Is it Tuesday already?

Man, I haven't eaten nearly enough of my vegetables.  Better get cracking.  Going to finally fix that salad for lunch and the garbanzo bean/chard dish.  Roasted a truly ancient butternut squash this a.m. (working from home so can take breaks to stick something in the oven, load the washer, etc.); I love the stuff but didn't know it would last so long; going to add a can of sweet potato and make a variation on Heidi Swanson's Thai-spiced pumpkin soup. Guess I'll just sauté and steam the spinach and stick it in the fridge for tomorrow's lunch; had better have another piece of chicken with that, then freeze the remaining pieces and make stock with the bones.  Still haven't braved the dandelion greens and not sure how/whether they will keep.  Going to a continuing ed dinner tonight at Scott's Seafood, where unfortunately I will be eating beef (limited choices at these kinds of dinners and I am really over salmon just now).

Speaking of butternut squash, and this probably won't be an issue again before the fall, that sucker was hard to peel. Usually I chicken out and roast it halved in the oven, then scoop out the good stuff.  But encouraged by a few internet videos, I decided to halve, scoop, peel and cut prior to roasting this time, and all I can say is, if a serrated peeler is what it takes, then I'm going to have to get one.  What an ordeal!  But it smells really nice now, and I am looking forward to all that coconutty and spicy, creamy goodness.

Yesterday made quite a bit of progress in the kitchen, and I was able to fix brown basmati rice and the lamb and fava bean stew.  The stew, in spite of its relatively simple preparation, was delicious.  I left out the sugar, not on purpose, but the tomatoes provided enough sweetness, I think.  The fava beans, after I had parboiled them and tediously peeled them out of their tenacious little skins,  constituted such a tiny pile that I can scarcely credit them with contributing to the flavor of the lamb.  I am running out of mealtimes to eat all this stuff, so they may very well go into the freezer; after all, it will be nice to have a healthy meal ready to nuke when I get home Sunday night!

TJ's Soy Chorizo and other vegetarian things

Finished up the soy chorizo I bought at Trader Joe's last week; had it in my eggs.  It's surprisingly not too bad but I doubt I'll be buying it again.

A much more interesting vegetarian item is this recipe for vegetable stock "base" found on another food blog, crediting in turn a book by Pam Corbin.  Heidi Swanson's blog has a lot of nice lentil recipes; tempted to try the red lentil one.

Having a lazy day today--was not in the plan, but I did work really hard yesterday, so I guess it's okay. Something about a snoozing cat on your legs.  Will roast the chicken for dinner and then pack some of it for the freezer.  All the stuff I am making, actually, will go at least partly in the freezer, as I'm spending the (long) weekend at a meeting in Reno.  This also means I'll have to prep and do something with next week's box, which per the email I received Friday will contain:

carrots
baby spinach
fresh onions
green garlic
sweet potatoes
asparagus
strawberries
dried peaches
French Breakfast radishes
chard
rosemary
Fava beans OR sugar snap peas

I'm looking forward to the sweet potatoes and the rosemary.  Guess the spinach and chard will just need to be sauteed and stuck in the freezer; everything else should keep okay in the fridge for 4-5 days. 

Per Eatwell's newsletter they are having a hard time with the rain, which is having a particularly brutal effect on the strawberries.  I've eaten up this week's already, mixing them with some kiwis I found at Porter's market, along with slightly sweetened Greek yogurt.  Yum.  Also finally squeezed a bag of limes and 4 Meyer lemons and froze them in ice cube trays yesterday--I'll move them into ziplocs then.

Since I struck out on the organic bacon, guess I will use the salt pork I bought a couple weeks ago instead--vagulely thinking of some kind of bean soup when I bought it.  Might as well use it up in the dandelion dish; might need to be parboiled first if too salty.

Kitchen and veggie progress

First some urls for recipes I am choosing:

Lamb with fava beans
Dandelion salad w/hot bacon dressing
Chick peas and chard
Brine for roast chicken

Unfortunately, the kitchen is taking longer to clean than I expected; I've done two loads in the dishwasher and have the prepped vegetables in the fridge, the TJ chicken is brining there, but I've not done any actual cooking yet.  A couple more hours tomorrow morning will do it, though, and then I can probably cook everything but the lamb in the afternoon; I plan to cut the young onions and the carrots, coat them in a little olive oil, and roast them alongside the chicken.  The spinach can be a side dish to the lamb, just steamed w/olive oil and parmesan or butter and raspberry vinegar.


Yesterday was kind of a wash as far as cooking/cleaning.  I ended up spending most of the day shopping.  I had discovered some inexpensive baled glass storage bottles at Ross on Wednesday ($7 for 3), so I decided to check out a couple other local Ross's.  They also had some amazing prices on small ceramic baking dishes, so I picked up a couple of those, too.


I failed to score at the store that was supposed to have the organic pork.  They do have organic chicken, though, and decent-looking seafood, so it wasn't a complete waste.  Then a trek to Grocery Outlet, where I got 15 tins of the yellowfin ventresca.  I put gas in the car, too, so all in all it was semi-productive but didn't get kitchen clean or food cooked.


The good news is that by tomorrow the kitchen should be clean enough that I will be able to take pictures of what I am cooking.