CSA week 3 (may 28-june 3)

tatsoi, bok choy, red leaf lettuce, rainbow swiss chard, cabbage, baby vidalia onions, squash and zucchini, cauliflower, sugar snap peas, Asian broccoli. 

Wednesday supper:

Thai inspired pasta with sautéed tatsoi and garlic. The sauce for the pasta had honey, soy sauce, peanut butter, cooking oil (good with sesame oil, but we're out), cilantro, and toasted sesame seeds. This would have also been good with some chopped green onions. Y'all like that fancy rotini/macaroni pasta communication? Just using what we had. 

Saturday lunch: 

Chicken salad bibb lettuce wrap with sugar snaps and leftover pasta. I made mayo for the first time to put in the chicken salad. 

Monday supper:

Roasted cauliflower, fresh Asian broccoli with edible flowers, and fried squash. 

Tuesday supper: 

Salad with bibb and red leaf lettuces, blueberries from another local farm, and sugar snaps. And pizza with Trader Joe's whole wheat pizza crust, broccoli, spinach, pepperoni, and cheese. 

Extras: 

More swiss chard pesto. This time I uses lemon thyme from my garden instead of cilantro, and almonds for the nuts. 

CSA week 2 (may 21-27)

Last week's produce was two different kinds of kale (I think they're red Russian and dino), more rainbow Swiss chard, bibb lettuce, cauliflower, and baby vidalia onions. 

Here are our meals and snacks that used these delicious veggies. 

Thursday supper:

Baked potatoes with olive oil, salt, pepper, cheddar cheese, ham, and vidalia onion greens. I also covered my potato with whole plain yogurt after I took the photo.

Friday supper: 

Veggie tacos with salsa and cheese wrapped with bibb lettuce leaves. Spinach and cauliflower salad. The taco filling was chickpeas with a little leftover chopped carrots and bell pepper from the yogurt dip from the week before-- I accidentally chopped too much so I saved it, knowing I could find somewhere to use it. These tacos were perfect for it. Herbs and spices included fresh garlic, onion, and cilantro, and dried cumin and chili powder. And probably black pepper and salt. 

Saturday supper:

Homemade pesto pizza (#1). Trader joes whole wheat crust, with Swiss chard and kale pesto, home roasted red peppers, olives, vidalia onion-- root and greens, spinach, and mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. The photo is before I added the spinach and cheeses because I wanted to show off the pretty pesto and peppers. 

I did make another big batch of pesto with pecans instead of sunflower seeds this time. I think I like it better with pecans. I froze half in cubes. And there was still some leftover for later in the week. 

Tuesday supper:

Homemade pesto pizza (#2) with cauliflower crust. I used this cauliflower cheese stick recipe for the crust, Swiss chard and kale pesto, home roasted red peppers, vidalia onion, spinach, and cheeses. 

Snacks and others:

Kale chips! I used the dino kale and this crunchy kale chips recipe. The toddler and I are both enjoying them. 

I also steamed and chopped the rest of the red kale and froze in cubes for smoothies. No coconut cream this time. 

We have lettuce leftover again this week. I think we're going to need a big salad for supper soon. 

CSA week 1 (may 14-20)

I signed up for a CSA share (community supported agriculture) for the summer. I've been interested in the "produce box" veggie delivery concept for several years, but I had never found anything I could afford with our grocery budget. A couple weeks ago I learned that it's called CSA, so I was able to properly google and do some research. I learned that many of the pricy (for me) produce delivery people are more like distributors. Which I'm sure is great for many farmers, to have a middle man to handle the orders, money, deliveries, work with other farmers, etc; and great for many customers to know exactly what they'll get and have it delivered to their door. But I found several true CSA farmers in my area, including one just down the road from me. I'm using Double T Farm this summer. No middle man, no buying produce from other farms; I get what's growing local in the season. And I pick it up at the farmers' house. 

We'll see if I want to keep this up all summer; I'm going to share my fruit and veggies for the week and how I used them. This was technically week 2 for my farmers, but I signed up one week late, so it's my week 1. 

Top to bottom: romaine, kale, bok choy, rainbow swiss chard, broccoli, spinach (that was less than half), and salad turnips. 

I was so impressed with these beautiful greens! I was also determined not to cook them all in a ham or chicken stock, chop, and serve with chow chow like New Year's Day, or Thanksgiving, Christmas, or any other winter dinner. So here is what I did,

Wednesday supper (and my birthday)

Roasted turnips and sweet potatoes, quinoa cooked in chicken broth, spinach salad, and homemade whole wheat bread. The bread looks completely mangled because I give the toddler with six molars and still learning to chew, some of the softer inside part of the bread. This homemade bread gets a crunchy crust, and he can't quite handle it yet. I enjoy it though. 

Thursday supper, I forgot to take a photo. We had sautéed onion, garic, kale, and tomatoes, with sausage. I served it with that same quinoa from Wednesday. It grows. I cook it once and we eat the leftovers for a week. The sausage made this delicious.

Friday supper with family. 

Saturday supper

Pasta with swiss chard pesto**. Spinach and romaine salad with broccoli and carrots. I made the whole recipe of the pesto; I left out the Parmesan cheese so half of it could freeze well. I obviously loaded my macaroni with cheese when it was time to eat. Recipe link at the bottom. 

Pesto cubes!!

There it is. The recipe called for sunflower seeds, which Jonathan and I both thought was a strong flavor for this pesto. If I make this again, I'll try it with walnuts or pecans instead.

Sunday snack, with lots of leftovers. 

Kale and spinach yogurt. I like how mine looks nothing like the photo accompanying the recipe. I skipped the mayo and added some olive oil and maybe a drop of apple cider vinegar. It is garlicky and delicious. 

Kale and coconut milk cubes. 

I had a little more kale than I needed so after I chopped it in the food processor, I mixed it with some canned coconut cream and froze it in cubes for smoothies. 

Monday supper with family. 

Tuesday supper

Leftover quinoa, roasted broccoli, turnips, and bok choy. 

I still have the turnip greens and some romaine. That was a lot of salad last week, so we couldn't eat it all. If Jonathan and I had both had salads for lunch every single day, then maybe, but no. Actually, Jonathan took leftovers for lunch about everyday. I have used the romaine several days for lunch to wrap my ham and cheese, but we got bibb lettuce this week, so I used that yesterday for lunch. Maybe I'll blanche or sauté the turnip greens to freeze and throw them on some pizzas this summer.

**I know I need to add the link for the swiss chard pesto. Blogger is hard to work with from a phone; I'm pleased to get those few links I did. If you follow my good eats board on Pinterest, you can find it there until I get to my computer and add the recipe link. Or I bet I can stick it here on the bottom. Swiss Chard Pesto. Done! 

homemade sunbutter. bullpen butter?

A couple weeks ago I made my own toasted coconut butter. It's very easy to make in a food processor; it turns into a butter consistency pretty quickly, so there weren't ever any, "oh no! I'm doing it wrong!!!" freak out moments. It was so easy and fun I immediately thought, "what else can I turn into butter?!"

Next up were sunflower seeds. I followed the instructions on the Prudent Baby website except I didn't add any sugar, honey, etc.

I toasted the seeds in a pan on the stove-- not in the oven-- then poured them in the food processor to let it do it's thing. Which took like 10-15 min. I have a really good food processor so my motor did not get hot, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if you needed to give an older (or cheaper) food processor a break to let it cool. The bowl got hot though from the friction of all the spinning and grinding and mixing and processing, but that wasn't a problem. Then I scraped it all into a Mt Olive Pickles jar, and stuck it in the fridge for later. Check out the link for the details. And let me know if you try it. A 1 lb bag of raw sunflower seeds is available at Trader Joes for $1.99 in Raleigh, NC; and it made about 14 oz of sunbutter. Get you some.

I think at my house, sunbutter needs another name. I'm kind of liking bullpen butter. Thoughts?

macaroons

Evidently I'm easily inspired to try a new dessert. I have Messianic Jewish family living in Jerusalem, so they participate in all the holy days. I get to learn more about the festivals and what God has told them to do, as well as their traditions that have been added to the celebrations. One of the Passover traditions is eating macaroons. Check out my cousin, Callie's, blog post about Macaroon Madness and shopping for them at the shuk in Jerusalem.

My boys have a Jewish heritage, but as far as I know Jonathan's family does not observe any Jewish traditions. Eliad and I are learning more about his heritage from some children's books I've checked out at the library, from what I'm learning from Callie's first-hand experience, and of course from reading the Old Testament and stories from our various Bible story books. But really, making macaroons had very little to do with anything except, "HEY, macaroons for the Feast of Unleavened Bread?! Great inspiration! I'm doing it!" I've been known to make cheesecake during Shavuot too.

So how about a recipe. I pinned a pretty basic looking macaroon recipe on Pinterest just a day or two before Callie's macaroon blog post. I'm fairly certain it wasn't a coincidence that it popped up on the food & drink category page during Passover. The recipe is from Real Simple. I followed the recipe for the ingredients, but the ice cream scoop suggestion was making HUGE macaroons-- much bigger than I wanted. Instead I used a tablespoon and scooped a good, rounded coconut ball with that. I used insulated baking sheets which require increased baking time. And instead of parchment paper I sprayed my pans with olive oil-- risky, I know. My suggestion if you use a greased pan instead of parchment paper, let the macaroons cool very briefly after taking them out of the oven, then move them with a spatula. They do not stick to the pan when hot, but they will stick if they're left to cool very long on the pan. Also, this recipe is pretty forgiving with separating eggs. With my third egg, the whole thing plopped into the bowl and the yolk immediately broke. Booo. I scooped out most of the yolk with a spoon, but there was still a tiny amount-- it never would have whipped up for a meringue. But for these macaroons, it all worked out very well. (That was good practice for meringue though. Now I know I need to separate each egg over a different bowl before adding it to the other whites.)

My smaller version made about 24 macaroons. I dipped about half in semi sweet chocolate. I dusted a few with cocoa powder, a few with cinnamon, and I left a few plain. I'm very interested in other flavor ideas you try.

Here is the original recipe from Real Simple:

3 large egg whites
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 14-ounce package sweetened shredded coconut (about 5 cups)

1. Heat oven to 325° F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment.

2. Vigorously whisk together the egg whites, sugar, vanilla, and salt in a medium bowl until glossy, foamy, and the sugar is mostly almost dissolved. Fold in the coconut, stirring until evenly combined.

3. Using a small ice cream scoop, drop the batter in mounds (about 2 tablespoons each) 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake, rotating the sheets halfway through, until golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes; let cool completely. The macaroons will keep for up to 5 days at room temperature in an airtight container.