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.

Stir Fry

Tonight was a simple stir fry over brown rice.  It consisted of lots of cabbage, carrots, some onion, bell pepper and pineapple with coconut aminos for the sauce. 
I am so happy to have found the coconut aminos for my stir frys.  I have missed soy sauce.  While this isn't exactly a soy sauce, I seem to be able to use it like it is.  It has a much milder flavor.

I really should have done a double batch of rice, for the girl child finished off all the born rice and now there isn't any for breakfast in the morning or lunch.  But we still have veggies left.

Co-op Bounty and Quick Sunday Lunch

This week I went ahead and ordered 2 shares of produce because we just never seem to have enough veggies since going vegetarian.
We did trade with a friend our green beans for some extra sweet potatoes and cucumber.  Yes, those really are some big cucumbers and sweet potatoes this round.

We got
2 bags of apples
2 cabbages
2 cauliflower
7 cucumber
5 HUGE sweet potatoes or yams
10 tomatoes
7 Asian pears
16 bananas
2 lbs of strawberries and  2 bunches of radishes with greens.
We did still have a couple tomatoes, carrots and potatoes left from last week as well as 2 pineapple and apples just because, due to some hectic scheduling we ate out twice.  If I had made the meals planned for those nights we would have run out of food.

Anyway after picking up produce on Saturday morning we headed to a friends house for a breakfast and piano lessons for my daughter.  Here we shared some of our apples, we also brought eggs.  Our hosts provided field roast, tortillas and lots of veggies.

Then I went on to a day long reproductive justice event and had lunch there.  The husband and kids had hamburgers and leftover potato mushroom soup.

Then we had a gathering at a friend's house where I brought a pineapple and more apples to share.  It was a lovely potluck event with veggie spaghetti, salad, cupcakes and such.

Sunday Breakfast was whole wheat pancakes, before heading out for errands.

Then for lunch we had Field Roast vegan hot dogs, fresh pineapple and some more potato mushroom soup.  Yes, I made too much of this soup.  But it has been making a very nice side dish.  And all I had to do was put some potatoes, mushrooms, onion, celery water and salt in a crock pot and cook until the potatoes were tender and then blend until smooth and add some pepper and more salt to taste.

Sunday dinner was game night with some friends and we took a couple of those huge cucumbers, the makings for strawberry margaritas and a huge tub of roasted pine nut hummus.  It went well with the vegan Indian food they made us and the bell pepper slices to also dip in the hummus.  I am glad I purchased a second tub of hummus for the home.