Saturday, April 21, 2012

Week 52 in Review

The Score 
Eaters - 10     Compost - 0     Carry Over - 1
This was a week that my husband picked up the box, and unlike me, he took it 'as is.'  Often, I take one or two items that are hard sells with the family, and exchange them at the farmer's market for ingredients that I know that will be well received.  Seeing as it was our last official week of the year, however, it seemed like a reasonable challenge to accept the box as it was.  Interestingly, a few items that almost certainly would have hit the compost nine months ago were not that hard to integrate into our meal plan for the week.  We ate up everything this week, with the exception of a few avocados that weren't quite ripe enough to consume, but they will definitely get gobbled up in the coming week as we all love avocados. 

The Best
  • Surprisingly, we all loved this very simple sausage, white bean and swiss chard soup.  This was a delicious, quick alternative to the Italian wedding soup that took many hours to prepare several months back.  This may have been the first time that our entire family willingly ate swiss chard at the same seating!

The Good
  • While quite simple in many ways, this Thai-spiced salad could act a great base for a number of proteins.
  • Arugula on pizza is fantastic!  We all loved this recipe with fig jam and prosciutto.
  • Never one to want to waste, I took our left over curry chicken, mixed it with some shallots, golden raisins, crushed cashews and a bit of mayonnaise to make a yummy and pretty curry chicken salad.
  • Using lemons from the box and our backyard, I made this tart and tasty lemon bar recipe.  I could eat these every day.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Week 52 - It Was A Very Good Year

Yes, it's here... Week 52 in the box!  Hard to believe that this experiment has reached its official final week, but in many ways I'm ready.  After a couple of weeks of vacation, I'm ready to get back into the kitchen, and after fifty-two weeks of working with a wide variety of ingredients, it's easy to embrace what's found in the box any given Saturday.  Planning around the box is a part of my process these days, so really it just feels like it's time to get things going.

In the box this week
(top) lettuce, spinach, arugula, mustard greens
(bottom) carrots, swiss chard, sugar snap peas, summer squash, avocados, apples, strawberries

Meals/recipes for the week:
After this week's review, I look forward to sharing some closing thoughts about our year in a box, as well as some thoughts about what's up next!
This week's title is inspired by the song of the same name by Ervin Drake.

Week 51 in Review

To be honest, week 51 didn't go quite as planned.  In the rush to get our family of four packed and ready for a two week trip, cooking just didn't fit in.  I made a couple of things for breakfast - waffles with strawberries, frittata with kale - but dinners were quickly thrown together or eaten out.  Alas, my second to last week of 'Year in a Box' wasn't a banner one. That's life, however, and our enjoyable vacation made up for any blog regrets that I might have had.

And now, onto week 52!!!