What I Made – Week 9

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For a pretty heavy basket, we didn’t make too many impressive meals this week. We were able to use up some of the older items hanging around from last week, though.

A special occasion dinner called for easy roasted potatoes, a pork shoulder smoked for over 12 hours, and skillet blistered green beans.
This black rice with tempeh, mushrooms, and garlic scapes had minimal ingredients, but lots of stir fry flavor. I steam tempeh for 10 minutes before frying to remove any bitterness because I read that once and thought, why not.
No one has ever confused me for a cauliflower fan, but roasted until brown with spices and used on top of a salad is pretty great. This shawarma spiced version also included red pepper hummus, mint and in a later version, feta and dried fruit, all topped with a tahini lemon dressing.
This zucchini noodle bolognese was so easy it really doesn’t need a recipe. I browned hot Italian sausage, cooked down some whole peeled tomatoes (canned from our garden bounty last year), and spiced it up with some Italian herbs to make the meat sauce. The zucchini will release water into the sauce, so thicker is better at this point. Pour it over the spiralized zucchini and top with cheese and you’re all set!

Not pictured are the blueberry and cherry sauces we made for topping waffles (or ice cream). We still have the kale and more zucchini to try and use next week!

What I’ve Planned – Week 9

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Like I mentioned last week, we have some soggy lettuce hanging around, so you’ll notice some recipes this week that feature ingredients from weeks past as we try to not let anything go to waste.

What I Made – Week 8

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You would have thought this week’s basket world have brought more salads, and it should have! Here’s what we ate instead.

This blueberry buckle has 4 cups of blueberries! Not on purpose, but it was an effective way to use everything up, so we’ll call it a happy accident.
Roasted broccoli is tossed with olive oil and harissa for this tofu quinoa bowl.
A salad! Lettuce topped with mozzarella, craisins, and chicken with a garlic scape dressing.
This cabbage is seared before being braised in a spiced tomato sauce. I didn’t top it with yogurt like the recipe said, so it could have used some lemon juice or another splash of something tangy.
These mini-burritos are filled with beans, rice, and chard, topped with cheese, and broiled until melty and just slightly browned.
I added a can of diced tomatoes to make this vegetable vindaloo with potatoes and carrots extra saucy! I did forget to add the peas.
And finally for birthday dinner, skillet steak with peas and asparagus, a very quick and very tasty early summer meal.

What I’ve Planned – Week 8

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This is the perfect early summer basket this week! The boxes are getting heavier and the veggies are filling up both sides of our crisper, which is a sure sign we’re headed for peak season. I’m trying to take a break from pasta with my menu this week, although there’s no break from salads in sight!

What I Made – Week 7

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Our household comes down strong on the side of waffles in the morning debate of pancakes versus waffles. With blueberries throughout and topped with butter and real maple syrup, how could you not love these?
Blueberry muffins are pretty great, too. Especially when they make use of this incredibly simple-yet-foolproof muffin recipe.
Two whole-roasted components that were later disassembled into a meal: a chicken cooked per Ina Garten, but smeared with homemade pesto under the skin, and kohlrabi, later peeled and combined with peppers and feta.
It’s not very pretty to look at, but this zucchini chicken enchilada casserole is one on my go-to zucchini recipes these days. Instead of spiralizing them, I cut the zucchini into thin rounds and dry them a bit with a quick turn under the broiler before layering it into the casserole.
This pasta with sausage and peas was great on a rainy evening, and even though we used hot it’s,Ian sausage, it wasn’t at all spicy.
I actually roasted these beets early in the week along with the chicken and kohlrabi, so the assembly of this salad just required cooking the grain (freekeh, in this case), making the vinaigrette, and chopping the lettuce for a very quick weeknight meal. Is this meal prep?
I amped up the veggies in this clam pasta with white wine sauce by adding extra carrots, but it would also be good with some wilted spinach stirred in.

We still have more lettuce to use and a bundle of garlic scapes (in addition to what we harvested from our own garden)! We’ve frozen some of the extra peas, because we’re doing the same with what we’ve been getting from our garden, too!

What I’ve Planned – Week 7

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A good mix of roots and leaves this week. I’m trying to plan a lot of quick meals good for a busy workweek with long hours, or at least with parts that can be prepped ahead of time.

We’ll probably just eat the peaches plain and either turn the scapes into more pesto, or save them for another week.

What I Got – Week 7

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Happy first week of fruit share! Unfortunately with the cold weather, the usual farms are not producing much yet, so our fruit this week came to us from Georgia!

Clockwise from left: Orange Carrots, Little Gem Romaine Lettuce, White Kohlrabi, Red Beets, Garlic Scapes, English Peas, Peaches, Blueberries, Green Zucchini

What I Made – Week 6

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Let’s start with the most photogenic dish of the week, and also a surprisingly easy one! We used arctic char instead of the bass, and swapped the arugula for regular old lettuce.
This potatoes, fennel, and sausage skillet is an example of how I followed a recipe, but completely changed everything. I didn’t think my skillet was big enough to cook everything together, so I roasted the potatoes in the oven, adding the sliced fennel halfway through. I browned the sausage and onions in the pan, and cooked the onions in the sauce to make the glaze. Then I just topped the potatoes and fennel with the glazed onions and sausage. It was tasty, but heavy for a summer meal.
A pretty straightforward taco salad with last week’s shredded beef. We mixed a tablespoon or two of hot salsa and a tablespoon or so of spice blend into the beef to amp up the taco flavor.
I’ve made this recipe for salmon and napa cabbage many times, but didn’t follow the directions for the fish as closely this time. Do as the recipe says, not as I did if you want delicious crispy skin.
Another meal where I made some changes for the texture. I pan fried the tofu instead of marinating it, then just added oil to the marinade from the recipe to make a dressing. We left off the rice noodles this time, but I also like bean thread noodles on this.
Part salad, part grain bowl, the basic formula for this quinoa base with a lemon scallion vinaigrette and whatever cheese, dried fruit, and nuts you have (or not) is the recipe I always go to when I have a leafy green and no ideas for dinner.
Behold the collard breakfast sandwich! We followed the recipe instructions for the collards but managed to change just about everything else: an English muffin instead of a biscuit, peach bourbon jam instead of the aioli, country ham instead of pancetta, and a fried egg in place of the scrambled. But it tasted very good anyway.
Last but not least, rhubarb! lemon! cheesecake! I like to layer the curd throughout the cheesecake rather than just swirling it on top for maximum combination per bite. It’s also great with gluten free cookies for the crust.