Skip to main content

Hello, veggies!


Today was the day: we went back to our local farmers market to get our first CSA box.

sign reading "Farmers Market Today"
Hooray!  Market Day!!

We get an e-mail on Thursdays that gives us a sense for what to expect, so we knew to anticipate an abundance of fresh, delicious, organic seasonal veggies grown nearby.  I made a tentative meal plan, leaving some flexible spaces on purpose so we could account for volume once we knew what we had.  Karen made sure the massive reusable bag was in the car, and away we went!

The market was a bit busier today, but we took our time perusing.  We returned our egg carton to the farmer who we bought eggs from last week, stopped for cold brew coffee (again - not sorry!) and wandered our way to the back corner of the market, where CSA pickup happens.  We picked up a loaf of bread on the way, and I admired the golden beets.

We checked in to pick up our CSA, and the farmer showed us where to tick off our names on the list and pick up our medium-sized share.  If you've never done a CSA, you sign up for a share which includes a given number of units a week: in our case, seven.  A "unit" is just whatever you'd buy in the grocery store.  So, you might get a head of lettuce, a pint of peas, a bunch of kale, etc.

Or, like us this week, you might get a box of strawberries, a box of peas, a head of cooking greens, a bag of salad mix, a napa cabbage, scallions, and four summer squash.

Turns out the medium share is unquestionably enough for two people.  Our bag was packed.  But I wasn't leaving without some of those beets, so we found a little space for those, too.

Zucchini and some of those fabulous beets.
Goodies!


Did I mention that we still have some lettuce and kale left over from last week?

From there, it was a trip to the co-op for some of the non-vegetable things we are eating this week.  The good news is that the list was short.  The bad news is that we're still fairly new to the co-op, which means we get really excited about pretty much everything.  Friends, we went hard.

The green bag in the back left is the CSA. One bag contains dishwasher soap and stuff from Target. The rest is shelf-stable, thank God.

Fortunately, the fridge was mostly empty, except that lettuce and kale. The fridge is no longer empty.  (Karen came up with the brilliant idea to clip an index card to each bag of veggies to serve as a label, to help us distinguish between the various kinds of delicious greens.)

So what are we going to do with it?  The menu this week:

  • Breakfast: toast with various nut butters (a mixed nut, sunflower butter, and straight-up creamy peanut butter) and fruit
  • Lunch: green salad with chickpeas, cranberries, & sunflower seeds
  • Dinners: beet & goat cheese pizza with kale salad; a massive stir-fry; taco night; veggie burgers with zucchini fries, a new recipe I am trying out; shrimp on squash noodles

About that taco night: I've got a summer research student this year, and it's tradition that we invite my research student over to have dinner early in the summer.  That's this week!  (My student is absolutely fabulous, and I'm having a blast working with her.)  She happens to be vegan, so we're whipping up a batch of vegan sweet potato tacos and a wacky chocolate cake for dessert.

Stay tuned this week for the amazing Karen's DIY cold brew coffee (because kits are for wimps), with bonus homemade coffee syrups.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Kicking Coffee Up A Notch

On cold brew coffee I like coffee.  Not as much as Kara likes coffee, but I like it a lot.  I especially like iced coffee, year-round.  But I hate brewing hot coffee then diluting it with enough ice to get it cold (I prefer to use milk or a milk substitute to dilute my coffee).  So I bought a cold brew concentrate.  And that was fine, but I knew there had to be a better way. At some grocery stores and at one particular well-known coffee shop, you can find "kits" to make cold brew coffee.  Some places, especially that coffee shop, even offer cold brew coffee "machines."  Not being made of money and having a brain in my head, I decided I could do it much, much cheaper.  I remembered making "sun tea" with my mom, and figured I could do coffee almost the same way. The first time I DIYed my cold brew, I tried to make satchels using coffee filters and twine.  It didn't work great.  The grounds escaped and were a pain to try to get out ...
3 comments
Read more

Ethical eating: reducing food waste

One of our goals as part of our attempt to eat more ethically is to reduce the amount of stuff we throw away.  This includes packaging - a goal that matches up nicely with the scratch and home cooking approach! - as well as, of course, food itself. But it also involves management of our pantry staples. Pantry. Note: I love boxes. Meal prepping helps with this in theory, because you know what you will need to have on hand to make the meals you intend to make. That means that we can - theoretically - check for items in the pantry before we head out to get groceries.  I keep talking about all of this "in theory" because, well, let's be honest - there are some staples that I need to have on hand regardless of whether I intend to use them in the next week.  And sometimes I am making a meal plan in the car on our way somewhere, or over text message while one of us is at work, which means I'm not right on hand to check out the pantry's contents.  (What the phot...
1 comment
Read more

An Ode to Lunch Prep

School years and semesters are now well under way for folks whose work is most pressing on that September-to-June cycle.  And where have we been?  Well, getting said year under way, of course. Despite the fact that I'm on research leave, we are diligent about our meal planning and about using weekends to do some advance work for the week.  (This means that doing the prep has taken precedence over blogging about it over the past two busy weekends - sorry, friends.) If you've been around food blogs for any length of time, you've seen ten thousand people praising meal prep and telling you it's the secret to your new healthy lifestyle.  I wish this was the moment when I said "but they're wrong!" or "do it like this!" but... meal prep, especially lunch prep, is crucial to our family's ability to eat well and resist the siren calls of ordering a pizza or grabbing something processed. However.  Karen and I can manage most of the prep in about ...
Post a Comment
Read more