My first week back with the co-op

The first half of the week I had some trouble waking up so it was cereal and fruit for breakfast.  But it was a healthy organic cereal by Nature's Path with some almond milk.
Dinner on Monday was  pan cooked cabbage with olive oil and salt and pepper with some vegan apple-sage sausage from Field Roast, a salad with goat cheese crumbles and tomatoes from the neighbor and plums.

Tuesday I used the leftover cabbage, some cooked cauliflower and yukon gold potatoes to make a bubble and squeak with some more of the vegan sausage from the night before and another salad.
By Wednesday I was at least up to making toast for breakfast, so it was peanut butter and toast and some fruit.

Then Wednesday night was steamed kale and rice with stewed plums and gleaned peaches with honey and a bit of cinnamon done in the crock pot.  After when I was about halfway through dinner, my husband pointed out that the stewed fruit would be really good on ice cream.  So I saved the rest of my fruit and had it over ice cream for dessert.

Then that gets us to this morning - Thursday.  I actually made breakfast for the family.  We had a frittata with spinach, onion and tomato, topped with salsa, toast and jam (I had fig butter on mine) and some grapes and orange juice.

A New Start - image heavy

Yes a new start.
I realize the blog has been untended for awhile.  But I have a good reason.  We moved!
My focus became not the challenge of making healthy meals that would keep my family from encouraging us to eat out and more a how can we eat up everything in the pantry and fridge so I don't have to move it.  Then we had a 5 days of between homes while we stayed with the in-laws and then there was the moving while the kids were gone our first week here. 
This past Saturday was my first day back to getting food from the co-op again.  But the new house as also brought some food bounty of it's own that was unexpected.

First the local bounty.  We moved near friends who garden.  They know my daughter's love for small tomatoes and have been bringing those by by the gallon.  They don't last long, but they keep her fed.
Our neighbors also have a peach tree that is in season.  The house has also recently been purchased, but no one has moved in yet.  So I have been gleaning peaches.  Not many of them are really edible, since it hasn't been well cared for. I do spend some time trying to work around worms and such.  Usually the birds are good about getting to the peaches with the worms before I do though.

We have also been working towards building up our herb garden again and while picking up compost at the local compost pile a nice lady gave us a lovely healthy rosemary.  I have missed my rosemary the most from the old house.  The photo shows my basil, since I took the photo, I have added oregano to one of the blue pots.  The rosemary is in a plastic pot destined for the front yard.  All the herbs other than the rosemary, will eventually end up in a pretty spiral in the front yard.

Well on to the co-op and some of our meals of late:
Plums (we got some in the basic share as well as ordered an extra variety pack)
kale
kiwi
cabbage

lettuce
grapes
blueberries
cauliflower
tomatoes
bananas
cantaloup
bread (another extra we purchased)

Produce I already had on hand
gleaned peaches
grape tomatoes from friend's garden
cuties oranges
1/2 bell pepper
onions
romain salad mix

My grocery list:
tomato sauce
potatoes
spinach
sandwich meat for the kids
goat cheese crumbles and feta cheese (goat for me and the girl and feta for the husband)
honey mustard dressing
orange juice

Saturday was a bit hectic with the co-op pick up and then needing to head out to my in laws to pick up a couch we purchased from an antique mall in their small East Texas town.  I know that seems like a bit of an expense after just buying a new house, but then my movers broke my couch and I had seen this couch while we were visiting my in-laws during that 5 days without a place to live.  My husband hates the color, but it is a 90 year old couch in great condition and I love it.
But anyway, Saturday involved a breakfast of oatmeal with peaches, almond slices, brown sugar and vanilla.  My husband made that while the girl and I sorted produce.  The boy was still gone on a house sitting gig, this time.

Lunch was at the in laws.  Dinner time was getting even more hectic as we decided to take advantage of having the in-laws' truck and make an ikea run and get the girl child a much needed book shelf, so we hit taco bell for the veggie cantina bowl thing.  Not a very healthy day at all really. 
Sunday got better on the eating, but not on the busy since we still had access to the truck and lots of things to get and do for the house.  But we started out slow with some waffles with a peach and blueberry compote and some orange juice and coffee.
BTW, I did take my in-laws some of our abundance of plums to thank them for the use of their truck for the week.
Then we headed off for the free compost offered by the city to start building a raised veggie garden that my daughter has been wanting.  Had to fill our own containers for that.  Then home to unload that.  Rested from the heat and then off to the hardware store for cinder block for the garden.  We could only push the flat cart with so many in it, so we only got enough for 1 and a half beds when we wanted 2 garden beds.  Which means the husband gets to go back for more when he goes back for the rain barrel tonight.
Get home and get the call from the boy that his GPS system has broken and he isn't quite sure how to get to the new house from his house sitting gig, so we have to look up his location on our gps and give him direction and then unload and shower.  About that time he is home and we all head to Jason's Deli for lunch.

Then we drop the kids off for mowing and other yard work while we head off to Costco for yet more shopping for big items while I can.  Which means a ladder and computer desks.

Then we come home and build a garden with the kids while the dog chases dragon flies.  You would think the old fellow was a puppy if it wasn't for the fact that his back legs kept giving out on him and he would go crashing to the ground or into a fence every now and then.  I haven't seen that dog bound like that in years.

And then finally dinner.  We had personal pizzas on 8 grain pita bread with salad and plums.  My pizza consisted of sauce, vegan sausage, bell pepper and onion that had been sauteed in garlic, and sauteed spinach.  Everyone made their own thing.

And some of the other things that we have enjoyed since we moved into the new house:

Udi Muffins with Cuties on the Patio

Spinach Salad with goat cheese

Eggs Scrambled with veggies and toast

Egg Salad Sandwich with strawberries

Spaghetti w/ Pesto and Strawberries

Spaghetti with Pesto and tomatoes

Beans and Rice with Vegan Sausage

Fresh fruit salad with gleaned peaches, strawberries and oranges

And just some other fun photos from the adventures of the new home:

My unusual fireplace

Camping in the house the night before the furniture arrived

Camping in the house before the furniture arrived

Cut some roses to brighten my kitchen

The girl and the husband planting basil

The girl and her 2 favorite past times - computer and eating

A neighbor brought us a butterfly cocoon, which we got to set free

The girl and husband with the butterfly

Co-op Shares and the Salad Blues

Once again I got a double share from the co-op, and split a case of strawberries.  We also volunteered and I traded a bag of apples for another box of mushrooms just cause we still had apples from last week.  We also got the bread variety pack.
This week's inventory:
4 boxes of strawberries
1 bag of apples +2 extras
2.5 bunches of Spinach (It was 3, but half of one was used for our Saturday morning breakfast with friends before coming home)
2 heads of lettuce
9 tomatoes (was 10, but we used one for breakfast)
2 cucumber
4 zucchini
4 boxes of mushrooms
2.5 boxes of blackberries (was 3, but the girl child munched on them on the way home)
5 avacados
11 bananas
10 oranges
10 peppers
Leftover from previous weeks:
1.5 boxes of strawberries
3 heads of romaine lettuce
1 head of butter lettuce
3 bunches of celery
8 tangelos
6 apples
13 mandarin oranges
1 sweet potato
onions (I actually went to the store last week for a bag of onion since I cook with them so much)
4 potatoes
2 partial boxes of grape tomatoes
several small sweet peppers

Breakfast with friends consisted of scrambled eggs, sauteed spinach and onion, sliced tomato, fresh strawberries and apples.

Lunch was sandwiches and fruit and those veggie straw chips.  Sort of a fend for yourself.  I think the only I did that might have counted as fixing a meal for the family was cutting the hoagie rolls and slicing a tomato and washing some lettuce.  This was our junk food meal, as my husband put it.

Dinner was the usual layered salad that has become my "how many veggies can I put in this thing" salad and a baked potato with sauteed veggies.  The salad had 2 kinds of lettuce, onion, celery, 2 colors of sweet peppers, cucumber, mushroom, grape tomatoes, frozen peas, frozen corn, Whole Food's 365 mayo and fresh ground black pepper.  The potato topping consisted of both the small red and yellow sweet peppers from last week as well as one of the larger green peppers from this week, zucchini, mushroom and onion.

Last week we had lots of pasta and home made pizza.  I felt sluggish from it.  Of course the layered salads are rather fatty, but there is still no cheese or meat in our diet.  While I think we might still be eating less fat than the average American, I feel like I need to do something to improve the health of our diets.  I think we eat healthier when we are getting more Kale, which I can steam, than lettuce, which I consume with fatty stuff like mayo or on sandwiches. But my weight loss has stalled, which I suspect is from the annoying salad theme going on with the co-op this month.  I just don't do healthy salads.  I need cheese or a creamy dressing to make them edible, and I can't eat cheese anymore. 

I think that next week I might have to order just one basket of produce and figure out what to do with all this lettuce and celery that is filling up my fridge.

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.

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.

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.

The Salad Bar

This was Sunday lunch.  We haven't been eating out much, because trying to find something to eat out that is worth the cost, the hassle and taste yummy is sometimes a bit of a chore.  But there are times, like trying to fit a meal in between obligations away from home, that you just really have to do so. If the weather had been warmer, I might have suggested the family pack a picnic instead.
We went to Jason's Deli, since we know we can get a dairy free bread for the girl child there.  I went with the salad bar and just crossed my fingers that the honey mustard dressing didn't have much in the way of soy for me.  

The salad bar had a very nice selection.  I got a variety of greens, some broccoli, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, bell pepper slices, peas, hummus, sunflower seeds and almond slices and yes an egg.  I am not vegan  I, on occasion, have an egg.