Crunchy Garlic Chicken

Week Two, Friday

It seems like we got more specialty items this week at Fair Shares, and fewer things to incorporate into our meals. I made one of my standard meals tonight, and only used spinach from the CSA food. I got the recipe for the chicken from a Betty Crocker cookbook, but it's fairly close to this recipe.

I finally got around to washing the lettuce from this week's share. Last week, we got romaine lettuce and spring mixed greens. I recognized both of them and I'd had them before. This time, the lettuce pieces had long stems. I wasn't sure what to do with them, but I didn't think I'd like them in the salad. I cut all the stems off. I'm sure a couple years from now the trendy farmer's market thing will be to sell "lettuce stems" and people will pay for and eat the parts I didn't want.

stemmy lettuce

Here's the salad:


Crunchy garlic chicken with roasted sweet potatoes and sauteed spinach and onions

Later on, I made a dessert. I hadn't used the tortillas yet, and I thought about making some sort of french toast using them and the apple syrup. I ended up heating up some butter in a frying pan with brown sugar and cinnamon. I cut up two tortillas and cooked them for a little bit on each side. Roy opened the syrup jar and heated up some syrup in the microwave.


I think if I do this again, we'll keep the syrup as a dipping sauce rather than pouring it on the tortillas. It got messy, but it was good.

I ended up using spinach, lettuce, radish shoots, last week's olive oil, tortillas, and the apple syrup today.

Bison Burgers

Week Two, Thursday

Roy and I disagree on whether I'm a picky eater. Roy's an optimist, and lists all the foods I've tried and liked. I think of all the ones I don't like or refuse to try. Nothing spicy, no hot liquids. No black beans.

One of the choices at Fair Shares this week was black bean soup, black beans and rice, or some other black bean thing. Roy loves this stuff, so we got the soup, and he ate it for lunch on Thursday. He added chopped onions and cheddar cheese. Roy thought it was excellent. A little tang to it, filling, it was good.



For dinner, we were going to use the ground bison to make burgers. I made potato latkes with them. I'd never eaten bison before. It cooked faster than the lamb and it was leaner. Roy pointed out that the drip tray on the Foreman grill was empty; no fat spilled off the burgers.

While I cooked the latkes and meat, Roy helped by chopping an onion, slicing the hamburger buns, a tomato, more onion, and cutting off some cheese for the burger. The cheese was thick and it took a while to melt. I'm afraid the burger got overcooked. I'm not sure what it was supposed to taste like, since I don't know what bison tastes like. Roy liked it better than I did. I know I liked the lamb burger better.

This didn't feel like a healthy meal at all. We didn't have a salad with it. Roy said our burger toppings amounted to a salad - lettuce, tomato, and onions.

I used three foods from Fair Shares: the ground bison, lettuce, and an egg in the potato latkes.

Latke Mixture: potatoes, onion, egg, flour, salt, pepper, nutmeg

Latkes cooking

I used half the ground bison for this meal.

Bison burger and potato latkes. The lettuce from last week still looks good.

Leftoverture

Week Two, Wednesday

No cooking tonight, we had leftover lasagna.

Roy and I had some food from our new stash of food - snacking on tortilla chips and salsa. We had the choice of mild or spicy salsa. Unfortunately for me, the salsa was still "mildly spicy" and too strong for me.


We used the last of last week's spring lettuce mix and added the radish shoots to our salad.


I just had to stick the main course in the microwave.

Week Two Share

Week Two

This is my second week at Fair Shares.
This week had a Southwest/Mexican theme. The foods include tortilla chips, salsa, torillas, and Black Bean soup. There's also eggs, ground bison, gouda cheese, spinach, lettuce, and radish shoots. These radish shoots look more like rabbit food than anything else I've gotten so far.


There was one item in this week's share that I knew I wasn't going to like. I don't do spicy food. One of the items was a jalapeño marinade/dip. I was able to trade it in for another item, so I got an apple syrup. Not sure what I'll use it with, but it should taste good.

Week One Assessment

Week One

I was a math major in college, and I love to analyze data. Here's how I did. If I get really ambitious (or bored) I'll add the quantity.



I used part of every food. We ate all of the lamb, rolls, cheese, spinach, mushrooms, and finished off the mixed greens on Wednesday night. There's only two eggs left.

The one thing I didn't eat much of was the lettuce. We used the mixed greens for salads each night, and I only used the lettuce for sandwiches. I used five leaves. This is how much was left at the end of the week.



I gave about half of this to a neighbor. I'll use the rest for sandwiches this week.

Lasagna!

Week One, Tuesday

Tonight's dinner tasted wonderful, but I'm not sure how often I'm going to make it. This was the last dinner of the first week, and I wanted to finish up some of the foods. Spinach, mushrooms, mozzarella cheese. I've never made lasagna before, but it seemed like a good idea.

This recipe said it would take 35 minutes of prep work. Ha! It took me two hours. I had to grate the cheese and wash the mushrooms, which wasn't part of the recipe of course. Also, I didn't take advantage of multi-tasking. I could have started boiling some water as some other things were going on, so it would be ready when I needed it. Instead, I worked sequentially. It never got stressful, but it sure took a while. I will not be making this on a weeknight again.



This is mixed ricotta cheese, romano cheese, an egg, spinach, onions, garlic, mushrooms, salt, pepper, and some dried herbs.

I used fresh pasta. I thought it would save time, because I wouldn't have to cook the lasagna noodles first. It did save time, but everything else took so much longer than I thought.


Just before I added the last layer of pasta.

It cooked for an hour. We had plenty of time to prepare and eat a salad.


Here's the finished product.



I thought it turned out so well that I sent an e-mail to the other people in my condo building saying I had leftover lasagna for them. I live in a three-unit building, and neighbors from both of the other units came up. I gave them food, we talked about Fair Shares and food vacuuming, and we hung out talking for about an hour. I've only cooked for a few people before - Roy, my parents, Roy's mom, Roy's brother, and my best friend from back home. It's nice to see that my effort brought about a little get-together.

Chicken Stir Fry

Week One, Monday

I'll be going on a few trips this spring and summer. It's mostly on the weekends, so I didn't think it would affect my Wednesday new food pickups. Just today, I extended my trip to Milwaukee. I'm going up there for the Summerfest concerts over July 4th weekend. Just today, I decided to extend my trip, and head up there on Wednesday, June 30th. I'll have to figure something out.

Today, I made chicken stir fry for dinner. I picked up a nice looking vegetable mix at Straub's the other day.



The only thing I used from Fair Shares was the brown rice. I used this recipe from Pinch My Salt. When Roy and I first decided to switch to brown rice from white, the time it took to cook was a detriment to me. I'd only ever made quick-cooking rice, and I stuck with Minute Rice's version of brown rice. Chicken stir fry was great for a quick meal. Cooking the rice for 40 minutes changes things. I don't know if I'll use this rice all the time, or go back to the quick cooking stuff if I don't have a lot of time to prepare dinner.

The rice turned out a lot better this time than last time. Roy thought it tasted noticeably better than the minute rice.


I have a problem sometimes when I cook stir fry. It seems like the vegetables let out water, and soon the food goes from sauteeing in peanut oil to boiling. It only happens sometimes, but I don't know what causes it. I added some more oil and turned the heat up a bit until it finished cooking.



The other thing I don't like is that our air conditioner blows right onto the stove top. (We live on the top floor of our building and need AC already. We don't need much heat in the winter though.) I can see the fire coming from the heating element react to the AC, blowing around. Sometimes just one side of the pan gets much heat. So I end up turning the AC off while I'm cooking. That's fine now, but it won't be when I need to cook something for 40 minutes on the stovetop when it gets really hot out.

Spaghetti and Lamb Meatballs

Week One, Sunday

One of the meals I make most often - once or twice is week - is something Roy and I call "chicken spaghetti". It's grilled chicken, whole wheat spaghetti, sauce from a jar, and cut up bell peppers. It's quick, easy, and tastes good. I have a feeling that I'm going to use this as a template, and tweak it as I get new ingredients from Fair Shares. One week might be fresh pasta, another might be homemade tomato sauce or different veggies.

Tonight was substituting lamb meatballs for the chicken. I could only think of three basic meals using ground meat - hamburgers, meatballs, and meatloaf. I've only made hamburgers before. I've already used the lamb for that a couple days ago.

I told Roy this earlier, that I don't think I've ever eaten spaghetti and meatballs. I don't order it out, because lots of places include pork in their meatball mix. And I didn't have it growing up at home - spaghetti night was usually just spaghetti and sauce with no meat added.

I started out with a pound of lamb, and I used 10 ounces for hamburgers. That left 6 ounces for tonight for the two of us. I used the ingredients from this recipe. Adding in the cheese and breadcrumbs made the meatballs a lot bigger than I thought they would be. At first, I made four, but I ended up cutting them in half.


It ended up being a lot of food. I made the meatballs first, before starting the pasta or heating up the sauce. Less stress knowing other items weren't waiting on the meatballs. They cooked up pretty easily, and I could tell when they were done. I should have tasted them before dropping them into the sauce, but everything worked out.

I made salads for Roy and me, cutting up the vegetables while the pasta was cooking. This is the third day in a row that I've made a salad, since I got all this lettuce from the CSA.


Here's a close-up.



Roy was really happy with how it turned out. He said it was "another rousing success" and "excellent!" I thought the meatballs tasted good, but this was way too much food.

From my CSA food, I used the ground lamb and an egg for the meatballs. For the salad, once again I used the mixed greens and the olive oil.

Salad Success

Week One, Saturday

Roy and I went out for dinner tonight, so no cooking. Yay! I did make an omelet for lunch. I used eggs and spinach from my CSA food. I usually have eggs, spinach, and cheddar on hand, so this is a typical weekend lunch for me.

What made it different than usual was the salad. I would not have made a salad had I not received the mixed greens from the CSA and bought a bunch of other salad ingredients yesterday. It turned out better than yesterday's salad. I included the mixed greens, tomatoes, carrots, onion, and a bit of a nut mix I bought yesterday. I just used olive oil and balsamic vinegar as salad dressing, and that worked better than the dressing I made yesterday. I think I have a winner!

The spinach omelet, toast with grape preserves, and my tasty salad.

Grandma's Nuts. The grandma herself was giving samples at Straub's yesterday. This is really good.

Lamb Burgers

Week One, Friday

Today would be my first big meal since I got the CSA food. I finally got to the market to buy some extra ingredients for a salad. I bought grape tomatoes, a red bell pepper, and julienned carrots to go along with the lettuce. I meant to put some onion in it too, but I forgot.

Even without the salad, I've been enjoying having lettuce around. I've only bought bagged spring mix or baby spinach before. It's nice to have a crisp piece of lettuce in a sandwich. On Thursday, I brought my usual turkey sandwich to work. On Friday, I cut up a leftover chicken thigh from Wednesday's dinner, and had a sliced, roasted chicken sandwich for lunch.

My favorite local salad is the field greens salad at Schlafly Bottleworks. It's the salad dressing I really love, a vanilla vinaigrette. It's sweet and doesn't taste vinegar-y at all. I found a recipe on-line for that type of dressing. I'm going seriously into Food Network overdoing it territory here - making my own salad dressing.

The small bottle here, the vanilla extract, cost over twice as much as the larger bottle, white wine vinegar. I've never bought either of these items before.

I had to add extra oil and sugar to this recipe. It wasn't bad, but it didn't taste at all like I was expecting. I don't have a storage container for it.

The leftover dressing is currently still sitting in the mixing bowl, with saran wrap over it, in the fridge. Do I need to buy a bottle for it? The Food Network never shows leftover storage. Maybe I should toss it and stick to the pre-made stuff.

I don't normally make multi-course meals. I'm usually standing in the kitchen cooking right up until it's done, and everything comes out at once. I didn't know how to time it. So we decided to eat the salad before I started cooking the rest of dinner.



Most of the meats we'll be getting from Fair Shares will be ground. For this first week, we got a pound of ground lamb. I've never cooked lamb before, but I thought the easiest thing would be to make burgers. Lamb burger hamburgers. I made the burgers 5 ounces each, so we'd have some leftover meat for later on in the week. We used the goat mozzarella, lettuce, and the remaining two rolls. (For the salad, I used the spring mix lettuce and fancy olive oil.)

Weighing the raw ground lamb.

I cut up a potato and made skillet french fries as a side dish. I added salt, pepper, garlic, and some bread crumbs to the lamb. It cooked for five minutes on the Foreman grill. Toasted the rolls. Added some lettuce and onions. (Also a tomato for Roy and ketchup for me.) The rolls ended up being rather thick to act as a hamburger roll. I ate it all, but Roy took off the top half and ate it as an open face sandwich.




I love the raw onions slice with burgers. I could tell the lamb tasted different than a beef burger, but it still fit. I didn't notice the cheese much at all. It had a mild taste. I don't normally get cheese on burgers out, but I had this cheese and I wanted to try it.

Mushroom Spinach Omelet

Week One, Thursday

I had a hair cut appointment after work on Thursday, so I didn't have time to buy extra groceries or make a long meal. That would have to wait until Friday night.

I'm not a mushroom eater. I'll eat a portobello if it's mixed in with other things, but usually, it's "hold the mushrooms" when I'm ordering something. But part of the reason I'm doing this is to try new things.

These mushrooms look exotic and scary:
My friend Tina thinks these are chanterelles. I've never even heard of these.

We found some more normal looking mushrooms in the bag, and used them for dinner. I will have to use the exotic ones at some point, but I'm not ready for them yet.

For this night, I used eggs, spinach, mushrooms, and one of the rolls. A spinach, mushroom omelet! I also diced a potato and part of an onion for the side dish. (Roy deserves credit for all onions that appear in this blog. They make my ears tear, so he cuts all my onions for us.)



I learned how to cook omelets from watching chefs at omelet stations at hotel brunches. They usually cook the fillings first, then add the egg mixture. I have a stainless steel frying pan, not a non-stick, and I can never do this and keep the eggs from sticking. Plus, I wasn't sure about the timing, how long it would take the mushrooms to cook and how that would affect everything else. So I decided to cook the mushrooms first, and then add them to my whisked eggs.

I sauteed the mushrooms in butter in a second frying pan. I read instructions on how they tend to lose moisture and then absorb it again, but I only cooked them a few minutes on each side until they got soft. Roy tasted one for me and thought they were good. I cut them up into smaller pieces and set them aside until I was ready for them. I usually put spinach in the omelets I make, so that was nothing new. I ripped up pieces of uncooked spinach and put that in my whisked eggs. I prepped one batch of eggs and fillings for Roy, started cooking that, and then prepped my batch. I tasted a mushroom to make sure I really wanted to put them in my dinner - it didn't taste overly mushroom-y.

I had the potatoes and onions cooking at the same time as the eggs. At one point, Roy had to help me tend to the potatoes while I was dealing with the eggs. At one point, I needed to be in two places at once - still whisking my eggs while Roy's omelet needed to be flipped. His eggs got a little overdone, but they were still alright to eat. I usually just make eggs for myself. Maybe I should prepare both batches first in two different mixing bowls next time.

The First Night

Week One, Wednesday

Roy and I picked up the new food after work on Wednesday. I had already decided I wasn't going to try to cook something complete with it that night. The meat came frozen, and there was too little time to plan.

I made roasted chicken using the new olive oil. And I'd use the new brown rice, which I had never cooked before. Not real brown rice, anyway.

The brown rice.



I never cooked real brown rice before. I used this recipe from Alton Brown. It's rated easy, with 5-star user reviews. I halved the recipe, because I only wanted two servings.

Roy and I can't agree whether the rice was undercooked or overcooked. It picked up the flavor, but it was crunchy, like eating a seed. We got two pounds of rice, so I will try something different next time.

Minute rice to the rescue!


Of all our new food, we ate one roll (split between us) and I used some olive oil on the chicken.


Close up of the rice. I added roasted garlic, bell peppers, and onions to it. Roy called it un-fried rice.

I have to admit, I didn't get frazzled when I saw the rice didn't cook right. Even Roy noticed it. I think it's because the rice was in the oven, out of view, and I didn't see it until the time was done. If it were on the stove top, I'd be watching it and freaking out over what I should be doing to fix it. This time, the rice did its own thing, and I was able to cook something quickly as an alternative. Moral of the story: have a backup plan.

Everything tasted good, even if it didn't contain much of our new food.

Week One Share

Roy and I picked up our first share of food from Fair Shares on Wednesday.

They have distribution points at several locations in St. Louis and the suburbs. The main location is in the city, near I-44 and Kingshighway. We pick up our food just a couple blocks from home, at the Trinity Presbyterian Church in University City. Roy and I went there, met some of the organizers and volunteers, and packed our new grocery bags full of fresh food.

Two reusable grocery bags


Two types of lettuce, spinach, mushrooms, eggs, goat mozzarella, ground lamb, olive oil, brown rice, whole wheat rolls.

We got so much lettuce, but I didn't have any other salad ingredients on hand. I hope I don't end up spending as much in the grocery stores as I did before the CSA! I've been buying a lot of new gadgets and different foods to go along with the Fair Shares food. I've bought a salad spinner, garlic press, an olive oil mister, and some new cookbooks.

Beginnings

Roy and I just joined Fair Shares, a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. CSAs work sort of like farmer's markets, a way to get farm fresh food without middlemen. Fair Shares has one level of distribution between us and the farms - they gather food from several area farms, and we collect it once a week.

Most CSAs just do produce, but Fair Shares does meats and even bakery items. This costs more, but it was part of what interested me. There's a 10-month season, instead of just joining for the summer months.

I thought long and hard about this. We had to commit to the full season. I'm a picky eater and a bad cook. Farmer's markets have intimidated me - too many unfamiliar foods. I'm scared of wasting food. But I was excited about getting so much fresh food and I need a push out of my food comfort zone. I'm not counting calories or fat, but if eating a lot more vegetables helps me lose some weight, that's good too. It can't be bad for me.

Thankfully, we do have some ability to choose foods. Fair Shares has the option of "trading" some foods out. I don't eat pork, so I can trade for some other meat on the weeks we'd get that.

I'm starting this blog to document what foods we get and what meals we make with them. And to document my cooking disasters. I've started taking pictures of my meals! I'm mostly doing this for myself, but I'm doing it in a blog to share with some friends who are interested in this experiment or anyone else who wants to learn from this.