Jenna, Author at Just J.Faye

Summer Chopped Salad with Garlic Scape Hummus

July 12, 2014 by Jenna

This is my first year joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). I am a few weeks in and I absolutely LOVE it. A box of fresh, locally grown vegetables every week? Yes, please.

These veggies. They are just so beautiful.

My friend and I are splitting a half-share from Stone’s Throw Urban Farm, which is the perfect amount of produce. Every Tuesday one of us stops by the beautiful micro-farm located right in the middle of a little neighborhood south of Minneapolis. They have a u-pick herb garden where you can load up on fresh herbs. It’s amazing. Mint, basil, oregano, chives, lavender, thyme. Jeez. I now put herbs on everything.

At first this whole CSA thing was slightly overwhelming. I had to read up on cleaning and storing vegetables to make sure they stay fresh. Luckily The Kitchn came to the rescue with their Guide to Storing Fruits and Vegetables. Every Tuesday evening I have drying produce scattered all over my counters. It’s kind of a beautiful disaster. Also, I tend to do my meal planning and grocery shopping on Sundays, so the Tuesday pick-up throws me off a little bit, especially when I don’t know what I will be getting in that week’s box. But then I got over all of that.

The awesome thing about joining a CSA is that it has exposed me to vegetables that I wouldn’t normally purchase, like fennel, and also some that I never even heard of, like tat soi. It’s been so fun to experiment with these different things. I have been trying to challenge myself with new recipes, but a lot of the time I just end up sautéing them, which is still super delicious. Not complaining.

One of the really fun vegetables to play with is garlic scapes. Have you heard of them before? They are essentially the stalks of garlic plants and are swirly and green. Really pretty. They are kind of like a combination of garlic, green onions, and asparagus. You can do lots of fun things with them: throw them in pasta or stir fry, grill them, blend them into pesto, etc. I decided to make this week’s bunch into hummus. It was a great idea. Chickpeas, garlic scapes, some lemon juice, salt, and pepper all blended up. Super simple. Super tasty.

I decided to take this hummus and dump it on a summer chopped salad with cucumbers, red peppers, yellow squash, and grilled chicken breast. It was another great idea.

This week I also received a bunch of fresh dill. I have never purchased or used fresh dill before and, let me tell you, it is a game changer. Dill is strong and packs in a ton of flavor. I love it. So, so much. I mixed it with some olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and lemon juice for a simple vinaigrette to top my salad.

This salad. Oh man. It makes me super happy. It’s fresh, bright, easy to prepare, full of flavor, and very good for you. Oh, and it’s delicious.

Feel free to sub the vegetables with anything you have on hand!

Now go get your hands on some garlic scapes and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Summer Chopped Salad with Garlic Scape Hummus

Prep time

15 mins

Total time

15 mins

Utilize all the fresh summer veggies by throwing together a chopped salad. The star here: garlic scape hummus.

Author: Jenna Duesterhoeft

Serves: 2-4

Ingredients

Garlic Scape Hummus:

1 15 oz can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
3 garlic scapes, chopped
1 clove garlic
Lemon juice from 1 ½ lemons
Salt and pepper to taste

Lemon-Dill Vinaigrette:

½ cup olive oil (check other blogs for ratios)
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
Lemon juice from ½ lemon
1 tbsp fresh dill
Salt and pepper to taste

Summer Chopped Salad:

7-8 cups mixed greens (I used a mix of romaine, spinach, and kale)
2 grilled chicken breasts, cut into ½” pieces
1 red pepper, chopped
1 large cucumber, chopped
1 large yellow squash, chopped

Instructions

To make the hummus: place all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor. Process until it reaches desired consistency.
To make the lemon dill vinaigrette: combine all ingredients in a mason jar, shake well.
To assemble the salad: combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, mix it up, and divide between 2-4 bowls. Add a dollop (2ish tablespoons) of hummus and a few drizzles of the vinaigrette. Serve and enjoy!

summer chopped salad with garlic scape hummus

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Thursday Thoughts

July 10, 2014 by Jenna

Holy moly it’s Thursday already! This week has gone surprisingly fast considering it’s the week after a holiday day. Here are some random comments, thoughts, and links for this gorgeous Thursday morning:

When I was condo hunting a couple of years ago I had a few basic requirements that I was looking for, one of the most important being that it must have a balcony. Luckily I found one. Now that it’s nice out I utilize it as much as I can. I’m either in the kitchen or on the balcony. The two very best places to be! As a bonus I have a nice little view of downtown Minneapolis, which is especially beautiful during that magic evening hour. It’s just enough to remind me how much I love this city.
I have been struggling with my running the last couple of weeks. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s the early mornings (5:30am!). Or maybe I’m just out of shape. Whatever the reason may be I needed something to work towards to keep me positive and motivated before I start marathon training in August. So I signed up for the Urban Wildland Half Marathon on August 2. Also because my friend told me to sign up, so I did (easily influenced).
I have been thinking about switching up my breakfast routine (on a major smoothie kick right now) and was intrigued by Minimalist Baker’s Simple Vegan Omelet. I am not vegan and love eggs, but was still interested in giving it a go. I multiplied the recipe by 3 so that I could use it for a few breakfasts. I am eating it right now (outside on my balcony) topped with fresh dill and salsa. It is delicious! Try it out if you are up for something new!
A few weeks ago was Popsicle Week and I thought that was amazing. But people, it gets better. This week is Milkshake Week! Is that not the best thing you have ever heard?! I’m drooling over all of them, but especially this Peanut Butter and Brownie Milkshake, the Birthday Cake Milkshake, and this Cinnamon Toast Crunch Milkshake. Gahhhhh. Milkshakes for dinner are totally acceptable, right?!
One of the bajillion awesome things about summer is going to outdoor music festivals. The Basilica Block Party has been my summer staple since I moved back to Minneapolis. They always have a bunch of great artists and bands playing and it always such a blast. I love just being with a big group of friends listening to the music, dancing, drinking beers, and being young. I’m excited for another round of that again this year.

Hope your week has been going as fast as mine has! Enjoy the rest of it and continue to soak up the summer.

Have a great day! xo

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Basic Full Body Strength Workout

July 7, 2014 by Jenna

How was everyone’s 4^th of July weekend?! Did you go anywhere? Did you eat hotdogs and watch fireworks and sit by a lake? I hope you did, plus much, much more.

If you were anything like me you may have spent the weekend indulging in burgers and beers and brats and baked beans (alliteration!). That’s ok. Indulgences are good every so often. Plus, it was all so delicious annnddd it was America’s birthday so…. YOLO!

Am I right?

I was luckily able to fit in some exercise between the s’mores and strawberry shortcake. On Friday morning I coaxed my mom, sister, and sister-in-law to do my 4^th of July Tabata workout with me. They didn’t come willingly, but they did do it… and I think they even enjoyed it a little bit. Then on Saturday a bunch of us (“Bass Lake Bandits”) participated in the Nisswa Firecracker 5K that I had mentioned on Thursday. I was originally just going to walk the 5K with everyone, but I felt good and ended up running the 10K instead. It was actually my first 10K race, which is silly considering I have done 5K’s, half-marathons, and marathons. It was a beautiful morning for a run and we were all rewarded afterwards with an ice cold PBR.

Side note: how cute are we?! Don’t you love our matching red, white, and blue headbands?

Despite those two good workouts, my caloric intake definitely still outweighed my expenditure. I’ll say it again: delicious, America’s birthday, YOLO.

Maybe you were better-behaved than I was, maybe you weren’t. Either way, let’s start out the week with an awesome workout to help negate some of the cookies.

This is a very basic strength training circuit that hits all the major muscle groups. If you are a beginner to strength training focus first on technique and proper form. Once perfected, you can work towards increasing the weight. Improper form can develop into muscle imbalances and injuries. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Here are some instructions on proper technique. If you have any questions, please leave a comment so that I can help!

While you are performing the exercises concentrate on the muscles that you are working. Are your biceps burning a little during the bicep curls? Can you really feel your glutes during those squats? If so, you are doing the right.

Once you have form perfected, feel free to increase the weight of the dumbbells. If/when you do this you may decrease the reps from 15 to 10-12 or even 5-8 if you are going really heavy. However, please, please, please ensure that you have the correct form with the increased resistance – utilize mirrors or workout with a friend or ask the cute guy at the gym to watch your form (the cute guy, not the meathead guy, unless of course you are into that).

You can also enrich your proprioception and stabilization by utilizing a stability ball, BOSU ball, or performing the standing exercises on one leg instead of two. Again, be careful here. When you add this type of challenge, keep your core engaged and your movements slow and controlled.

I recommend choosing either the heavier weights or the unstable platform, not both at once. Advance slowly, gradually add in new challenges, and keep proper form. Overtime your body will adapt to the challenges that you are placing upon it. It will then grow stronger and you will need to continue to challenge it. Then it will grow even stronger… and the cycle continues.

Now go get at it.

Here are some added pictures from my wondrously relaxing 4^th of July weekend!

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Thursday Thoughts

July 3, 2014 by Jenna

You know what they always say… knee-high by the 4^th of July! I am at my parent’s house and we are about to head up to our cabin for the weekend. I thought I would share this picture of our corn field. I also thought I would share some things I have been thinking about this week:

Last weekend was the Pride Festival in Minneapolis. It was so much fun. I kind of felt like I was in Vegas for a second? Love for everyone, people. Love. For. Everyone.
I just bought these little detachable lenses for my iPhone last week: wide-angle, fisheye, and macro. They are so cute and little and just snap on and off via a magnet. I haven’t played with them too much yet – the above photo was taken with the fisheye lens this morning – but I am excited to experiment more!
I just started using Bloglovin’ and I loooove it. It’s like a combination of Pinterest and Feedly. #addicting. Check it out and follow me on there!
I really want to try to grill pizza. Have you done it before? This looks amazing and so does this. Come grill and eat (and drink) with me!
On Saturday the ladies in my family along our cabin neighbor ladies will be running/walking the Nisswa Firecracker 5K together as the “Bass Lake Bandits”. My mom made all of us matching red, white, and blue headbands. The finish line features a crawfish boil, a free PBR, and a Slip ‘N Slide. So yeah, it’ll be fun.

I had a half-day of work, so I am officially on vacation and ready to head up north. Woop woop! My bag is packed full of miscellaneous red, white, and blue clothing that will hopefully come together is a somewhat matching and stylish patriotic outfit or two. My nails are red. I am ready to go festively celebrate our nation’s birth. I hope you have a great weekend planned! I hope you grill and enjoy some sunshine and wear sunscreen and enjoy time with people you love (or like a lot) and have ice cold beverages and hop into a pool or lake and see fireworks and just have a grand time all around!

Have a great day! xo

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Browned Butter Ginger Peach Blondies

July 2, 2014 by Jenna

Browned butter. It’s nutty, flavorful, and adds a completely different dimension to baked goods.

Have you ever cooked or baked with it before? If not, you should go change that right now. Get out a stick of butter and start melting it! Or maybe wait until after you are done reading this. Sometimes multi-tasking is hard and you really don’t want to burn it.

Browned butter is exactly what it sounds like: butter than has been browned. Go figure.

You essentially melt butter in a saucepan and whisk it until the milk solids are cooked and toasted. This is what makes the butter brown and gives off that nice, nutty aroma. It’s amazing. But for how amazing browned butter is, blackened butter is not. So watch it carefully and do not burn it, hence my previous warning about multi-tasking.

I am going to add this browned butter into blondies.

Now let’s think about this: dishwater blonde is a hair color that is blondish-brownish. So if I use browned butter in blondies should I call them “dishwater blondies”?

That’s a hypothetical question. I am not going to call them that.

Plus, along with the browned butter we are also going to add in some ginger and peaches. And what would you call that? These ingredients just throw an entirely different dimension into this hair color analogy, so I’m just going to stop. After all, this isn’t a salon. It’s a kitchen.

Oh, and pecans. I can’t forget about the toasted pecans!

So we’re just going to stick with this: browned butter ginger peach blondies.

The name is a bit long, but the product is a lot delicious.

Browned Butter Ginger Peach Blondies

Prep time

25 mins

Cook time

35 mins

Total time

1 hour

Browned butter give these blondies a whole new flavor dimension, but then adding ginger, pecans, and peaches turn them into one extremely delicious bar. They are packed with flavor, soft, and incredibly satisfying.

Author: Jenna Duesterhoeft

Serves: 24

Ingredients

1 cup pecans
15 tbsp unsalted butter (1 ½ sticks), melted and cooled
1 ¾ cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 tsp ground ginger
1 ½ cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 firm peaches, one diced and one sliced

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 350° F. Take two pieces of foil and place them perpendicularly in a 13x9” baking pan. Leave some overhang so that the blondies can easily be lifted out of the pan. Grease foil with butter or oil.
To toast the nuts: spread pecans on a baking sheet and bake for about 10-15 minutes until golden brown. Stir them around occasionally (every 5 minutes or so) to ensure they are not burning. Once toasted, chop roughly and set aside.
To brown the butter: melt butter in a medium saucepan. Whisk the melted butter until brown specks appear at the bottom, it will froth and foam a bit. Watch closely and be careful not to burn. It should be a light brown color and have a nutty aroma. Place browned butter (should yield about ¾ cup) into a heatproof bowl and let cool slightly.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and ginger. Toss in the diced peaches. Set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together the browned butter and brown sugar until combined. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Fold in the dry ingredients until just combined; do not overmix. Fold in the nuts (feel free to save some to sprinkle on top).
Spread batter into the prepared pan, place the sliced peaches on top, sprinkle with the remaining pecans and a few dashes of ginger. Bake for 30-35 minutes.
Cool completely before removing bars from the pan.

Notes

The peaches make these bars super soft and moist, so a good, firm peach is ideal for this recipe. Pat the sliced and diced peaches with a paper towel before incorporating into the recipe to draw out some of the additional moisture.

I know you are probably prepping for a huge 4^th of July picnic right now. I apologize for not bringing you something in the red, white, and blue color scheme. But at the same time, I don’t apologize at all. These are so, so good.

Oh, and Follow my blog with Bloglovin!

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4th of July Tabata Workout

June 30, 2014 by Jenna

I don’t know about you, but I had an awesome weekend. It just really felt like summer. I needed one of those. It reminded me how great it is to be alive and young. So much fun.

And this coming weekend: 4^th of July! Who is excited?! A short workweek followed by a long weekend. What’s not to love? I hope you are all planning on lots of sunshine and lake time and BBQs and watermelon. I am. That is fo sho.

Inspired by the 4^th of July, I put together a little tabata workout.

July 4 = 7/4 = 7 rounds of 4 exercises. Get it?

The awesome thing about tabata is that it is super quick and extremely effective. Remember this HIIT workout when I explained the benefits of this type of training? The science around tabata is the same.

This workout will take you less than 20 minutes. It is quick, but it is not easy! It actually is harddddd. In order to make it worth your time, you have to push it – really make yourself work. You should be huffin’ and puffin’ and sweatin’. Then afterwards you will feel amazing. Your metabolism will be all revved up and you won’t feel as bad about indulging in hot dogs, s’mores, and flag cake.

Do it a once or twice this week to prep for all the lake/pool time, delicious food, and cold beverages.

Maybe you are going out of town and won’t have access to a gym. That is no problem! You can basically do this workout anywhere. The only thing you need is a timer, because if you can easily and evenly count to 20 seconds through all these exercise it means you are not working hard enough. Luckily for us, there is a plethora of timer and stopwatch apps.

I will be doing this workout outside of my cabin on Friday morning before throwing on my swimsuit and chilling by the lake. Maybe I will get the rest of my family to join in. The sound of loons will be our background music.

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jenna.faye.ivey