The CSA week 16 produce was packed in ice chests and taken with us on a trek to Newport RI where we have been tourists this week. We knew we would have a kitchen so planned meals around the veggies. We ate well!
TheCSA week 17 share may be the last of the tomatoes….but we have cauliflower! The collection of veggies each week always prompts meal ideas. My challenge this week might be how to use all the poblano and padron peppers!
Week 15 of the Gorman Produce Farm CSA - it’s another week of great food!
There is a little bow wave of garlic, potatoes, and winter squash from previous weeks - but those foods keep for weeks and months. I did make a fabulous custard with leftover baked butternut squash this past week; mixed up in the smoothie maker with just a little honey, baked into a light consistency custard, and then drizzled with maple syrup just before being eaten. Yum! I’ve also enjoyed the small purple potatoes in stir fries (only 2 at a time to not get too overwhelmed with calories. We made a bit batch of spaghetti sauce to have made good use of some frozen tomato sauce I’d cooked when I was overwhelmed with tomatoes a few weeks ago.
The big surprise to me this week is that sweet potato leaves are edible! Evidently they can be used raw or cooked. I’ve going to try them both ways and, if I like them, go ahead and cut the leaves from the sweet potato on my deck to enjoy; supposedly it is a good thing to do a few weeks before the sweet potato harvest.
I traded the poblano pepper for an additional bundle of Dinosaur Kale since I enjoy kale chips so much.
Notice that I got all yellow tomatoes too! They’ll look beautiful with the red leafed lettuce.
Note that I’m using my own bags rather than bringing any plastic produce bags into the house. It feels good to avoid items that will become trash (or recycle if they stay clean). 
It takes a lot of focus to not have tomatoes left from the Gorman Produce Farm CSA share each week. This I made tomato sauce with all the tomatoes that were left (the roma tomatoes). I am perfecting my technique; the steps this week were:
Everything else I had left will last without refrigeration: potatoes and garlic.
This week there are a lot of tomatoes again. The new type of tomato in this week’s share was yellow (I got 4 of them along with 1 red one in the 3 pounds in this week’s share). The yellow tomato I ate with yogurt on top last night was pretty and tasty. I’ll eat the heirloom tomato for my next ‘tomato as a side dish.’
The beautiful peppers are in a range of colors. What a way to add flavor and color to a meal!
The spaghetti squash will work very well under chili that my husband is going to make (using up some of the tomato sauce I am accumulating).
This upcoming week is going to be a ‘good eating’ week!
I am enlarging my deck garden this year and done some planting in small pots indoors to be ready. It was finally warm enough here late last week for them to all go outdoors. I’ve planted combinations of plants in larger pots - one that will spill out over the side and one that will grow upward….or one that makes a large root and one that grows tall. I’m not sure it will work or not, but at least the deck will look interesting this summer and I’ll do a monthly post about the deck garden until the fall. I supplied the plants I had started from seed with potted plants bought at Home Depot once they were sale priced. The mint that wintered on the deck has already sprouted so I simply added something else to those pots. I have pots or troughs of:
Sweet potato and bell pepper
Watermelon and tomato
Zucchini and cilantro
Tomato and spaghetti squash
Cucumber and cilantro
Tomato and cucumber
Spaghetti squash and mint (in the old ‘turtle’ sandbox)
Tomato and carrots (in a repurposed bin that cat litter came in)
Cantaloupe and cilantro
I just realized that I probably should plant some basil somewhere.
Today I am thinking about foods that I am eating more frequently now that I was 5 years ago. Some are foods that are new to me within this time period. Some of the foods are ones that I’ve always eaten but I just each more of them now….or I buy different forms. My success in getting down to the ‘normal’ weight range for my height has a lot to do with the transformations I made in my diet. So - here is my list of the food I’m eating more this winter:
Pomegranates. The pomegranate season is something I look forward to. I eat 1/4 at a time….and managed to eat one a week for almost the entire season. But they’ve only been available from regular grocery stores in recent years. The first one I ate was on a visit to my mother; it is an easy fruit to like immediately.
Kale. Did you know that 1/4 cup of kale provides 131% of the Vitamin K daily requirement, 27% of Vitamin C, 28% of Copper and 12% of Vitamin A? It is a powerhouse leafy green. I use it in the winter time in soups and stir fries. I’d seen it in winter gardens long before I found it in the grocery and decided to try it in food. I prefer it cooked so I eat it more frequently in winter.
Mushrooms. I’ve purchased and eaten mushroom for a long time but have only recently started eating them more often. They are rich sources of Riboflavin, Niacin, and Pantothenic Acid as well as minerals like Copper and Selenium….and they contain protein too. I like them better in stir fries than I do raw….and I buy another package virtually every time I go to the grocery store.
Bell peppers. Until recently, I’ve generally eaten the green bell peppers but the packages of yellow, orange, red, and green peppers are what I have been buying recently. They all add color to stir fries - and the strips can be used to dip hummus during the summer.
Almond milk. I switched from cow’s milk to fortified almond milk a few years ago…and like it well enough to no longer need to take a calcium supplement!
Soy nuts. I like dry roast soy nuts. They are high in protein as well as good quality fats. They've replaced dry roasted peanuts almost entirely in my diet over the past year.
Quinoa. A grain that is a complete protein (i.e. includes all the essential amino acids)! And it cooks quickly too. I use it instead of rice under stir fry, in salads instead of pasta, and for breakfast instead of oatmeal or packaged cereals. It is my favorite grain. Quinoa has only recently become available in the grocery store.
Chia seeds. I tend to have a tablespoon of chia seeds with my almond milk almost every morning. It is quite a nutritional boost: Omega 3 fats, protein, and minerals like calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorous, selenium, and zinc. When I first tried chia seeds back in early 2012, I had to order them. Now they are available in my grocery store.
Butternut squash. For some reason, I tended to buy acorn squash if I bought winter squash at all. Then several years ago, I discovered butternut squash and now I buy it exclusively. I helps that the grocery store has packages of the squash already cut into chunks - perfect for roasting in the oven or cooking in broth to make a soup.
Plain yogurt. I used to always buy flavored yogurt….until I discovered how easy it was to make smoothies with plain yogurt and fruit. This winter I have been heating up frozen blueberries in the microwave and then putting a dollop of plain yogurt on top. Yummy….and I like the pretty purple it becomes when it is stirred into the blueberries.
Organic celery, oranges, beef, poultry, eggs. I seem to be buying more and more organic items over the past few years….but for different reasons. Celery was the first item I started buying organic after I read about it containing so many pesticides; I eat more of it during the summer than I do in the winter. I buy organic oranges because I want to make zest from the skin…where most of the pesticides would reside in the regular oranges. The organic beef was recommended by my husband’s nutritionist and tastes better too; I really don’t want the antibiotics and hormones that are part of the regular beef. The same comment about antibiotics goes for poultry and eggs as well….plus organically raised chickens are not raised entirely in a cage. I’m sure that over time I’ll be buying more organic produce - particularly when the price difference is not very significant.
What about you? Has your food consumption changed in the past 5 years?
Having a home cooked meal is faster than going out for fast food - as long as the kitchen is ‘cook ready.’ I’ve been getting better at that recently with my favorite winter time meals - something warm and a complete meal in one dish.
The first type is a stir fry. I don’t generally have rice or noodles - preferring to fill up on the generally lower calorie veggies. Here’s my basic strategy to prepare a complete meal in 30 minutes or less.
Cut up veggies that need to cook the longest. Carrots, celery and bell pepper are examples. Add frozen veggies (I generally buy cauliflower and broccoli frozen since I can use it at the rate I want instead of being overwhelmed with the need to use up the amount I bought in the produce section). Begin the stir fry in a large skillet with a little olive oil. Season (I like orange zest and McCormick’s Pinch Perfect Citrus Fiesa).
While it cooks, cut up veggies that cook more quickly (like onions and mushrooms) and measure out protein (like dry roasted soybeans). Cut up broccoli and cauliflower if the pieces are too large with kitchen scissors once it has thawed. Add rest of veggies to the stir fry.
Once the onions and mushrooms have softened, add sauce (if desired). I like to use roasted garlic hummus with a quarter cup of water to coat the stir fry. It merely needs to be stirred in and heated.
And then it’s ready to eat!
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The second type of meal I like in the winter is soup. I always make a bean soup for lunch on the day I cook a pot of beans (soaked overnight and then cooked the following morning). This week I cooked a package of dried black beans.
About 20 minutes before I wanted lunch, I took out a couple of cups if bean liquidfrom the pot to start my soup in a smaller pan. I added 1/4 cup multi-grain rice (that cooks in about 15 minutes), dried onion flakes, orange peel and a bouillon cube.
While that bubbled, I cut up mushrooms, yellow pepper and carrots. The veggies went into the pot along with a cup of the cooked black beans after the rice has been cooking for about 10 minutes. Cook until the rice and veggies are cooked….and it’s a warming and filling meal!
The rest of the beans are parcelled out to containers of about 1 cup each and frozen to be the start for soups in the coming weeks!
Celebrating the whole of life....
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