Catching up

I feel sort of bad for not keeping up with my menu plans, but things had gotten sort of boring.  But I think I have figured out how to at least make some minor changes to keep the food interesting.
So going back to Saturday's co-op haul  We just got a double share this time.  This week included:
3 boxes of strawberries
2 boxes of mushrooms
2 boxes of grape tomatoes
2 bunches of celery
2 bunches of Asparagus
3 heads of romaine lettuce
4 zucchini
16 apples
25 tangelos
16 bananas
3 pints of sweet peppers

I still had left over from previous weeks:
broccoli
asparagus
2 bunches of celery
2 zucchini
1 leafy green lettuce
1.5 live butter lettuce
pineapple already cut
a few potatoes
And that single sweet potato (thank goodness those things keep so long)
Lots of oranges

Saturday was eating leftovers of chili beans and potatoes.
Sunday it was our turn to contribute to the church potluck.  I decided this was a good change to use up some of the lettuce and make layered salads, and also took lots of fruit.
I actually made 2 slightly different layered salads, although they look alike here.
They both have
3 kids of lettuce, onion (went to the store for that), celery,  broccoli, mayo, quartered grape tomatoes and fresh ground pepper.  The difference is that one has frozen peas and the other has frozen corn and some chopped sweet peppers.

Monday night consisted of some Asparagus roasted with onion and mushrooms tossed in olive oil and salt before cooking and served over a pasta that had been tossed in olive oil and nutritional yeast with strawberries on the side.  I think I like this even better than the garlic roasted asparagus that we have been having often.

Lunches have been fairly simple things.  Hummus in chips, peanut butter on celery (I do have 4 bunches of celery that needs eating), and today is a beautiful smoothie made with bananas, pineapple, strawberries and just a handful of frozen berries to chill it.

We are going through the veggies very quickly this week, and I doubt we will have any to eat on Friday, other than lettuce and celery.  But the fruit we have in abundance.  I think I might freeze any bananas we still have left tomorrow evening.  It is getting warm enough for regular smoothies again and frozen bananas are great for that.  And the husband is happy to have frozen bananas for making banana bread.

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.

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.

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.