Ashley O'Hara

The simple things in life are what I enjoy most.  Nature, in all its beauty and bounty, is a force that drives me, and gives me joy and good health.

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Chicken and tomato soup with spinach, potatoes and carrots

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Butternut squash soup with bacon and kale

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Creamy mashed potato pancakes with a crispy, buttery crust just like my mom always made the morning after mashed potatoes.

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Frewmsh turkey burger over Jersey greens, cucumber, tomstoes and radishes.

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Can't get enough tacos in our house. This time was with fresh grilled chicken breasts, grilled onions and Jersey bell peppers.

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Fresh cod fillets topped with a sautéed chopped bacon and shitake mushroom mixture and then broiled for a crispy, buttery tender texture. A quick sauté of arugula with minced garlic gave the fish a nice peppery bite. Some of the meaty shitakes were kept sliced to add to the arugula mixture. This is incredibly easy and too tasty to pass up!

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Can't get enough Jersey fresh veggies!

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Gravy with Italian sausage and eggplant with fresh Jersey tomatoes and eggplant from my parents' garden.

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Jalapeño-stuffed bacon-wrapped shrimp with Spanish rice and Jersey tomatoes from my parents’ garden.

The shrimp literally consist of three ingredients. Can you guess what they are? Ha. It’s a very simple “recipe” complements of Valerie Bertinelli on the Food Network. Keeping the jalapeño in the deveined shrimp while wrapping it with a slice of bacon can be slightly tedious. It took me about a half hour to wrap 24 large shrimp - half a frozen bag I thawed in a bowl of water for a couple of hours. I tried cutting the slices of bacon in half as well as cocooning other shrimp with a whole slice, and both worked. I found that the whole slice looked nicer and held the jalapeño in the shrimp nicely, yet once fried in a layer of vegetable oil, the outer layer of bacon crisped like I intended while the layer or two wrapped underneath did not. That didn’t bother me or my husband, however some people may prefer less layers of bacon per shrimp. These would be perfect for an appetizer. Held together with a long toothpick, they’re a great salty, spicy finger food or pair well with rice, like we had it, and a veggie. With Jersey tomatoes at their peak, we have them with pretty much everything we eat for lunch and dinner.

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Lettuce right outside our door at the Jersey shore.

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Can’t get enough if Jersey summer veggies from my and my parents’ garden.

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Jersey zucchini pizza boats with garlic marinara, mozzarella cheese, and Jersey basil from our garden.

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Jersey zucchini and chicken sausage in garlic marinara over linguine.

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Beautiful, vibrant colors make shish kabobs the ultimate grilled summer meal for a crowd. It really couldn’t be any easier. Besides using a food processor to whip up a quick marinade, all this meal requires is a knife and a bit of time to slice up an array of meat and veggies. I select vegetables that are in season: green zucchini, yellow squash, red bell pepper, red onion, Delaware yellow corn, button mushrooms, pork loin, sirloin, and shrimp, all of which I had in the freezer and bought during different sales at Shop Rite and Acme. Sometimes I buy meats fresh at a local butcher in Ventnor. Whatever I’m feeling on a particular day or how mich time I have to prepare. You can’t ever go wrong with buying, saving, and freezing; I don’t taste much of a difference in flavor and freshness, but that’s just me. I chose a marinade I found on Pinterest for these kabobs: ½ cup canola oil (I used vegetable oil), 2 T fish sauce, 1 T lime juice, ½ bunch if cilantro, 2 cloves of garlic, and 2 T brown sugar. We chose to double this since we had about 2.5 kinds of meat/shrimp and a ton of vegetables, but you’d be surprised how far the marinade goes when you pour it in a gallon zip lock back and swish the marinade around the meat. Separate your meat and veggies in two bags so that you can reuse the marinade on the veggies to brush everything once you have it on the grill, especially if you’re grilling in batches. Or, save some marinade on the side. The more you brush, the juicier the kabobs.