What's For Dinner? July Week 1

{July 2-8}

I know I've said this so many times already but I just can't say it enough:

It feels so good to eat like this!

When I signed up for the CSA, the motivations in my mind were mostly supporting local farmers and getting a variety of fresh, seasonal vegetables each week that didn't demand a weekly trip to the Farmer's Market. The fact that we found a farm that promises chemical-free food was just the icing on the cake for me. Don't get me wrong... we love the market, but it's often tough to get there every Saturday morning on busy summer weekends. And with all the U-Picking we've been doing, our Saturday mornings are often spoken for.

But somehow, there have been so many benefits to cooking and feeding my family this way that I hadn't even considered when we signed up:

1) The learning experience! Wow! I am learning so much about foods that were just never in my radar before. Foods I'd never tried. Foods that were familiar but now in a new light because of a new recipe. There IS a lot more work (actually, thought process) that goes into meal planning this way just in an effort to stay on top of it all. We're talking about perishable foods here... and a lot of them! Very, very little of it is going to waste. Just scraps really. So I am constantly thinking of food. :) What to make. When to make it so that everything gets used in a timely manner. Etc. Each week, when I receive my veggie bag, it feels a little bit like Christmas. I'm anticipating what I will receive this week and excitedly sorting through all of the contents. It also feels a little bit like a reality cooking show on Food Network where they provide you with an unknown ingredient and you have to figure out what to do with it. The newsletters are a HUGE help. I've used lots of their recipes. But as I sort through the bag, my mind is immediately thinking of recipes. I go to my recipe binder, my cookbooks and the Internet for ideas. I find that there are lots of suggestions and lots of people doing the same thing.

2) The shear amount of vegetables (& fruits because of U-Pick) we are consuming has really increased. They are main courses; they are side dishes; they are smoothies. Haha! :) Sometimes the meals are considerably lighter (as in "not heavy", not in total quantity) and we are making a meal almost entirely out of vegetables. They are the hub; the center of my meal planning... and whatever I'm serving is usually in an effort to use one vegetable or another.

3) When I said it "feels good", I meant that literally. I can feel and see a difference in my body, especially in the last couple weeks. My stomach and behind feel smaller and I just feel cleaner. I don't feel bloated in the evenings (sorry for being graphic) and I feel like I'm eating just the right amount... all of it very healthy. It's a good feeling. (Now if I could just go to bed earlier...)

Here is our vegetable share for week #5, picked up on June 28th:

Top left, moving clockwise: collard greens, lettuce, baby candy onions, frozen edamame (theirs), broccoli, zucchini, tomatoes.
And one other thing that wasn't pictured above: snap peas!

Here's a cute picture just for fun. Craig stocked me up on citrus fruits last week and intermixed them in bowls on the counter. We use lemon quite a bit in all sorts of recipes, but the lime was for a special drink, which I will share with you soon.
I made this first dish on Saturday evening to use up some of our Napa cabbage from the week before along with some of the snap peas and a tomato from the above bag. It's a stir fry recipe that Diane (of Riehm Farm) shared in our newsletter.
Chicken and Chinese/Napa Cabbage
1 chicken breast, boneless
2 tbsp oil
2-3 cups of Napa cabbage, chopped (it really cooks down)
8 mushrooms, sliced
1 cup grape tomatoes or chopped tomato (I used a regular tomato)
1-2 cups snap peas or regular peas
3/4 cup chicken stock or broth

Dissolve together:
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce
salt & pepper

Stir-fry chicken in oil until cooked through. Remove. Add cabbage, mushrooms snap peas and tomato. Continue stir-frying as you pour in the 3/4 cup stock. When cabbage is limp, add chicken and cornstarch mixture (see above). Stir-fry until sauce thickens. Serve over rice.

On Sunday, I just made quesadillas quickly (using some of the CSA green onions) between putt putt and fireworks... and then on Monday, we went to a family picnic.

Then every night for the rest of the week, I prepped the next night's meal after tucking the kids in bed and cleaning up from the current night's meal. On Tuesday, I picked up our sixth bag of veggies, which I will show you further down, and continued serving veggies from bag #5 (from the previous week).

Here's something super easy I came across on Smitten Kitchen: Quick Zucchini Saute. It's a cinch to prepare and I was able to do it in less than 10 minutes (including the time it took to julienne the zucchini and chop the almonds) while the Cherry Mustard Chicken warmed in the oven.

For Wednesday, I'd prepped Weelicious Chinese Chicken Salad again to finish off the last of the Napa cabbage. This was the night I went back to Pullins for raspberries, so it was easy to just pull this prepped bowl from the fridge...

...toss it with the already prepped sesame and peanut dressing, and serve it with lettuce leaves to wrap up. (Sorry for the blurry pics - I was using the little Nikon again for food pics a few times this week.)

Here are the ingredients for a perfectly simple dressing to serve over steamed broccoli. And a perfect pairing for Chinese Chicken Salad.

I just lightly steamed our CSA broccoli and then scooped them into a bowl with the dressing already in it. Toss together and sprinkle with sesame seeds! Voila!

Kids plates this night (Wednesday) - oops, the picture didn't turn. We've been eating sliced cheese with our meals a lot lately. Sophie actually ate and loved the lettuce wraps! Yay!

Craig's plate.

My plate. I had more than one lettuce wrap and saved room for dessert. We've been eating desserts involving raspberries all week too. Lots of berries over ice cream. Yum.

Thursday was another new-to-us recipe coming from my newsletter and calling for some of my collard greens: BBQ Sausage with Potatoes & Greens. Prior to last week, I wouldn't have known what in the world to do with collard greens. Or any "greens" for that matter. I know greens like chard and kale and collard greens are often used in soups and stews. And many varieties are served "creamed" as a side dish. But I'd never prepared them at all before last week. I used a couple of collard leaves in that green smoothie. And then I've made this BBQ dish twice since then. Craig, Will and I all really liked it. Sophie wouldn't touch it. But that's okay. I was so pleased that Will ate it!

Potatoes and greens get boiled with some garlic until soft.

Sliced sausage gets browned with some bell pepper and onion (I used my baby candy onions) in a skillet.

Then it's all tossed together with some BBQ sauce and served. As usual, I put it in a casserole dish and just reheated in the oven the next night for dinner. Very easy, healthy and delicious!

Dinner al fresco again.

I had bowls of fruit, bell pepper strips, sliced cheese and green beans (steamed from frozen, not fresh) to go with our meal. Plus some kohlrabi for me. Love it!

The kids eat pitted cherries the same way they eat fresh raspberries... poked onto their fingers and then popped into their mouths.
Okay, here are the contents of veggie bag #6, picked up on July 5th:

Frozen edamame, 3 red candy onions (with green stalks still attached), 1 kohlrabi (with greens still attached), 1 bunch kale, 1 huge head of lettuce, 1 pint raspberries, 1 zucchini, 3 tomatoes, bag of broccoli equal to one large head and a huge bunch of basil.

I've had to switch counters to find room to spread it all out now! Seriously, when I sorted through this bag, I wanted to do a happy dance... and hug the farmers. It all looks so good! And this week, all the vegetable shares got a bonus pint of raspberries! These last couple bags have definitely been worth more than the $16 per week that our total sum breaks down to.

I've got two bags of edamame in the freezer now and, though I'm anxious to taste it (I'm got an edamame hummus recipe in my future), this was an easy food to put on the back burner since it's already frozen. The rest needed to be used faster.

The kohlrabi was gone in just a couple days, as usual. I love to just slice it and eat it. My immediate thought for those tomatoes and some of the red onion was... SALSA! But that will be on the next dinner post. The only thing, besides kohlrabi, that I used immediately was the basil. One of the farmhands suggested I put it in a small cup of water and leave it out on the counter. I think it got wilty kind of quickly that way. Typically, I store fresh herbs wrapped in a damp paper towel inside a resealable plastic bag in the fridge.

So on Thursday night, I made pesto from a recipe in my newsletter. It suggested using walnuts in place of pine nuts as a less expensive alternative, so I did!

Basil Pesto
(I doubled this recipe)
2/3 cup fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup walnuts
2 garlic cloves
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup EVOO
1 tbsp lemon juice

Grind walnuts to fine texture in food processor. Add remaining ingredients and pulse to combine.

Then on Friday evening, I tossed about half of it with some cooked penne and a little starchy, cooking water for a light dinner.

The kids got avocado smoothie as a vitamin-packed beverage this night. Sophie can suck down two cups of that in seconds. Will likes it, but tends to savor it a little longer instead of gulping it down. Then they drank milk afterwards.

Again, we had sliced cheese on the side. Plus rinsed, fresh, black raspberries and steamed (from frozen) veggies.

A very good week, if you ask me!

So, what else?
I ordered the Gwyneth Paltrow cookbook from Amazon along with a new set of measuring spoons (I've been working without a tablespoon measure - mine broke - for months... I've had to measure 3 tsps of whatever to equal 1 tbsp - haha!), and a new Michael Pollan book that I haven't read yet. I'd really like to own several of his books, including two that I've already read.

The June issue of Bon Appetit had a lot of great articles in it. The one on Gwyneth Paltrow's cookbook is actually what convinced me to buy it. But they also had a whole bunch of recipes using sweet cherries, a whole post on frozen desserts (including those peach popsicles I just made) and an article called The Farm Box Diet (all about CSA's).

Here is what my desk looks like at work when I'm making out my grocery list on lunch break:
I've got my CSA newsletter, some recipes copied from magazines that sound good, U-Pick notes, the Meijer ad, a notebook for compiling my list and sometimes a Bon Appetit passed on from my co-worker.

Per Craig's encouragement (to make shopping easier for him when he takes his turn), I've started breaking the list into categories: dairy, produce and "aisles" (a.k.a. the center of the store). We never buy meat at the grocery store anymore and the list for the "aisles" really isn't very long. I have to say, this makes shopping easier for me too. I've noticed that the number of foods I add to my list based on the sale ad are much fewer than they used to be. I'm sure there are a variety of reasons for that.

Also, on one corner of the shopping list I make a list of recipes I plan to make for the week. This helps so much to remind me the purpose for various things I bought and so I don't forget to keep moving through all our fresh produce.

Happy summer eating!