Red Leaf Lettuce

What I’ve Planned – Week 11

/ CSA in the City / 1 Comment

I try to make a mix of quick, small meals we will finish in one sitting and larger meals that make plenty of leftovers and space them throughout the week. Salad on repeat gets old fast. The ingredients this week help me mix and match flavors for many different styles and tastes. Here’s what I have planned.

The peaches we got are pretty hard and will take a while to ripen. I also see a cucumber a day as snack in my future!

Advertisement

What I Made – Week 11

/ CSA in the City / 1 Comment

This is the week of the year when it’s almost too hot to stand over the stove, but we’re no longer getting much lettuce for salads! Only one salad this week, everything else I tried to make quick and easy or in the crock pot!

This sheet pan dinner simply includes sliced kielbasa, potatoes, and wax peppers, tossed with oil and whatever seasoning you like. I wish I had quick-pickled the peppers, because I missed the tang of vinegar in this.
Blackberries and blue cheese are combined with toasted pecans and a balsamic vinaigrette for this black and blue salad. I added quinoa to make it a full meal.
The cherry tomatoes add a colorful salsa to these zucchini quesadillas.
When I don’t know what to do with chard, I look for a recipe with spinach that also calls for sautéed onions. I toss the chopped stems in with the onions and use the leaves as the recipe directs you to use spinach. This lamb curry gets nice and tender in the crock pot after most of the ingredients are seared in a skillet. I added the chard leaves with about an hour left in the cook time.
This wax beans with chorizo dish would make a great side, but we add some extra chorizo and eat it as a main dish. (This is the Spanish dried chorizo, not the fresh sausage links you might see at the butcher counter.)
This tandoori chicken casserole has two whole zucchini shredded and mixed into the sauce! I usually use hot curry powder to give it a little kick, but I forgot this time, and missed the extra spice.

We ate the peaches plain, and are still up to our eyeballs in cucumbers with plenty of onions still on hand, but we did a pretty good job using up the rest of our veggies this week.

What I Made – Week 9

/ CSA in the City / 2 Comments

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

/ CSA in the City / 1 Comment

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 22

/ CSA in the City / Leave a comment

A belated post for Week 22!

Famous breakfast hash! We crisp sausage in a cast iron skillet, then cook onions in the same pan, then set aside sausage and onions and cook potatoes in the skillet. Everything is added back in, and 4 holes are made for the eggs. It’s all cooked under the broiler until the eggs are just set, then dusted with paprika and topped with cheese and sliced green onions.

Personal mizuna-topped pizzas, with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and salami. And yes, I burnt the crust broiling the mizuna… this was a new gluten free crust that I picked up on clearance at the store and I wasn’t a huge fan.

Chicken salad with crispy chickpeas and roasted carrots. I used vegan herbed cheese this time but it would be good with feta or goat cheese too.

Chicken piccata with roasted radishes. The blank space on the plate was for the roasted potatoes I forgot to include for this photo!

What I’ve Planned – Week 22

/ CSA in the City / Leave a comment

I’m very excited for the return of fall salads. It’s the perfect way to recognize that the tops of the trees are starting to glow with their autumn yellows and reds, but still recognize that somehow it’s almost 90 degrees and any length of time spent outdoors other than the first brisk pre-dawn hours may still come with oppressive humidity.

I’ll be using up the last few weeks of ingredients to make meals of what new things I got this week

What I Made – Week 17

/ CSA in the City / 1 Comment

Back to a full week of cooking! I didn’t plan it this way, but looking at the photos I guess it’s bowl food galore.

This Thai red curry soup was extremely spicy (my preference, I always go a bit heavier with the curry paste than the recipes call for) but wasn’t overwhelming, thanks to the creamy flavor of the coconut milk. If you prefer less spice, you’d be safe with the 3 tablespoons of curry paste the recipe calls for, and two tablespoons would be only a hint of flavor, I think. I also used rice vermicelli noodles per the photo on the site, even though the recipe doesn’t specify.

I turned this Tex Mex Tofu Quinoa Bowl into a salad by putting it over lettuce. Can you tell I had food styling help on this one? 😉

This one pot cabbage casserole may not look like much, but it’s got all the flavor of cabbage rolls with none of the work. Of course, we used fresh tomatoes instead of canned diced tomatoes, so some chopping was involved, but this is still one of my favorite easy recipes and it uses up half a head of cabbage!

I was able to use up several of my veggies and make a meat free, one pot dinner with this lentil salad. (I may have served this with fish, too!) I find the key to this recipe is really tasting the salad and adding vinegar to balance the flavor of mint, earthy lentils, sweet carrots and roasted peppers, and salty cheese. I just should have drained them a lot better to make them less soggy!

This Instant Pot Jambalaya is pictured immediately before I drowned it in hot sauce. There is lots of prep work and chopping for this recipe, but the actual cooking method couldn’t be easier. I used a tablespoon of Cajun seasoning but it definitely could have used more. I added sliced okra right before I cooked it under pressure and thought the texture was perfect. (I have never experienced the burn error this recipe warns you about.)