Happy Monday! If you’re anything like me, Monday may bring about the stress of having to feed yourself delicious and healthy lunches each day in order to fuel yourself. Some weeks I’m utterly overwhelmed with the chore of feeding myself, other weeks I somehow scrape by, but the best weeks are when I prepare this Lemony Chicken and Broccoli Salad or fresh Shrimp Salad to keep me going each day.
Category Archives: main dish
Shrimp & Avocado Salad
This week, I’m sharing half a dozen recipes from the Crafting Ritual and Cultivating Mindfulness retreat. Our personal chef, Jami, prepared all our delicious meals from basic, whole ingredients.
Is this the summer of shrimp salad? For me it is. I’ve had three varieties in just as many weeks. I can’t remember eating much of it in the past, but that’s changed, I love this citrusy Shrimp and Avocado Salad recipe by Jami. It’s perfect eaten alone or on toast. A crunchy cracker like this Trader Joe’s whole wheat pita variety would work well too.
The Shrimp and Avocado salad is easy to make, especially if you buy your shrimp pre-steamed and a fresh pre-made mango salsa. If you can’t find a freshly made mango salsa, you’ll have to make your own. It’s super easy and I highly recommend using frozen mango so that it’s of peak freshness. I promise it doesn’t degrade the quality, I actually prefer it to what we consider ripe mangos in the states.
Blueberry Coconut Smoothie Bowls
Happy Monday! Two weeks ago, I hosted a dozen folks during a meditation retreat in Hot Springs, North Carolina. Our personal chef, Jami, prepared all our delicious meals from basic, whole ingredients. This was a great reminder of how good we feel when we fill ourselves with wholesome, nutritious foods. One rule from Michael Pollan’s Food Rules immediately comes to mind : Eat mostly plants. And that we did.
Raclette
Potatoes are our ingredient of the season. You can find our full archive of potato posts here.
Today we’re sharing one of our favorite winter dinners : raclette.
If you haven’t heard of raclette, don’t fret; it’s not a common meal in America. Read on below as we introduce you to the perfect meal for a snowy day. And if you think we’re crazy sharing a “wintry” meal at the end of April, just know that it’s snowing in the mountains of Colorado this weekend!
Ginger Apps and Mains
Ginger is our ingredient of the season. You can find our archive of ginger recipes here.
Um, it’s Valentine’s Day. The heart balloons, roses, and piles of chocolate in the grocery store warned you this was coming. And now it’s here.
Our plans for the evening? Prepare and eat at a delicious f-ing meal. Because that’s what love is.
We hope your plans are just as awesome. And if you’re looking to add a bit of fiery spice to your evening, here are four dishes from our archives with a delicious touch of ginger.
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Farmshare 2017 {Month 1}
If you’ve been around for a while, you know that we are huge proponents of eating fresh, nutritious food. We like to know where our food comes from and how it was grown. We also love supporting local farmers and eating with the seasons (because tomatoes in January are nothing like the juicy sweet beauties picked in mid-August!). Put all of this together and, of course, we are the perfect candidates for a farm share subscription. If you don’t know much about the farm share model, you can read all about it in this post.
Last summer I posted monthly updates with photos of the food we received in the share and a series of photos showing how we used the food. This link takes you to the complete archive of farm share posts from 2016. Since I’ve found those posts so useful when looking for meal ideas, I’m going to continue the series with our 2017 share.
Again we purchased our share from Grant Family Farms. This year we decided to mix things up and rather than getting the “all-in” kitchen share, we opted for just a medium box of veggies and a dozen eggs. While we loved our shares last year, we wanted to see how our eating and spending differed with just the veg delivery… and being experimenters at heart, rather than just do a thought experiment, we wanted to really test the difference. The jury’s still out about which option we prefer.
When I receive the share each week, I draft a list of menu ideas for the week ahead, trying to use up as much of that week’s share as I can, and planning for how I’ll preserve what we can’t eat. Preserving varies from putting veggies in the freezer to experimenting with a new fermentation recipe.
The first month’s shares were a well-rounded mix of vegetables.
- greens {lettuce, kale, chard}
- root vegetables {potatoes, beets, carrots}
- cruciferous vegetables {broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, turnips}
- squash {zucchini & summer squash}
- spicier stuff {onions, garlic, peppers}
- tomatoes & corn
- kits! {salsa kits, soup kits, etc.} This is a new addition to the shares this year, and I love it! The farm packages up a combination of vegetables and includes a recipe for how to use them. So far we’ve had a few salsas (one included local tortillas!) and a soup. They’re a lot of fun to receive and use!
I’ve photographed some of the dinners we’ve prepared and shared. Above each photograph, I list the farm share ingredients used for the dish, link to the recipes (where possible) or cookbooks, and include any additional notes.
BLTs! tomatoes & lettuce
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cauliflower risotto : cauliflower, onion, parsley
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poblano & chicken casserole : poblano peppers, onion, cilantro, garlic, tortillas!
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chicken & veg soup : carrots, potato, corn, onion
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grilled chicken & veg wraps : hummus using dried beans from last year’s share!, lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes
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salad : lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh peas
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grilled chicken & salad : lettuce, tomatoes, corn
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veg hand pies : cabbage, potatoes, carrots, onion
These were completely inspired by The Great British Bakeoff. I made a simple pie crust and filled it with the vegetable mix seasoned with cumin, paprika, and garlic. We added some spicy mango chutney. These were so simple and the perfect side to our roasted veg soup (below).
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kale salad : kale
I followed the formula from this recipe (introduced to us by our sister), but not the ingredients. Subbing regular raisins for the golden, sunflower seeds for the pine nuts, and then my own balsamic vinaigrette for the lemon dressing. Same same, but different.
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lettuce wraps with haluski : onion, lettuce, cabbage
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meatloaf, braised cabbage, summer squash casserole : carrots, onion, garlic, cabbage, summer squash, parsley
The meatloaf recipe is from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook, and it’s become our go-to meatloaf recipe (because every mom worth her salt should have one). I’ve probably talked about this recipe before, but the things I love about it are also the steps that may make others close the book. You have to finely chop the carrots, onion, and celery (a food processor is recommended), and then sauté them in a pan before combining with the remaining ingredients. You also make your own “ketchup” for the top of the meatloaf; it’s so flavorful and definitely worth the effort. This time I was missing the Worcestershire sauce, so I just subbed soy sauce in the sauce recipe, and then skipped it altogether for the meatloaf portion. I also never make the homemade breadcrumbs, preferring to use store-bought.
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ramen! : bok choy, zucchini, carrots, onions, eggs
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roasted veg soup : beets, beet greens, carrots, potatoes, onion
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chicken with roasted veg : zucchini, carrots, potatoes, corn, onion
Roasting the vegetables under the chicken in a cast iron pan is the way to go. The way.
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shrimp & zucchini scampi (such a quick meal!) : zucchini & parsley
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moroccan spiced shepherd’s pie : carrots, onion, squash, potatoes
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shrimp taco-ritos (some of us folded them, some of us rolled them) : cilantro, salsa, zucchini, bell pepper, onion
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beef tacos with black beans and rice : onion, carrots, lettuce, pico de gallo salsa kit (tomatoes, onion, jalapeno, garlic)
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zucchini & tomato casserole : zucchini, tomatoes
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Not pictures were a couple of other worthy meals. There was the picnic with roasted beets, kale salad (walnuts this time!), and egg salad sandwiches. And the tabouli using parsley, cucumber, tomatoes, garlic… made at the beginning of the week with the best of intentions for a Greek meal that never happened.
Being tasked to cook with the vegetables in the share each week is always such a great challenge. This summer I’ve turned to a few cookbooks on my shelf that weren’t getting the attention they deserve. One is Modern Israeli Cooking. It’s a newish cookbook for me, and I’m smitten. The other is Jamie’s Italy. This is a beautiful cookbook that I’m sad to admit has sat on my shelf for well over 5 years. I’m just glad that I’ve finally used it! And now I have to keep it forever so that the cauliflower risotto is always in our lives.
What a great start to the year farm season! I can’t wait to see what next month brings.
Farm Share & Meal Planning : Month IV
From June-December 2016, we had a weekly farm share that provided our family with a slew of fresh and local vegetables, meats, dairy products, and other goods. I’m doing a series of posts documenting how we used the food. You can read more about the share and our first month of meals here. And you can read all subsequent posts here.
Oh man, I admit that I’m overwhelmed by the state of the US government right now and the population of Americans supporting them. I want to acknowledge that we are not OK with the sh*t going down right now. We believe in a country and world that’s so much better than what we’re reading about in the news, and we’re doing our best to lead by example.
As a result of the hostility that we’re observing, I’m feeling a deep need to hibernate and create a sense of peace, calm, and compassion at home (do you know how hard that is with two crazy little guys?!). Anyway, something that’s helping is taking the time to prepare nourishing dinners. So, to help me (and maybe you?) do that, I wanted to pick up on my farmshare dinner series.
… now that I’ve successfully created the most dismal post introduction ever, on with the food!
Choose Your Own Gratin
This gratin is a one pan (or pumpkin) meal that is so delicious and savory that it’s perfect for these crisp fall nights of late October.
I made up this recipe on a whim last Wednesday – it was the night before our next farm share delivery and my goal was to make a delicious dinner using up as many random ingredients as I could before the fridge was restocked. I ended up experimenting with a potato gratin that was packed with a layer of pork sausage and another layer greens and fresh herbs. The final result was a dish hearty enough to stand on its own as a one-pot meal. To my delight, everyone in the house loved it, and I couldn’t help but make it again last night, but with a pumpkin twist!
As I said, I wanted to use up odds and ends from the fridge. Whenever I put those constraints on myself, I often come up with something creative (usually delicious), and in the end, I often realize that this made-up dish is a great jumping off point for many more experiments (thus the pumpkin!). Since there’s so much flexibility in this dish, I’m going to write it down as a recipe, but with an emphasis and understanding that you have a lot of room to experiment.
For example, here are a list of the variations I used in the two times I’ve made it:
- greens : The first time I made this, I used a greens combination of chard, fresh spinach, and beet greens. I paired that with leeks and a lot of fresh dill and parsley. The second time, I used all kale paired with a leek and half an onion, fresh parsley and fresh sage. The second time I also added a layer of sliced and steamed yellow squash. Anything goes!
- sausage : On round one, we had a 1/2 lb of maple breakfast sausage and a 1/2 lb of Italian sausage in the fridge. The second time we had 1 lb of maple breakfast sausage (it paired beautifully with the pumpkin!).
- potatoes : The first time I peeled and sliced the potatoes, the second time I keep the skins on and diced them for stuffing in the pumpkin.
- the sauce : The second time I skipped the cheddar cheese in the Bechamel Sauce.
I know that the idea of making a Bechamel sauce can be daunting on your first go, but don’t back away from it. I first made one a few years ago for a sweet potato and kale gratin (also amazingly delicious), and it was then that I realized that it was so easy. Just remember to keep stirring and watch your heat – you don’t want it too hot or too cool, just somewhere in the middle and you’re good to go. This is a handy sauce to be able to make because in addition to gratins, you can use it as the base for homemade macaroni and cheese or as a basic cheese sauce to go over veggies.
Ingredients
- 1 lb sausage (I used 1/2 pound Italian sausage and a 1/2 pound maple breakfast sausage)
- 2 leeks (or a small onion)
- 1 or 2 bunches of greens (can be any combination of kale, chard, spinach, beet greens)
- small handful of fresh herbs (any combination of parsley, dill, sage, thyme)
- potatoes (enough sliced for two layers in your casserole pan)
- olive oil
- goat cheese
- 3 Tbs butter
- 3 Tbs flour
- 1 2/3 cups milk
- 1/2 cup cheddar cheese
Instructions
- Crumble the sausage into a frying pan and cook over medium heat, removing it from the pan when cooked through, and set aside.
- While the sausage is cooking, peel and slice the potatoes (about 1/4 inch slices). Bring water to boil in a medium sauce pot, add the sliced potatoes, and boil for a few minutes until the potatoes are just soft. When done, drain and set aside.
- Wipe out the pan, add some olive oil to coat the pan, and saute the leeks or onion over medium-low heat until cooked through, soft, and clear in color. Add the rinsed and chopped greens, and continue to cook while covered, stirring occasionally, until the greens have wilted. Remove the lid to allow excess moisture to escape, add the fresh herbs, and give everything a stir. At this point you can turn off the burner, but allow the pan to sit on it, using the remaining heat to continue to evaporate water from the greens.
- Heat the milk until warm (I just pop it in the microwave for about 90 seconds), then set it aside.
- Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed sauce pan over medium heat.
- Stir in the flour and whisk constantly for about two minutes as the mixture bubbles. If it bubbles too intensely and starting to brown, turn the heat down. I find that a medium to medium-low setting is just right on my stove, but you may have to play around.
- Add the hot milk and continue stirring for about 3 minutes. The mixture should thicken and bubble slightly (it's almost hard to tell because you're mixing it constant).
- Take the mixture off the heat, add the cheddar cheese and a dash of salt, and stir until the cheese has melted.
- Place one layer of potatoes in the bottom of a 9x13 in pan. Add the layer of greens topped by the cooked sausage. Pour over approximately half of the Bechamel sauce. Add the second layer of potatoes, top with dollops of the goat cheese, and pour over the remaining sauce.
- Cover with foil and place in a 350F oven for about 30-40 minutes remove the foil and leave in the over for another 10 minutes or until there is some slight browning on top of the gratin.
- Remove from the oven, allow it to sit for about 10 minutes, then serve, enjoy, and come back for seconds.
If you’d like to experiment with the pumpkin variation, it’s easy peasy, yet looks impressive. Begin by slicing the top off a smallish pie pumpkin and remove the seeds and stringy bits from inside. Then I placed the pumpkin on a baking sheet and popped it in a 350F oven to begin cooking while I prepped the remaining vegetables and sauce (about 15-20 minutes?).
When the remaining ingredients are ready, start layering them in the pumpkin : first the greens, onion, and herb mixture, then the sausage, then some of the sauce, then any additional veggies (this is where I added the yellow squash), then the diced potatoes, dollops of goat cheese, and then the remaining sauce. I had some remaining ingredients, so I layered them in individual-sized pots with some sauce and cheese.
These would make cute individual-sized servings for a dinner. I’m also thinking that a cracked egg on top of the pots and left to cook in the oven would turn this into an amazing breakfast casserole!
I popped the pumpkin back into the oven for another 30-40 minutes to let everything continue cooking and blending together. When I removed it from the oven, I let it sit for about 20 minutes (we were distracted), and it was still perfectly warm and ready to eat when we served it (great to know if you’re trying to time dishes for a holiday dinner). Rather than scoop out the servings, this looks beautiful on plates if you slice through the pumpkin and place pie-like slices on plates, allowing everyone to remove the rind on their own.
So there you have it, an amazingly simple and versatile gratin that is hearty enough to be its own meal. If you make one, let us know what variations you come up with!
Farm Share & Meal Planning III {the main course}
This summer we have a weekly farm share that provides our family with a slew of fresh and local vegetables, meats, dairy products, and other goods. I’m doing a series of posts documenting how we’re using the food. You can read more about the share and our first month of meals here. And you can find our second month of meals here.
Officially, the boys and I were on the east coast for month 3, and the food I’m sharing below is from month 4, so we may have missed some late summer veggies, but we’re jumping feet first into fall and calling this month 3 of recipes. While we were away, it was Calder’s job to eat all of the food and blog about it…
This month seems to have been more plentiful than previous months. We’re seeing a natural change in what’s being harvested from crops with shorter growing seasons, like radishes and turnips, to some of the slower-growing crops, like corn and carrots. We’ve also been the lucky recipients of a full case of Colorado peaches. With all of this food, I realized that I have a lot more to share this month and am breaking the post up into two parts. Today I’m sharing most of the main course recipes and in the second post I’ll follow-up with desserts, canned goods, and fermented foods.
… and it’s so frustrating that the days are getting shorter as the veggie boxes are getting heavier!
Early in the month, I leaned on a couple of my favorite cookbooks, Jerusalem and Plenty, for new vegetable recipes. If you like to experiment in the kitchen and are open to trying new spices and food combinations, I recommend both books. Jerusalem includes meat and vegetable dishes, but Plenty is all vegetable.
I haven’t discussed it much on the blog, but I’m part of a cookbook club, and I’m excited to host our October meeting where we’ll be cooking from Jerusalem. I can’t wait to taste all of the dishes and document our meeting for a future post!
Meal Planning – Month 3
The table below lists the variety of foods that we’ve received for the past month. I don’t know the exact quantity of vegetables we receive each week (it’s a large grocery bag filled with veggies, and I would say it’s about 20+ lbs), definitely enough to feed our family for the week. During the month of September, the vegetables have been some combination of those on the list below. In the protein category, we receive about 3-5 lbs of meat each week, made up of a combination of the items on the list. The tofu and tempeh each arrive once per month. Under the dairy & misc. category, we receive the yogurt & cheeses each week, we receive 1 lb of coffee once per month, and approximately two canned goods each week. While in season, we receive fresh fruit and some variety of fresh herbs.
veggies | proteins | dairy & misc. | fruit & herbs |
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cucumbers | stewing chickens | herbed goat cheese | peaches! |
green lettuce | hot German sausage | camembert | plums |
carrots | italian sausage | yogurt | basil |
cabbage | bacon | coffee | parsley |
eggplant | ground beef | fruit jam | dill |
onions | tofu | pickles | sage |
zucchini | tempeh | edible flowers | |
summer squash | eggs | ||
mushrooms | |||
beets | |||
chard | |||
kale | |||
kohlrabi | |||
peppers | |||
broccoli | |||
leeks | |||
radishes |
Above each photograph, I list the farm share ingredients used for the dish and, where available, I’ve linked to the recipes. Where necessary, I also include some notes about that day’s meal.
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Cucumber salad with smashed garlic and ginger (from Plenty) : cucumbers, onion, herbs
This was a delicious and refreshing side dish for a summer meal. It was a bit spicy for the boys, so we had plenty of leftovers, and I loved eating it on rye bread with humus (it was good that just typing that makes me was to make more right now).
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Teryaki tempeh : tempeh
We liked this DIY teryaki sauce enough that it’s worth keeping for future recipes.
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Chard with tahini, yogurt, and buttered pine nuts (from Jerusalem) : chard
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Roasted eggplant with buttermilk sauce (from Jerusalem) : eggplant, peaches
This ingredient combination may seem odd, but it was amazing! So good, in fact, that we ate this dish at least three different times over the month. The original recipe called for pomegranate seeds, but since we had an abundance of peaches, I decided to experiment. Luckily, the odds were in our favor and this turned out so delicious that now we’re excited to experiment with other fruits. Pears? slightly cooked apples? definitely pomegranates.
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Squash casserole : zucchini & yellow squash, goat cheese, eggs
I added fresh dill and dill goat cheese to the casserole, and I subbed panko bread crumbs for the crushed crackers that were called for in the recipe. I served this casserole with round two of the roasted eggplant and some sauteed paneer with Indian spices.
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Scotch eggs! : Italian sausage, eggs
I only had a Scotch egg once in my life, but loved it enough that I was craving one three years later. If you’ve never had one a Scotch egg is a hardboiled egg wrapped in sausage, coated in bread crumbs, and deep fried. I barely had enough bread crumbs and vegetable oil to make this batch, but they turned out delicious and have me excited to make another batch!
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Chard with tofu and black bean sauce, stir-fried rice : chard, tofu, onion, corn, bell pepper, carrots, eggs
For a while we were ordering Chinese about once a week from a local restaurant. That habit has transferred to our favorite pizza
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veggie burritos with homemade peach salsa (more on that tomorrow!) : onions, green peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms, sauteed greens, peaches, chicken, green chili goat cheese
The next day, I used the leftover burrito ingredients to make an amazing burrito bowl for lunch : just pile everything into a bowl over the rice and enjoy!
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Savory vegetable pie : collard greens, caramelized onions, parsley, mint, potatoes
I baked this pie on a Friday and we took it with us the next day on a weekend camping trip. It served as the perfect, portable lunch on both Saturday and Sunday, with many small slices eaten as between-meal snacks.
I didn’t follow a specific recipe, just looked at a few things and came up with this formula: place the bottom crust inside a pie dish, add the sauteed greens and mushrooms mixed with the caramelized onions and fresh herbs, add a layer of grated cheddar cheese, top with a layer of cooked diced potatoes that are lighted mashed/blended with some buttermilk (could sub regular milk for less tang), add the top crust, and bake in a 350F oven until done.
While I’m comfortable making quiches, this was my first savory pie. It came out so delicious (and easy to serve) that I’m excited to make a few more this fall and winter. I think they’ll be perfect for dinner-time picnics in the park or packed lunches on ski days.
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Burgers, grilled corn, and kohlrabi salad (salad recipe from Jerusalem, but we didn’t love it) : ground beef, corn, kohlrabi
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soba noodles with mushrooms : mushrooms, leeks
We had such a great combination of mushrooms this month! I don’t know the names of all of them pictured below, but as soon as we saw them, we were excited to do something special with them.
This dish is super simple, just sauteed leeks and mushrooms added to soba noodles in a miso broth. Its simplicity really lets the flavor of the mushrooms stand out, and their meatiness adds a nice hearty texture to the dish.
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Salads : lettuce, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, peppercorn goat cheese
Nothing special here, just delicious simple salads. I really loved adding the peppercorn goat cheese to the salads (and the carrot soup), and am thinking that I may be hooked on this as a new garnish.
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Light vegetable soup : onion, carrots, broccoli, green pepper, yellow squash
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Carrot soup : onion, potato, carrots, collard greens, leeks, chicken broth (from the stewing chickens), peppercorn goat cheese
There’s nothing I love more than adding some good garnishes to a blended root vegetable soup. For this one, I sauteed the greens with leeks and garlic. After placing the greens on the soup, I sprinkled it with some of the peppercorn goat cheese.
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Beet tart : sauteed greens, caramelized onions, roasted beets, goat cheese.
After seeing an apple tart where the apple slices were arranged in a rosette on top of the tart, I wanted to try to make a savory version using beets. This was my first go at it, and while it tasted good (we ate it all!), I think there’s room for improvement in both the presentation and the taste… I’m sure I’ll have an update with a recipe in a future post!
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Pesto : basil
I don’t use a particular recipe for making pesto, although it would be handy since there are times where I forget key ingredients (cheese! garlic!). Calder doesn’t like pine nuts, so I made this batch with walnuts, and think it’s just as delicious.
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And that’s it for the main courses. Looking back, we ate so well this past month! Tomorrow I’ll post the desserts, canned goods, and fermentation projects from the month.
Farm Share & Summer Meals II
This summer we have a weekly farm share that provides our family with a slew of fresh and local vegetables, meats, dairy products, and other goods. I’m doing a series of posts documenting how we’re using the food. You can read more about the share and our first month of meals here.
Month two with the farm share and we’re still going strong! We’ve repeated some meals and gotten creative with others, spicing up our routine with dishes that are becoming fast favorites!
In the first post I explained what a farm share, or CSA, is and gave an overview of our particular share. This month, I’ll continue to list the variety of foods we’ve received over the past month and will post photos and recipe links to meals.
I was going to discuss our fruit and produce storage system, but this post on Design Mom does a great job of that, discussing many of the methods I use plus more! Instead, I thought it might be fun to start a discussion or just document how we approach eating with our two kiddos (ages 3 and almost 1.5).
Eating with Kids
Let me start by saying that we are lucky because both boys are generally adventurous and willing to try new things, both at the dinner table and in their day-to-day life. Also, they are great eaters (more on why this may be below), they come to the table hungry and willing to eat.
It wasn’t intentional, but over time, I’ve realized that I/we have some standard practices when it comes to dinner time.
- I only make one dinner, never something special for the boys.
- BUT if I know that something would be hard for them to eat (for example if it’s too spicy or hard for them to chew), then I do offer them an alternative form of what we’re eating. For example, we served them the shrimp tostadas below, but as separate ingredients on their plates (refried beans, shrimp, avocado, cheese), this also allowed us to keep the chorizo out if it was too spicy (Alex ended up loving it!).
- AND I do allow for alternate meal requests if they’re asking for something that was leftover from the day before. For example, Alex loves the coconut curry and will sometimes ask for that for a few days.
- Similarly, I’ve noticed that my boys are both starving by 5pm or even 4:30pm. Rather than give them snacks or try to make them wait for dinner to be ready, on some days I’ll serve them leftovers from the previous day as their dinner while I’m making that night’s dinner for Calder and I. Then they’ll still join us and sample that night’s dinner when it’s ready around 6:30, but they aren’t going crazy from being overly hungry or tired.
- And of course, we love to have them involved with our food and food prep as much as possible. Alex cut all of the zucchini for the pasta dish below! And you can see some of my cooking-with-kids tips in this series of posts.
And on them being good eaters, we have a few theories.
- Other than a mid-morning fruit and cheese snack, between-meal eating is not a common part of our day. I’m not a big snacker, and so I just never think of offering something to them. And as I said above, during the one time that could be prone to snacking (late afternoon), I just offer them an early dinner.
- We don’t give them juice. The only thing we ever use juice for is to make some quick mini popsicles. Otherwise they never drink juice at home. I’m mentioning this because we’ve noticed that when we’re traveling or visiting friends and they have some pre-dinner juice, then they never seem as hungry for dinner. We’re starting to think that the sugar in the juice fills some of their calorie needs and raises their blood sugar, and so then they just don’t feel hungry for their meal…. and it’s not that we don’t give them sweets – you’ll see plenty of dessert ideas below!
- We do let them try anything and everything in the kitchen. One of our favorite things to do is make “combo-soups” at the Whole Foods soup counter. Because why have just clam chowder when you could mix it with crab and butternut squash bisque (seriously, try it). This creativity carries over into our home. One night Alex asked to have refried beans (we had tacos for dinner) on his vanilla ice cream. Why not, sweetened beans are a common ingredient in Asian desserts. He loved it, and got an extra dose of fiber with his dessert!
Meal Planning – Month 2
The table below lists the variety of foods that we’ve received for the past month. I don’t know the exact quantity of vegetables we receive each week (it’s a large grocery bag filled with veggies, and I would say it’s about 20 lbs), definitely enough to feed our family for the week. During our second month, the vegetables have been some combination of those on the list below. In the protein category, we receive about 3-5 lbs of meat each week, made up of a combination of the items on the list. The tofu and tempeh each arrive once per month. Under the dairy & misc. category, we receive the yogurt & cheeses each week, we receive 1 lb of coffee once per month, and approximately two canned goods each week. While in season, we receive fresh fruit (so far it’s been a lot of cherries!) and some variety of fresh herbs.
veggies | proteins | dairy & misc. | fruit & herbs |
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cucumbers | pork chops | herbed goat cheese | sweet cherries |
romaine lettuce | chorizo sausage | camembert | tart cherries |
carrots | fryer chicken | yogurt | peaches! |
cabbage | tofu | coffee | lemongrass |
green onions | tempeh | fruit jam | basil |
onions | tomato sauce | parsley | |
zucchini | ketchup | dill | |
summer squash | pickles | ||
mushrooms | |||
beets | |||
chard | |||
kale | |||
kohlrabi |
Above each photograph, I list the farm share ingredients used for the dish and, where available, I’ve linked to the recipes. Where necessary, I also include some notes about that day’s meal.
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Miso-dipped Tempeh Logs + coleslaw wraps (scroll down within those links for each of the recipes): tempeh, cabbage, carrots
This was a meal that we took to the park for a picnic dinner. The wraps, using warmed naan, were the grown-up version. For the boys, I packaged their tempeh, slaw, and some extras (hard boiled eggs, fruit) in bento boxes, adding seaweed smiles to the logs for a bit of fun.
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Breaded Pork Chops, Braised Cabbage & Roasted Vegetables : pork chops, zucchini, turnips, carrots, cabbage, onions
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BBQ Pork Chops, Sauteed Kale, Beet & Green Bean Salad : pork chops, kale, onions, green beans, beets, cucumbers, parsley, goat cheese
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Salad with Sauteed Shrimp & a Cilantro and Lime Dressing : romaine lettuce, cilantro, dill, parsley, basil, (hard-boiled) eggs, cucumbers
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Chorizo & Shrimp Tostadas w/ leftover Beet & Green Bean Salad and Grilled Corn : chorizo, onion, cabbage, beets, green beans, cucumbers, parsley, corn
These were so delicious that we made them twice! The first time we used our salt-block on the grill to cook the shrimp (it’s so worth the extra time required to slowly heat the salt!) while the we grilled the corn. The second time we were pressed for time and just sauteed the shrimp in a cast iron pan on the stove.
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Tofu Vegetable Curry (two months in a row – it’s a favorite!) : tofu, yellow squash, zucchini, green onions, chard, lemongrass
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Pasta with a vegetable marinara sauce : canned tomatoes with garlic and basil, zucchini, mushrooms, onion
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Roasted Chicken with Vegetables : chicken, sage, parsley, carrots, onion, turnip, golden beets
I’m a big fan of roasting chickens using this method of first searing the skin in a cast iron pan on the stovetop before placing it in the oven. After the breast side is seared, I remove the chicken from the pan, place all of the chopped vegetables in the pan and then put the chicken back on top. This way everything roasts in one pan and the veggies get to soak up the amazing juices from the chicken.
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Chicken with Preserved Lemons & Yellow Squash Casserole : chicken, onions, yellow squash, eggs, goat cheese
This meal, and really, the farm share, taught me something I never saw coming : how to cut apart a whole chicken! We receive a whole chickens in the share, but I only wanted to use the legs to cook this dish. We already had two whole legs in the freezer and I wanted four. Cutting off the legs was easier than I expected! I’m happy to have the new skill, and am happy that I held it together while both popping chicken joints out of their sockets and cutting them (I can barely type that without squirming).
And the squash dish ended up being a bit of a (very delicious) experiment. I mainly followed the recipe above, but didn’t have any crackers in the house. So instead, I used toasted quinoa that I had on hand and some panko bread crumbs. I also added dollops of goat cheese in addition to the cheddar that the recipe called for.
So there you have it, chicken and yellow squash make for a delicious, albeit very beige, meal.
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Salads! : hard boiled eggs, leftover roasted vegetables, leftover beet and green bean salad, cucumbers, herbs, lettuce
I know everyone knows how to make a salad, but I thought I would add these in case you’re trying to break out of a rut. I throw anything under the sun in my salads.
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Omelette with mushrooms and onions : eggs, mushrooms, onions
Thinking ahead, we saved some of the sautteed mushrooms and onions that were going into the aforementioned pasta sauce and used them the next morning in these omelettes.
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Kale Chips
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Tart Cherry Cobbler (from Rustic Fruit Desserts) : cherries
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Yellow cake with our favorite coconut buttercream and fruit : cherries with raspberries from our yard
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Mini Peach and Cherry Crumble : peaches, cherries
This was a super simple treat that I put together for us one night. I didn’t want to make a big crumble, because we’ve been enjoying the fresh peaches, but I knew that we could spare 3 or 4 for a few mini crumbles, so I made three of these.
I added some butter, water, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the sliced fruit. Then I topped it with some of the vanilla crumble from Rustic Fruit Desserts that I mixed with a little bit of quick oats to beef it up. The crumble topping is a stand-alone recipe in the book that gets used on top of some of the desserts (my favorite is the cranberry buckle), and it makes enough that I always seem to have some leftover in my freezer, which is perfect for quick desserts like this!
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Jam & Nut Struesel Bars : cherry jam
We get a lot of jam through the share (about a jar or two per week), but we’re still pretty slow jam eaters, especially since the boys are so small and aren’t devouring PB&Js yet.
While we’re happy to stock the jam away, I also wanted to find a way to use up a jar at a time in different desserts. Enter, one of my favorite easy desserts. I first came across this around the holidays when we actually had some leftover cranberry sauce in the fridge (that’s what the original recipe calls for). I now make these bars every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but this is the first time that it dawned on me to make them with jam as a summer treat.
I didn’t add the extra sugar to the jam (as called for with the cranberry sauce), and I did substitute some of the white flour for whole wheat to give it a nuttier flavor and some extra good stuff.
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Man oh man, month two of the share was so good! The boys and I are heading off to the east coast, which means that Calder’s going to have to try to find a way to eat his way through the share, give away greens to friends, and come up with next month’s blog post! 😉
My mom has a share from a local farm on the Eastern Shore of Virginia/Maryland, and I’m excited to see what we come up with while cooking from her share for the next month. It’ll also be interesting to see how the shares differ at this time of year.
What about you? Have you discovered any new recipes, tweaked old favorites, or learned some new skills while cooking from a farm share? We’d love to hear about it! And how do you keep the kids happy while cooking?