An abundance of co-op share

This week's co-op consisted of a basic share, a hostess pack and I shared a case of strawberries with a friend and bought more bread.  I really need to do something about how much bread the kids are eating around here.

So I ended up with
6 clam shells of strawberries (4 from the shared case 2 from the hostess pack)
7 russet potatoes
8 apples
7 bananas
1 onion
1 bag of red potatoes
2 bags of mandarin oranges
1 clam shell of grape tomatoes
2 lemons
3 avacados
1 pineapple
8 roma tomatoes
2 bags of raddishes
1 leafy green lettuce
1 bunch of asparagus
6 cucumbers
2 bunches of celery
dill
rosemary
3 loaves of 9 grain bread
1 baguette
1 hot cross bun bread (sweet bread with dried fruit)

Let over from before"
4 russet potatoes
1 sweet potato
1 onion
celery
2 heads of butter lettuce
beet
Several lemons
grapefruit
oranges
apples
key limes

I took the radishes and 3 of the cucumbers to our Sunday game night to share with some hummus as well as a package of field roast sausage. Yummy sausage.

My husband was sweet and made us a cake for Easter.  It was a basic yellow cake, but he made a glaze that used a lemon, a lime and half a clam shell of strawberries and lots of sugar.  It was very good.

The sweet bread once again made up a quick breakfast before church.  Lunch was eaten out because we had a lot to do for Easter Sunday since we wanted to go visit my grandfather for a bit.

A dinner of Ooops, It's lunch.

Dinner was to be this lovely steamed Kale over a mix of brown and wild rice and a side of the blended veggie soup.  But silly me, was rushing out the door for the girl child's Krav Maga lessons and hit the keep warm button instead of the brown rice button on my rice cooker.

The mistake was noticed before I arrived home, by my darling husband.  But as he worked late, he did not arrive home early enough to fix it in time for dinner to actually be prepared in a timely fashion.  So we ate at Taco Bell - yeah bean burritos, no cheese?  Then packed the kale and rice for lunches.

The kale was cooked in the steam basket above the rice in the rice cooker with some crushed garlic cloves and some sea salt.  A nice easy meal, provided you actually push the right button.

A Somewhat Healthy Lunch

Lunch today is not leftovers, mainly because the soup I have leftover is actually on my meal plan as part of dinner tonight, and I was craving hummus.
Lunch is a roasted red pepper hummus sandwich with butter lettuce on toasted 9 grain bread from the co-op and an orange.  If I am still hungry afterwards I might make a dessert out of an apple and some peanut butter.
I am not sure if you have noticed that I keep my meals pretty simple.  The easier they are to fix, the less likely we are to eat out.  That is the bane that we really fight against.  That thing that kills our budget and our health.
The food still needs to be tasty, and needs to have variety to keep us from being too bored with it to also eliminate the temptation to eat out.  The co-op helps with that, since I have to figure out how to make meals from what they give me and it prevents me from getting in a rut of  buying the same produce over and over again.  What I buy outside the co-op is the same foods over and over.  I get my long grain brown rice, my frozen corn, my frozen peas, canned oragnic tomato products, hummus, Jif natural peanut butter (crunchy for me, creamy for the husband, the kids eat either), pasta ect.  Only rarely will I get something unusual, and that is usually something we probably would do better to forgo anyway.  With the co-op we are getting variety, and it is a healthy variety.  Food allergies make it all the more complicated with variety.  Not just our allergies, but those of close friends too.

Sunday - Breakfast, Lunch, Game Night

For breakfast we had had the sweet bread that came in our bread pack from the co-op, a fried egg and half an orange.  It was probably not our healthiest breakfast to date, but it was very yummy.  The bread had lots of dried fruits in it and was very good.

Lunch was yet more of the salad left over from Friday.  Finally finished it off though.  I might have made a bit too much of it.  But goodness we are getting a lot of lettuce from the co-op these days.  We are really not salad people.  Other ways of eating lettuce just doesn't use that much of it.  We are more prone to use it on sandwiches, as lettuce wraps and such.  I just can't figure out what to do with so much lettuce, but make salad.
We had the veg soup I made for Saturday, that we didn't get home to have, with it. The husband blended it in the Vitamix and we topped it with a bit of Field Roast vegan apple sage sausage.

Dinner was our game night at friends.  It will be last one for a couple of weeks.  But we made lemon pudding. by using a teaspoon of lemon extract instead of a half teaspoon of vanilla and then I layered some lemon slices on top.  I think next time I will add some lemon zest to it to add a bit more zing.  Maybe try a different starch.  The flour is not as effective with the almond milk as the corn starch is, and we avoid the corn starch when visiting this house hold.  So my pudding wasn't as thick as I would have liked.  The husband made walnut meringue cookies with the egg whites leftover from the pudding making.
We also took our usual hummus and a couple of the cucumbers to dip in it. 

Co-op again - Sort of like a mini Christmas every week

Yeah!  I love my co-op day.  We volunteered again,in the rain, then went to have breakfast with a friend.  We brought the eggs and used an onion and spinach from our co-op shares as well.  They provided the potatoes and tortillas. 

This pile of food represents a basic basket, a juice pack and bread pack.  We were also supposed to have a Hostess pack with more food geared towards entertaining for the Easter Holiday, but there was a bit of a mix up with the delivery and we decided to be nice and be the ones to go without.  Mainly because we are not really expecting any company for Easter and we just wanted the variety of produce.  Then after we ordered the boy was asked to house sit for some friends, which means he will be gone for most of the week. 

As I mentioned before getting home we used an onion and a bunch of spinach that was in the juice pack.  But we have:


3 bunches of asparagus
kale
broccoli
2 pineapple
3 cucumber (got extra cucumber from the friend we had breakfast with as they don't eat it)
1 beet
1 carrot
4 potatoes
1 butter lettuce
parsley
celery
onion
8 key limes
8 oranges
ginger
3 grapefruit
5 bananas
lemon
3 apples
1 loaf of hot cross bun bread (not sure what it is, but seems to be a sweet bread)
1 baguette
3 9 grain bread loaves

I still have from last week
2 heads of butter lettuce
2/3 of a head of cauliflower
5 lemons
7 apples
4 oranges
1 grapefruit
1 onion
3 garlic
1 banana
some celery

Not sure about the interviewer, but the birds like the girl child

Lunch today was leftover salad and home made bread from last night.  My daughter had an interview at the Zoo for a volunteer position, so we headed out on the train right after lunch and ended up at Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner.  I felt sort of bad that we were out so late, because I had made a soup in the crock pot for dinner, but it will be lunch for tomorrow.
Before I forget what I put in it:
2 potatoes
the carrot
last week's celery
fresh parsley
fresh basil (grow this myself)
half an onion
last week's 2/3 head of cauliflower
half a bulb of garlic, cloved peeled and put in whole
a carton of Trader joes Hearty Vegetable Broth
Water to cover

I think I will blend it and maybe crumble some vegan sausage over it for lunch tomorrow.

Treats with a Family Game Night

Tomorrow morning is co-op pick up, so this is my night to try and use up stuff.  Sometimes it can be a bunch of random leftovers, but we did that last night.  Tonight was mostly lettuce leftover because we really don't eat lots of salads around here.  So I attempted to make it a bit of fun.

We had the layered salad again.  This time I used onion, celery, the last of the leafy green lettuce, about 1/3 of a head of cauliflower, frozen corn, and some walnuts with the usual mayo and freshly ground black pepper.
We also had some baked asparagus with it.  This time I squeezed the juice of half a lemon over the asparagus when I pulled it out of the oven.  Otherwise it was the usual minced garlic and olive oil.

I also made a home made bread from the last of the dough leftover from the kids making pizza earlier in the week.  The dough was getting a nice sour dough scent to it, which means it was going to make an excellent loaf of bread.  That was the thing I did to make dinner seem extra yummy even though I made other dishes very similar to things I had made earlier in the week.  Granted the salad was a little bit different and I added the lemon juice to the asparagus to change up the flavor a bit.
And then we were all wanting a dessert.  I had a graham cracker crust in the pantry that I never got around to using and decided to make use of it in a banana pudding since Nilla wafers are out of the question with the dairy allergies in the house.  I just adapted my Great Aunt Martha's general pudding recipe by using almond milk, had the girl child slice and arrange a couple of bananas.  BTW the pudding recipe is crazy easy.
3/4c sugar
3T flour or corn starch
1/2t salt
2 1/3 c almond milk
3 egg yolks
1/2 t vanilla
Basically you whisk it all together and then put it on the stove to cook while stirring gently until it thickens.  With the almond milk it thickens real suddenly with more lumps, but that is fixed with another whisking before pouring into the container of choice.
Now you can make this pudding a chocolate with 3T of cocoa powder or a coconut with 1/2c of dried coconut.  The cocoa you would add at the same time you add the flour/corn starch.  The coconut you add while you are stirring.
And then we played cards as a family for a bit while the meringues were cooking.  Cause yeah, I wasn't about to let those egg whites go to waste.

Pasta Salad and Steamed Broccoli

So far this week we have kept to the meal plan.   Wednesday was home made pizza, sorry I forgot to take photos and blog about it.  Everyone had their own.
Thursday here is simple steamed broccoli and a pasta salad.
The pasta salad consists of some of the fresh broccoli, celery, onion, frozen corn, canned black beans and some canned sweet peas.  I do not buy sweet peas, but when the boy moved back in, he brought several cans with him, and I figured that they needed using.  I prefer frozen, especially in salad forms as the color is nicer and they are not as salty.  The dressing is just a bit of mayo and black pepper so that it barely seems to glaze the pasta. 

At this point I am reevaluating my menu plan and am thinking that maybe cooking tonight might be a bad idea.  I have lots of pasta salad left over, tons of lettuce and some curried veggies still.  The pasta and curried vegies are actually making up my Thursday lunch now as I write this.  I also have bread dough from the pizza making taking up a lot of space in my fridge too.
I think I might make some home made bread so that folks think they are getting something special, boil a couple eggs and start chopping some veggies and do a salad bar night instead.  Folks can top their salads as they see fit.  And have the leftovers on the side.

I will you know how that goes.

Baked Asparagus and Salad night

The asparagus got a little overcooked tonight.  It was girl scouts night, so once again the asparagus was prepped and the husband baked it.  This time instead of spreading my pre-minced garlic over the asparagus I just tucked in some peeled garlic cloves.  I really prefer the preminced for this, made a world of difference in the flavor.
The husband made the salad.  It was just leafy green lettuce, celery and broccoli and we each topped it with the dressing of our choice.  I went with the champagne vinegar dressing from Trader Joe's.  It was okay, I really liked it better mixed with the pesto.  I think next time I will go for the honey mustard.
We cooked up 3 bunches of asparagus, just like the last time, but there is half of it left over.  Last time I had 4 spears left over.  I really think it was the difference in the garlic more than it being slightly over cooked that made the difference in how popular it was this evening.

Sunday - Breakfast- Lunch - Pot Luck

 Breakfast was once again an egg scramble with some onion and bell pepper with some toast, this time with some apricot preserves and a 1/4 of an orange.  Nice simple and quick.  The husband used the broiling pan to make bacon for the kids to go with their breakfast and for their lunch later.

Lunch was a layered salad that I made the night before and just mixed up right before serving.  It consisted of 2 types of lettuce, onion, bell pepper, celery, frozen corn and frozen peas and topped with mayo made with canola oil and fresh ground pepper.

The salad we are taking to the pot luck is about the same, as I made it at the same time, but I used broccoli instead of the corn.

My only regret about this salad, is that I wish I had made more.  I forget how much I love this salad.  It is really easy to make.  The only issue is that I worry about making too much, because it doesn't keep real well after you stir it up. You can make it the night before just fine, but you really need to plan on eating it all as soon as you mix all the ingredients together.

Crock pot Veg curry

Herm, the colors on my photos has been odd lately.
Anyway, Saturday night's dinner was a curried veg done in the crock pot and a brown and wild rice done in the rice cooker.

The curry had onion bell pepper, a sweet potato, both those giant carrots, a cauliflower, a few cloves of garlic crushed, and a can of organic diced tomatoes from Costco.  The curry part was a yellow curry powder from Costco mixed with paprika and olive oil and some water and then it was all cooked on low in the crock pot and severed over the brown and wild rice. 
I am going to need to go get me some more brown rice soon.
But since I made this in my giant crock pot, and the girl child is on strike against spicy foods, we have leftovers.  She isn't starving herself, she had leftover spaghetti from the other night from when the husband and I went to celebrate our mini Ides of March anniversary.

Eating out on Vacation

So we went to Houston for a semi-educational Spring Break with the girl child.  I had taken some food to deal with our dietary restrictions.  But staying in Webster, near the space center had actually made the eating thing pretty easy.

The Space Center was the one activity that was the easiest to find something for us all to eat.  They were great about the dairy allergy and the girl child ended up with a hot dog. And it was my most interesting meal on the trip with a hummus and toubouli  pita sandwich.

Our first day we arrived early enough that we went on to the Natural History Museum in Houston before going on to our hotel in Webster and I had a peanut butter sandwich before we went in, they nibbled on beef jerky and trail mix we made all the way down and were not hungry until about an hour in and hand a snack size item at the McDonalds in the Museum.  They were both disappointed with it after eating healthy for so long.  I think the food choice contributed to the crankiness of the girl child later in the day.
When we made it to the hotel later we had sandwiches and hummus with veggies and fruit for an early dinner and then took advantage of a coupon for Ben and Jerry's we got from the hotel for some sorbet.  It made for a nice treat to end the day.
Day 2 was the Space Center where we had lunch, then we moved on to the Aquarium where we had dinner.  They were very sweet about our food issues, which I knew before hand, which is why I chose it to cater to my husband's urge for seafood.  My daughter and I ended up with spaghetti with marinara and veggies.  Yes we went to a seafood place with a child with a shellfish allergy.  But it was a vacation and her reaction to shellfish is to become extremely hyper, it isn't going to kill her or anything. Her dairy allergy is much more severe.
Day 3 was the hardest.  The zoo was the least accommodating about the allergies, but the manager tried.  I was prepared and brought lots of trail mix and water for folks to snack on.  The girl child really still wanted something resembling real food about halfway through the visit, because she needs massive quantities of food and had a hotdog sans bun and some fries.  We then went for a real lunch at a Subway.  Navigating traffic and trying to find parking at this point was the worst part of the trip.
Then we went on to the Fine Art Museum just to make me happy.  We only lasted about an hour and a half before the girl child finally wore out completely and we headed back to the hotel at 3:30.  We had dinner at Freebirds, but took the girl child to Firehouse down the street in Webster, and we had coupons for both courtesy of the hotel.  And we once again had dessert at Ben and Jerry's

Day 4 after checking out of the hotel after breakfast.  Did I forget to mention that we did breakfast every day at the hotel.  Brought our own milk and creamer and the girl had cereal and a half bagel and I had one and a half bagels and the husband had waffles every day same breakfast.
Anyway we headed to Galveston to the state park to walk the beach and hunt for shells until lunch time, then we went to Subway for lunch and headed home, stopping in Webster again for Jamba Juice to make the trip more bearable.  And the girl nearly finished off the trail mix on the way home too.  BTW, I made a gallon of trail mix for the trip.  I have about a 1/4 cup of it left.

We didn't eat nearly as healthy as we do at home.  But I will say that we didn't eat nearly as unhealthy as we would have a year ago on a trip.  We didn't even eat as unhealthy as we would have a year ago eating at home.  We also walked several hours a day.  And I suspect I lost a bit of weight on the trip.  The pants I wore in on day one were loose and very comfy for a long drive, but still fit, by day 4 when I chose to wear them again for the long drive back home could not stay up on their own and needed a belt.

BTW my trail mix recipe:
small bag of dried pineapple
small bag of dried strawberries
small bag of dried raspberries
tube of fiber one cereal
almond slivers
walnuts
pecans
craisins
raisins

I did wish that I had some chopped dates  The small bags came from Trader Joe's the the unmeasured stuff I just scooped in there until it looked right, except for the pecan, because I only had a 1/4c left from what my in laws gave me at Christmas.  It filled a gallon ziplock bag to near bursting.

A very Salad Week Co-op Haul

This week was another double basket, and the husband and I volunteered, so we got a bit of extra asparagus from that.  We got:
4 bunches of asparagus
2 heads of leafy green lettuce
2 cauliflower
2 bunches of broccoli
10 apples
8 tangelos
4 grapefruit
4 lemons
4 mangos
10 bananas
I had a bit of food left over from last week as we didn't snack on our fresh produce as much on our trip as I expected nor did my son do much cooking while we were gone.  He relied mostly on the lentil burgers I made and froze and the spaghetti sauce.
So my other produce consists of:
2 bunches of asparagus
2.5 heads of butter lettuce
3 jalapenos
celery
3 bell peppers
2 large carrots
2 sweet potatoes
4 apples
3 lemons
5 bananas
4 bulbs of garlic
5 onions

We were supposed to get onions in the co-op this week, but they were all squishy and so were not distributed.  To be honest my grapefruit is also squishy.  It is rare for my produce to not be perfect.  I suspect that the state of the grapefruit was missed due to the fact that it was rather dark while we were trying to sort the stuff, due to a combination of day light savings time and the truck being way early.
My girl child wasn't feeling well this morning, so she and the boy stayed home, which meant that piano and breakfast with friends after produce pick up was out.  But we came home and put away produce and planned our weekly menu and made breakfast as a family.  It helped me with the sorting through of what was leftover since I didn't do that the night before as we were celebrating a mini anniversary last night with dinner at a Harri Krishna temple.  Yummy veggie dinner BTW.

Breakfast was our usual eggs with bell pepper and onion and some toast since we were just the family.  The rest of the week was planned out, but might change based on what folks end up snacking on or if it looks like something needs eating up sooner than it was originally in the menu.

Saturday - Lunch is a fend for themselves.  This usually means leftovers or sandwiches and some fruit
Dinner - Veggie Curry and rice - cauliflower, bell pepper, onion, and carrots, maybe even a sweet potato
Sunday - breakfast bacon for the kids and eggs and veggies for the adults
lunch a layered salad with the kids having an option of crumbling some of the leftover bacon over their salad
dinner another layered salad making sure to have no frozen corn in this one in case we go to game night where one of the children has a corn allergy.

From here on out, I just need to plan one meal a day
Monday is girl scouts so a salad that I will pre-prep and baked asparagus that I will also pre-prep and the husband can pop in the oven when he gets home.

Tuesday the boy is cooking and it will be home made pizza and salad

Wednesday Steamed broccoli with a pasta salad

Thursday - roasted cauliflower with a fruit salad and any leftovers to suppliment

Friday -baked asparagus with the Risotto mix from Costco using the veggie broth from Trader Joe's  I might make yet another salad if I am still looking at lettuce, since I have 4.5 heads of lettuce.

Co-op haul - Where did it go?

This week's co-op just doesn't seem as impressive somehow.  Maybe it is because we just got the one basket.  Maybe it is because there isn't that much fruit that we can just munch on this time.
Anyway, we only got one basket, a variety pack of breads and a 25lb bag of wheat.
The basket had
bok choy
celery
leafy green lettuce
2 bunches of asparagus
5 bell peppers
strawberries
3 lemons
2 bulbs of garlic
4 mangos
7 bananas

We didn't volunteer this weekend, because it was a crazy weekend.

Here we are at Sunday afternoon and most of that is eaten of will be consumed at dinner tonight.  Thank goodness 3 out of 4 of us are going out of town and I will have enough leftovers for the boy to eat most of the week.

Friday I made a huge pot of spaghetti sauce, since I knew we would be going out of town and that the boy was unlikely to cook much for himself.  I served it over spiral pasta and topped mine with nutritional yeast.  This used up all those lovely tomatoes from last week's co-op and bell peppers as well as several cans of tomato products the last of the fresh thyme and parsley I got from the co-op Italian pack and some of the basil off my own plant and some dried Italian seasoning and crushed red pepper and lots of minced garlic and an onion I bought from the store.

Saturday was leftovers and hotdogs made with Field Roast vegan hot dogs.

Sunday I did a stir fry using the bok choy, a stalk of celery, a half onion that was leftover from the onion the husband cooked up with the eggs for breakfast, the chayote from a couple weeks back, a bell pepper and some mince garlic a few eggs and a stir fry sauce made from honey and crushed red pepper served over brown rice.

Sunday dinner will be those last 2 sweet potatoes and the asparagus baked.

I will be taking the bell peppers, celery, mangos and strawberries with us on our spring break trip.  The celery will be had with the peanut butter, the bell peppers with the hummus and the mangos will be consumed by the girl child before I ever get to taste one, she has already started on them.

These will be snacks and things to go with our hummus and PB&J sandwiches that we will have to supplement our meals out.  The boy better eat all the leftovers I made just for him.  But yeah, no way a single basket can feed a family of four eating primarily a vegetarian diet.  And to think that a year ago, we struggled to eat everything in one basket.  Now I am complaining that I can't get enough food to last much more than a weekend from a single share.

Date Night!

Since there were plenty of leftovers for the rest of family, the husband and I decided that we needed a date night.  And having the adult age child back home, for however long that might be, means we can do these spontaneous nights out.
We went to Genghis Grill, since it is a nice enough place that is very good about catering my my allergies and vegetarian eating.
I once again had eggs, nuts and seeds for my protein, and brown rice for my starch. I went for the dragon sauce as usual.  There are lots of peppers, onion and spinach in there and a bit of broccoli with my usual water chestnuts and pineapple.  I really just need to start checking out some of the central aisles at the grocery store and getting myself some water chestnuts.  I love those things.
The kids had leftovers.  There were lots of leftovers to be had.  Part of my leftover issue for this week, is that I plan my meals around my husband having them for lunch.  But this week a client has been visiting the office and they have been eating out.  This has really messed up my meal plans.
Next week is a vacation, but the boy will be home puppy sitting.  But anyway for next week's vacation we have only contributed for one share from the co-op instead of 2.  We will be taking some of the food with us, as our motel has a fridge and we will be eating in room for at least one meal a day.  And I have frozen some lentil burgers for the boy and am making a larger pot of spaghetti sauce tomorrow for the boy to help insure that he has home cooked meals while we are gone.  I figure the sandwiches with lunch meat he usually has for lunch are still way healthier than the burgers he had been getting before he moved back.  At least his sandwiches now are whole grain breads from the co-op, with fresh veggies.

Lentil burgers and the last of the potatoes

I told you, you would see those lentils again.  For the lentil burgers I just added the lentils from last night, some eggs and the last tiny bit of grape nuts cereal, about 6 crackers, and a lot of oats to the mixer and let it mash it all up a bit.  Then I made some patties and coated them in a mixture of flour, salt and pepper.  I baked them in the oven at 350 until fairly firm and crispy on the outside after coating the cookie sheet in oil.
The boy made the side of rosemary roasted potatoes.  I just didn't feel like trying something new and fixing the chayote.  I can be boring that way.
I used the butter lettuce for my "bun"and put mayonnaise on the patty itself with some sliced tomato. Everyone else went for some bread.

I will admit that I only ate about 2 of those peices of potatoes because that lentil patty was very filling.  The girl, otherwise known as the bottomless pit, actually filled up and not only avoided a 2nd and 3rd helpings of food but didn't finish her burger.  She said she liked it and packed one for lunch.  I am glad she liked it, cause I made 15 of them.  8 were frozen to be consumed next week by the boy, while the rest of us are out of town. 

Tomorrow, I am going to ignore my menu plan and have a leftovers night.  We have lots of lettuce, 2 lentil patties, a couple servings of lentil stew as well,  a couple servings of potato leek soup, some rosemary roasted carrots, lots of rosemary roasted potatoes and a sweet potato to eat up.  I baked the potato this evening cause it was looking a bit iffy, so I cut off the iffy part and baked the rest.
We also have lots of muffins in the house.
I figure the spaghetti sauce can wait until Friday.  And that should use up the bell pepper and tomatoes nicely.  I did break down and buy some onion just for the sauce.  It was real onion or the dried stuff.

The Meal Designed for Leftovers

 Tonight was lentil stew and acorn squash.  Both were made with plans for the leftovers for future meals.
The lentil stew was just 2 lbs lentils, a chopped bell pepper, a chopped giant carrot, a heaping spoonful of pre-minced garlic, a 14 oz can of diced tomatoes and a 28 oz can of tomato sauce, the last of my dried minced onion, and water.  It went in the crock pot and water was again added later in the day as well as some salt and pepper to taste.

All 5 of the acorn squash went in the oven.  I just cut them in half and scooped out the seeds and cooked them face down in 9x13" baking dishes with an inch of water for about 40 min until the fork  would easily pierce the skin.  I then cut the 2 halves in half and sprinkled those with cinnamon and drizzled with a bit of honey for each of us for our dinner.  The rest of the squash was pureed and made into muffins and bread (5.5 cups of puree made 18 muffins and 2 loaves of bread, but the husband thinks he might have done better to have stretched it to more cause they are very moist).  Think pumpkin walnut muffin, with acorn squash puree instead.  These will be breakfast and desserts for days, maybe even weeks to come.  I think the loaves will be frozen.   

The lentils will be used tomorrow as an ingredient in another dish.  You will be seeing them again.

All Baked Veggie Dinner

Once again it was Krav Maga night, so the usual routine of me prepping dinner and the husband finishing it up was in order.

We found a couple of carrots in the back of the fridge from last week's rainbow carrot selection from the co-op to add to this week's giant orange carrots and last week's yellow potatoes for rosemary roasted root veggies, which I have shared my usual method of cooking here.  The only difference is no onion this time, because I didn't have any.  I have learned to be very flexible with my cooking that way because of relying on the co-op for my produce.

The asparagus was a garlic roast variety.  3 big bunches filled a 9x13 baking dish and was barely enough for our family of 4.  I bent the asparagus until it broke and tossed the end part and kept the spear part.  These were laid neatly in the baking dish, drizzled with olive oil and then I spread some pre-minced garlic over it and the husband baked it when he baked the root veggies.  The asparagus was done much sooner than the rest.

The girl did supplement her dinner with a cup of potato leek soup.

Lunch earlier had been potato leek soup and chips and hummus.  Not exactly the healthiest selection.  I don't really consider it a healthy meal unless I have lots of color involved.  Probably from years of packing bento style lunches.  And breakfast was just a blood orange since I had to run out the door to take the car into the shop.

Keeping the meals fairly simple has been making it easier to make sure dinner makes it on the table without the temptation to eat out.  It also seems to reduce the risk of messing up something more complicated.

A Potluck Contribution

I love game night.  Not only is it a good time, but there are just lots of cool people involved.  But when you get lots of cool people together for food, there are food issues to deal with.  Our Sunday night group have folks on Paleo diets, vegetarian diets, allergies to corn, soy, shell fish, and dairy.  So I like to bring fruits and veggies. 
Tonight's offering is a simple fruit salad.  I have 2 apples and 3 blood oranges from the co-op, and a 3 berry frozen mix and some frozen strawberries that I quartered.  I will slice a banana to add just before serving and I added some lemon juice to it all to keep the apples from browning.  As the berries thaw they should make a nice bright sweet sauce for the fruit salad.
The husband added some sugar.

Packing a lunch for another busy day

Sunday is another day of lots of running around and I decided to prepare ahead of time and made everyone pack their own lunches.  Mine is a hummus and veggie sandwich, a mini lemon muffin that was leftover from Sunday breakfast (and made with a last lemon from a co-op share a couple weeks ago) and one of the tiny pears we got in the co-op this week.  The sandwich consists of toasted multi-grain bread, hummus from Costco, sliced Roma tomato and a couple leaves of the butter lettuce. 
The girl child had a similar sandwich using meat instead of the hummus and a second sandwich of PB&J the boy had him some sort of similar meat sandwich without the tomato and both packed apples to go with it.  The boy also warmed up the leftover Spanish rice from the other night and packed it in a soup thermos.

The husband refused to pack a lunch and is taking advantage of a light lunch provided at the church before his meeting at the church before heading out to do some after hours support work for his job.  As last night he got a call from a client that called us home early from our concert and he still needs to finish up at the office, because out internet service is going wacky.  I think they are just trying to sell us an upgrade since the slowing of our internet happened the same day we got the ads to try and sell us the upgraded service at a discounted rate.  Well, we are not committing to a 2 year contract since we are hoping to move within 6 months so nyeh!

Dinner is in the crock pot and is a simple potato leek soup.  I used the last 2 leeks, several of the yellow potatoes we got from the co-op last week and nearly 2 boxes of the Hearty Vegetable Broth from Trader Joe's  and enough water to cover and put my big 7 qt crock pot on low to cook for the day.  At dinner time I will blend in the Vitamix and add salt and pepper to taste.  Maybe some thyme as well.  I think I have a bit of fresh thyme left over. 

I would like to take this moment to state that my crock pot, my vitamix and my rice cooker are the most wonderful things in the world.  I know I am not supposed to be attached to things, but I really really like these things.  With these 3 items, I could probably live without a stove if I had to.  Okay my toaster oven would help too.

Quick Saturday Lunch

We had a very busy day today with co-op pick up, some sorting, grocery shopping, dinner out and a wonderful coffee house style concert by a singer/songwriter from Austin.  So lunch was quick and easy and made use of some leftovers as well as some of this week's co-op offerings.

I had a sandwich with leftover Field Roast vegan Celebration Roast slices, and some of the butter lettuce that is so very yummy.  For a side I had a half a bell pepper sliced with some hummus for a dip that I picked up at Costco.  As usual it was water to drink.

Everyone sort of had their own thing for lunch.  The husband had the other half of the bell pepper and some salmon with crackers and some green onions I forgot we had leftover from last week's veggie pack.  The daughter went for the rest of the Field Roast with a PB&J and some fruit and the Son went for an actual meat sandwich and some fruit.

Co-op Haul and back to blogging

This is our haul from our Bountiful Baskets co-op this morning.  This represents about 2 baskets worth, an order of multi-grain bread and a few extras from volunteering.  I also have an extra head of lettuce from a friend. 
Our family of 3 has blossomed to a family of 4 recently, which accounts for the not blogging.  My young adult son has moved home since he is no longer needed to care for my grandfather, now that my grandfather has moved to an assisted living facility specializing in memory care.  And this accounts for the double basket.

One of the things we do upon pick up is to have breakfast at a friends house while she teaches our 12 year old piano.  We bring the eggs and my husband does the cooking.  So from this photo is missing a bell pepper and a tomato that went into the breakfast.  They provided the fruit that was part of the breakfast.  They gave us their lettuce since they are not as fond of butter lettuce as we are. 

I also still have a few things left over from previous weeks' co-op shares such as leeks (mainly because I traded for extras), potatoes, sweet potatoes and jalapenos and a chayote which were in the veggie pack last time).

Gratuitous Cat Photo - Willow Approved

This week you can see that we have:
3 heads of butter lettuce (that should last us a good while)
5 acorn squash
3 bunches of asparagus (yum!)
7 giant carrots
2 - 2lb bags, plus 3 blood oranges
9 large apples
6 bell peppers
11 tomatoes
2 garlic bulbs
11 small pears
5 loaves mulit-grain bread
All this for a total of $43.50

After getting home with all these goodies, we start making the menu plan for the week, so we can then make our grocery shopping list as well.

Sunday
Breakfast: Eggs with veggies in a lettuce wrap
Lunch: Sandwiches and fruit for kiddos, hummus w/ veggies and fruit for the adults (busy day with meetings at church, finish moving the son, and maybe a game night at friends if we actually get it all done)
Dinner: Potato Leek Soup (cooked in crock pot during the day and put through blender when we get home).  If we go to game night it can be put away for lunches during the week and we can make a fruit salad to take to friends.

From here we just plan dinners, with lunches being leftovers, and breakfasts being a fend for yourself usually oatmeal, peanut butter on toast with fruit, just fruit, or eggs in one form or another, unless muffins are on hand.

Monday: Rosemary Potatoes and Carrots with Baked Asparagus

Tuesday: Baked Acorn Squash, Baked Sweet Potatoes, Lentil Stew  (leftover squash and sweet potatoes will be pureed and turned into muffins for breakfasts for the rest of the week).

Wednesday: Lentil burgers w/ Lettuce wraps (made from leftover lentil stew) and sauteed chayote

Thursday: Spaghetti - home made sauce with salad

Friday:  Leftovers in some form.  I have no idea what we will have at this point.  If nothing else I might make pizza from the leftover spaghetti sauce or we might just warm all the bits and pieces and everyone just choose what they want from a variety.  But the goal is to empty the fridge in time for co-op pick up the next morning, and still have a healthy meal.  If we have no leftovers, I might consent to eating out at this time.