oil and lightly sauteed the vegetables.

Usually I get fajita sized tortillas, but the store was out so I purchased burrito size tortillas which my skillet cannot fit two, so I sliced the tortillas in half to make the quesadillas.

I sprayed a skillet with non-stick cooking spray and set each half of a tortilla and added some goat cheese.

Then I added the veggie filling to one side and let it cook for about 3 minutes.

The the other half of the tortillas is flipped over to the top the veggie half.

On the side I was planning on making a salad with some dandelion greens that I picked up. I tried a piece of one and realized that I had to cook them. They are bitter!

So instead I chopped up some chard and dandelion greens and sauteed them with a little bit of olive oil. Right before the greens were done sauteing I added some toasted sesame oil and tamari/soy sauce. These two go great together and make an excellent flavor for greens.

The greens were good, but still bitter. I looked up some recipes for dandelion greens and many of them use heavier fats such as butter, cheese, bacon or more oil than I used. I noticed that when I was cooking the greens that they ate up the oil pretty quickly. Every vegetable that was on that plate was from either our CSA or the Farmers Market! I love it when that happens!

I also picked up 3 pints of strawberries and wanted to make a dessert out of them. Yesterday I made a big batch of strawberry/rhubarb sauce for ice cream, and tonight I wanted to make strawberries topped with a balsamic reduction sauce. Like usual, my ‘fancy’ desserts don’t come out to well. The balsalmic reduction is supposed to come out thick and sweet, mine tasted like warm balsalmic vinegar. I don’t think I let it reduce enough.

It still tasted good!

So Dandelion greens. Super healthy, surprise surprise. They have often been used for medicinal purposes to act as a diuretic, laxative and to help with liver and kidney disease. If you notice from the chart below it is loaded with Vitamin K (coagulation), potassium (electrolyte balance, nerve and muscle function), Vitamin A (anti-oxidant), Vitamin E (anti-oxidant), B Vitamins (energy and red blood cell production), iron (red blood cell production), calcium (bone function) just to name a few! The vitamins and minerals perform many more functions that what I indicated. For more information about vitamins and minerals please see the Office of Dietary Supplements, National Institutes of Health. It is an awesome site!Hope you are having a healthy day!

P.S. Anyone following the UEFA 2012? It’s soccer for anyone unfamiliar. Since Matt loves soccer, all four of us picked a team.

Dempsey – England because he is a Jack Russel and they are from England.

Riesling – Germany because she is part German Shepherd.

Me – Spain because it is an absolutely amazing country.

Matt – Dutch because we just purchased a Dutch Oven (a cooking tool) and loves it.

Happy watching!