Week 50 in Review

The Score
Eaters - 10     Compost - 0.5     Carry Over - 0.5

It was a good week in the kitchen.  I was able to make everything that I had planned, and only ended up losing a small bit of lettuce this week to the compost.  We have a bit of celery left over, but have plans to use that up in a tomato sauce this weekend.  The week also brought a lot of variety - from Irish, to Italian, to spins on Mexican and Indian.  Wish every week could go this smoothly! 

The Best

• We all really enjoyed the arugula pesto and sausage lasagna.  It was the most complicated of the recipes made this week, so I tackled it on the weekend when I had a bit more time.  The arugula made for a nice twist on traditional pesto, and the fresh tomatoes really livened up the sauce.  A fantastic lasagna!

 Tomato sauce in progress

Arugula pesto gets combined with ricotta

Final product

The Good

• It doesn't look fancy, but once a year, gotta love St. Patrick's Day dinner.  With green cabbage and orange carrots from the box, and a variety of potatoes from the farmer's market, it certainly was a colorful plate.

• I started with a sauteed spinach and mushroom recipe, and then added it and some cotija cheese to whole wheat tortilla to make a lovely quesadilla.

• The curried cauliflower soup was quite simple, but very delicious.  It allowed me to use up the entire head of cauliflower, as well as some left over potatoes that had been purchased for our St. Patrick's day meal. 

 All the veggies in the pot

 The soup is served

• The kids didn't love the broccoli and red pepper gratin, but I thought it went perfectly with a turkey meatloaf dinner.

Week 49 in Review

The Score
Eaters - 9.5    Compost - 0.5     Carry Over - 1 (on purpose)

Turns out our week of salads went quite well.  We enjoyed a great variety of flavors and tastes, and the boys even enjoyed some ingredients that they normally might shy away from.  Making only salads isn't an option given the ingredients in the box every week, but it did open my eyes to new options for many of the ingredients that frequently are featured in the box. 

The Best

• The warm broccoli and chick pea salad made for a light, healthy lunch.  Next time I'll make a full recipe's worth so there will be some left over for the rest of the family.

 The Good

• The spinach salad with eggs and bacon had the boys happily munching - and then later asking, "this is spinach?"

 

• The so-called celery and cucumber salad featured a number of other veggies that made for a sweet and crunchy salad. I left out the relish as it seemed to be an odd addition, but added some leftover purple bunching onions from the previous week, instead.

• The arugula salad with lemon parmesan dressing was simple but delicious.  I added a bit of butter lettuce given that we still had some to use up.

The So-So

• We weren't the biggest fan of this kale salad, but it may be due to the fact that I didn't use the type of kale recommended by the recipe.  Though I think this purple kale does better when cooked, I do hope to try other types of kale that we receive in future salad recipes.

Week 18 in Review

The Score
Eaters - 10     Compost - 0.5   Carry Over - 1.5

This ended up being a pretty easy, breezy carefree week of cooking.  Of course, having a husband who loves to cook helps a lot, and he did make some amazing meals last weekend.  The plan of keeping things fairly simple worked well, though, for our mid-week meals.  We lost a bit of basil that lost it's gusto before we had a chance to use it all up, and have some onions, lemons and a few zucchini from two weeks ago that we're carrying over.  Given the pace of our summer nights, though, I feel like we've been both eating well, and continuing to enjoy our box.

The Best

• Our family loves chicken, but the Lemon tarragon Sweet Onion roasted chicken took things to a new level of enjoyment.  If you look closely, you can see some tarragon hiding under the skin, while the lemon and onions were hiding in the cavity.  

The Good

• While we neglected to get 'after' photos, my husband made some delicious pizzas on the grill over the weekend, which featured a variety of yummy ingredients from the box and farmer's market (photo was taken while he was planning his pizzas)

• What should have been an omelette with Broccoli, Swiss Chard, and Sweet Onions turned into a frittata due to a last minute rush, but we were all pretty excited to be eating a meal featuring seven different items from the box (can you find all seven?)

• We used some pesto in this pasta recipe that we had previously made and frozen (worked perfectly, just added the parmesan after defrosting), and with some green beans and a Jamie Oliver chopped salad, used five CSA ingredients in this meal

The Rest

• I think it was more execution than recipe, but sadly I can't say that I was the biggest fan of my fried green tomatoes.  I'm not a very experienced food frier, and I think I cooked them too quickly and didn't give the tomatoes a chance to soften up at all.  The flavors were good, but I think there are probably better versions of this to try out there.