There are so many greens in my life right now!
I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner, but now the kids are helping eat up the CSA goodies in their lunches. I give them plenty of veggies throughout the day, but I had gotten in the routine of the usual carrot, broccoli, green bean routine…
So instead of that, I made them an Asian stir fry with two heads of bok choy that I was eager to use, as well as edamame (which they love) and then served it over brown rice. It was cooked in sesame oil and tamari, too, so they were quite pleased. And I was happy that the bok choy got eaten before I had to start scrambling.
CSAs are awesome for all the obvious reasons, but then there’s this added pressure of making sure you don’t waste food, so sometimes you sacrifice making something new in order to finish off something else you already have. In reality though, this is a massively awesome “problem” to have because it means we are eating way more vegetarian meals than before. Or at the very least, way less meat. Because we have so much produce on hand it seems ridiculous to go to the store for much of anything! A well stocked pantry and freezer can fill in most of the gaps (grains, beans, nuts and seeds!).
Here’s another meal that I came up with for no reason other than I knew we had leaf lettuce, cabbage, and cilantro to use up, so I figured a slaw of some kind would be my best bet.
I toasted slivered almonds for some crunch.
For the dressing I made a soy miso sauce with tamari, miso paste, maple syrup, sesame oil, and rice vinegar. It was awesome. I used a portion of it to brush onto the salmon that I cooked at 400 degrees F until they were just barely cooked through.
Then I did broil for a few minutes at the end just to get some color on top. I love the char/caramelization of salmon.
Yummy!
A couple of random lunch photos…more Brussels with kimchi mayo plus bacon wrapped dates and a few carrots…followed by part 1 of 2 bread/cream cheese/smoked salmon slices from a different day.
I got my imperfect produce order in addition to my weekly CSA because it’s so easy to pick and choose what you want, it’s basically online shopping and I am ALL ABOUT THAT. If amazon fresh would deliver to our house I’d never go to a grocery store again. Ok, that’s a lie. I could never find everything I want online. But I can dream…
Plus, I like the whole “reducing food waste” aspect of imperfect produce. I am very happy to eat ugly. I’ve already gotten a few friends hooked on it. Have you tried it yet? That link gets you $10 off for anyone curious. It’s really cool how you can add or subtract items and then it just arrives on your doorstep! I munched on a carrot while washing and putting everything away. And really, the only “imperfect” items were the weirdly shaped bell peppers and discolored (but not bruised) pears. Everything else was just surplus that they needed to find a home for. Me! Me!!
Freezer find!
I needed something fast and easy because I still hadn’t gone shopping and we ended up getting home late from our afternoon outings, soooo…I grabbed the last portion of beef ragu that I’d frozen and added it to the instant pot with a cup of water and some quinoa and hoped for the best.
Lucky for me, I wound up with a one pot meal of quinoa packed with tomato flavor. Everyone was a fan of this dish. I served it with kale on the side (which I added to the hot food in order to let it wilt a bit and get some of the ragu flavor).
Dessert intermission!! You want a close up of that Vosges bar?
Daaaaaaamn.
This is the kind of A-game prepping that leads to easy and delicious lunches.
See? Thai salad with kale, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, salmon, and cilantro.
Another day I combined leftover kohlrabi and General Tso tofu with some leftover spaghetti squash to make a big old bowl of veggie heaven. Plus salty almonds on top because I finally got some more at the store (hence their absence from the Thai salad the day before).
Look at this little sweet cheeks enjoying pickled green beans that I made back in summer.
For dinner the kids requested the salad they made the week before at their cooking class! I didn’t have all of the ingreds (all out of kale), but when your kids request salad you make it work! I swapped in pistachios for the poppyseeds and feta for the parmesan, and it totally worked.
Just a simple dressing with olive oil and fresh lemon juice.
They loved every single bite and asked for more, but sadly it was all gone. These kids are cracking me up with their taste preferences. I think a solid percentage of adults don’t even like grapefruit!!
For dessert I busted into these Better Bites! I’ve had them in the freezer for SO SO long. Kyle got them for me as a treat and I never think to look in the freezer for dessert so they’ve just been hanging out and hanging out and hanging out and…
Finally! I didn’t forget about them!
FYI they are cookie dough balls coated in dark chocolate (I knowwwww right?) AND they are gluten, dairy, soy, nut (yadda yadda everything in the top 8) free AND deeeelicious.
I had one (and then another) with some chocolate.
