Red Leaf Lettuce

What I Made – Week 16 and What I’ve Planned – Week 17

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  • We didn’t cook much at the beach, but I did manage to use up a few things.
    • Pasta with sausage and dandelion greens (adds a bit more bite than the chard this recipe calls for, and I use whatever pasta I have on hand)
    • Grilled eggplant risotto, not what you’d think of as a traditional beach meal, but great on a stormy evening with some fresh scallops
    • Grilled corn, either slathered with mayo, feta, and a squeeze of lime to echo Mexican flavors, or with good old fashioned butter

    I’m planning to cut the rest of the corn off the cobs and freeze it for use in soup or chicken chili later this fall or winter.

    I also let those cayenne peppers turn red on the counter, then I finally dehydrated them and pulsed them in the food processor to make red pepper flakes. I didn’t use the good appliance, so the size of the flakes is a bit inconsistent, but they are definitely potent!

    To make this week, I’ve planned ways to use peppers, peppers, and more peppers

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    What I Got – Weeks 16 and 17

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    I spent Week 16 at the beach and didn’t take pictures of what we made, so it’s a combo list this time around!

    Week 16

    • Canary Melon
    • Little Sweetie Cantaloupe
    • Orange Seedless Watermelon
    • Bicolor Sweet Corn
    • Green Dandelion
    • Italian Eggplant
    • Mixed Sweet Peppers
    • Red Grape Tomatoes
    • Yellow Tomatoes
    • Red Okra

    Week 17

    Clockwise from left: Red Leaf Lettuce, Yukon Gold Potatoes, Yellow Seedless Watermelon, Green Cabbage, Canary Melon, Bicolor Sweet Corn, Green Bell Peppers, Red Radishes, Bartlett Pears, Red Grape Tomatoes, Orange Carrots

    What I Made – Week 7

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    These week in reviews make me realize how often I make one-pot or bowl meals. Salads and stir fry were this week’s mainstays. (Still have a head of lettuce left over somehow, along with my cucumbers and a few scallions!) Here’s what I did use this week…

    It doesn’t look so pretty, but I make this salad with beets very often. If you make the quinoa and roast the beets ahead of time, it comes together very quickly and stores great for leftovers.

    This stir fry with brown sauce couldn’t be easier or more adaptable. Thinly slice the bok choy and stir fry the white parts in a wok until softened and slightly browned. (I also added in some frozen stir fry mix for more flavor.) Then stir in greens and cook until wilted. Stir in sauce and top with protein. (I used pan-fried tofu here.)

    For as simple as this kale salad with farro is, it’s so flavorful! Besides the marinated kale and farro, we topped this with toasted pecans, Craisins, goat cheese, and scallions. It also kept very well for leftovers the next day!

    I like the flavors of this beef and broccoli, but if I made it again, I would thicken the sauce in a separate skillet much like the bok choy recipe above. I would not choose to substitute elk again; I didn’t prefer that taste.

    What I’ve Planned – Week 7

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    Even though there’s not nearly as much lettuce to eat this week, you’ll still notice a few salads in the mix this week.

    Here’s what I have planned:

    • Beet quinoa salad, one of my very favorite beet recipes, although I might change up the dressing for a more simple citrus vinaigrette
    • Garlic tofu stir fry with Bok Choy and other frozen stir fry mix veggies that have been hanging out in the fridge for too long. I’ll top it with this easy but tasty brown sauce,
    • Kale and Potato Bowl. According to the original recipe, this is not a salad, it’s a bowl.
    • Farro salad with kale. Does it still count as a salad if it’s a grain salad? I’ll make this salad more summery than autumnal by tossing in whatever fresh cherries we have left by this point in the week.
    • Beef and broccoli. Although I will use very thinly sliced elk roast, I’ll follow a recipe similar to this one.
    • Blueberry muffins! I’m sure these will be delicious no matter what recipe you might choose to use. I might try the one from Bravetart.

    Since I’m posting this a bit later than usual, I can shared that we’ve already enjoyed a paella with the peas both from our basket and from our backyard garden! I made a few changes to the original recipe, including swapping fish fillets in for the clams and cooking the seafood a bit longer at the end (closer to 20 minutes for the fish) to make sure everything was fully cooked. This overcooked the shrimp, so for future recipes, I’d probably simmer the fish and peas in the middle step when the rice was cooking, and then just steam the shrimp at the end for 5 minutes as directed.This enormous pan of paella (note that it almost stretches the full width of my stove) will keep us in leftovers for the week!

    Paella enjoyed al fresco with a glass of white wine is a good way to chase away the Sunday Scaries.

    What I Made – Week 6

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    It was a lot of salads this week, but I did manage to make some other types of meals as well. Not pictured below include my go-to quiche with beet greens and green garlic from my garden and a garlic scape pesto made with basil from the farmers market.

    This was the Tandoori Chicken and Rice Bake. I’ve really liked this recipe in the past, but the chicken turned out very tough and dry this time. Maybe it was because I used a 14.5 ounce can of light coconut milk and 1.5 cups of broth instead a 14.5 ounce can of broth, a cup of coconut milk and a half cup of water? Maybe I over cooked the chicken even though I didn’t fully cook it through in a skillet like the recipe says? I may never know.

    This salad is inspired by chicken shawarma. The instructions had you marinate the whole chicken thigh with lots of spices, but since they were skin-on and bone-in, most of the spices stayed stuck to the skin. Even though I marinated these overnight, I didn’t get much flavor once the chicken was shredded.

    Another day, another salad. This no-recipe salad includes roasted beets, quinoa, chipotle sausage, and goat cheese with a citrus vinaigrette (chopped shallots, orange juice, honey, red wine vinegar, and olive oil).

    This may not look like much, but this pasta with hot Italian sausage and dandelion greens is one of our all-time favorite recipes for using up any greens from dandelion to Swiss chard to escarole. I do make some changes to the recipe. I use whatever type of pasta I have available, typically substitute hot Italian sausage for mild for the additional flavor, and use an imprecise mix of skim milk and some cream in place of the non-skim milk. After the sausage is browned, I leave the drippings in the pan and add whatever amount of butter I think will make up the difference to get around 3-4 tablespoons.

    The dressing on this Vietnamese-Style Chicken & Noodle Salad is the perfect balance of sweet and tangy. I kept the veggie ingredients for the salad to cabbage, cucumber, cilantro, mint, and pickled radishes, only because I was too lazy to buy the other items. I layered this more like a traditional salad, but I wish I had tossed the cabbage and other veggies with the noodles as directed in the recipe to more evenly mix the ingredients and distribute the dressing.

    Even though we made a lot of salads, we still have a head of red leaf lettuce and most of the head of cabbage left to use. The Swiss chard will be served with salmon for dinner. I’m thinking about trying these biscuits to use up those last two yellow patty pan squash. I’ll be making strawberry shortcake/biscuits tonight to finish up those strawberries, since our fruit share starts next week! Maybe soon we’ll move away from lettuce and start fruit salad season? A girl can dream…

    What I’ve Planned – Week 6

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    If I could rename this blog, I would call it “Salad Season” because each May we laugh about how much lettuce we seem to get, saying it’s to prepare our bodies for lounging beside swimming pools and on beaches. Somehow, the sudden bounty of leafy greens doesn’t have much effect on my physique, but it’s still nice to be eating lighter as the weather gets warmer, at least, most days.

    Here are some of the things I’m planning to make this week.

    • Tandoori chicken bake (I shred an entire zucchini or squash to make this casserole that is loaded with hidden vegetables!)
    • Salad with goat cheese, quinoa, and roasted beets
    • Pasta with Sausage and Dandelion Greens (adapted from this recipe, substituting hot Italian sausage for sweet, and dandelion greens for the chard)

    I’m trying to put that lettuce to use in lots of salad recipes this week. We typically take leftovers as lunch, so it really works out to salad every day. I won’t wish this time of year away, though, because after Salad Season comes Summer Squash Overload, and it will be here before we know it.

    What I’ve Planned – Week 3

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    Rather than post each recipe step by step this time around, I thought I would make a summary list of all the dishes I’m planning to make this week and which veggies they’ll use. It will help me think and shop ahead for meals for the week and will be much faster for me to write than the longer posts I used to make (hopefully helping me keep up with the blog, ahem). I’ll link to the recipes online, where possible, and will follow up with a full blog post if I love the recipe or make substantial changes – or if you send me your requests!

    Here goes, roughly in order from Sunday to Friday:

    Even though this sounds like a lot, I expect at the end of this week we will still have red scallions to use, even after I put them on the tofu and noodles and the poke bowl. We might have some lettuce left over and maybe even some kale since that bag was pretty stuffed. I know we will have green garlic still to use because I’ll be using what we got last week in the recipe this week! And to think, this is only the start of the season – I have my work cut out for me.

    What I Got: Week 3 2019

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    We’re very much in what I like to call “salad season these days. A sure way to know summer is fast approaching is that the garlic is looking less green and more like the adult bulb we typically know it as.

    Clockwise from left: Green Garlic, Spinach, Green Kale (busting out of its plastic bag!), two heads of Red Leaf Lettuce, two bunches of Red Scallions, Cremini Mushrooms, Mixed Cherry Tomatoes, and Shunkyo Radishes (with greens still attached)