Usual Meals

Week Six, Saturday and Sunday

I cooked dinner both nights, but I barely used any foods from Fair Shares.

Saturday felt like summer. It's Memorial Day weekend, I wore shorts and my Birkenstocks all day, we ate out on the deck again. I did some supplemental grocery shopping, and I bought corn, another summery food. I made roasted chicken and baked onions. The only thing from Fair Shares was some olive oil I used on the chicken. But, the baked onion recipe comes from my Alice Waters cookbook, so that's pretty new as well.



On Sunday, I was out shopping and running errands. I came home long enough for us to decide to go to a movie that night (Iron Man 2). I had to make a quick dinner, so I made chicken spaghetti. The spaghetti sauce is from Fair Shares.


We didn't have salads either night. I'll need to make sure we eat more this week.

Grilled Strip Steak

Week Six, Friday

This was probably the least successful of my meals and the most stressful cooking experience. It was still edible, but really frustrating. Before I started getting food from Fair Shares, the only meat I usually cooked was chicken. I'd used ground meat and I made steak a couple times. But I don't have that much experience with other meats.

This week, the meat choice was pork. I was able to trade it for something else, so I got an 8 oz. NY strip steak. This had a list value of $17, so it's an expensive cut of meat. (The 8 ounces was big enough for both of us to share.) I had such good luck with cooking chicken on my grill pan, I decided to cook the steak that way too.

I read up on it and followed the directions: I seasoned it and left it out of the fridge for an hour to come down to room temperature. I preheated the grill pan.

The instructions for the pan (which is really a panini press) say to cook everything on medium to medium-high heat and to brush olive oil on the pan after it has pre-heated. I found that medium-high makes the oil splatter, so I've been using medium. The grilled chicken turned out wonderful several times cooked this way.

The meat turned a gray color, never getting brown. Roy thought the blame went to using a grill pan, that there wasn't enough contact with the meat. He thought I should use a frying pan next time. I don't think so though, because the chicken turned out so well on it. Maybe it wasn't hot enough? Both sides got gray.

I also don't know how to use a meat thermometer. Roy mentioned to our neighbors that I was cooking a strip steak, and they told him that a meat thermometer is helpful with this. I recently bought an instant read thermometer, but this was the first time I've used it. The meat was only about an inch or so thick. The thermometer wouldn't stay upright by itself. I held it up, and it only registered to about 120 degrees. Should I have held it in longer? I wanted to stick it in the thickest part of the meat (towards one end) but Roy told me it would be better to stick it closer to the center.

I ended up cutting into the meat to see that it was gray most of the way through, with a little pink. I'd say it went from medium to medium well. I ate the less well done part.

All the while I was trying to cook the meat, I was also steaming broccoli for the first time. I had a steamer insert, but I only used it once before. That time didn't turn out well - all the water boiled away. This time, I couldn't get the water to boil.

This is a picture of my kitchen from the day we moved in. I don't know how well you can see it, but there's an air vent on the ceiling near the stove. When the AC is on, it blows air onto the stovetop and counter. Some days, we just turn the AC off when I'm cooking there. Too hot today. (We're also on the top floor of the building, so it gets hot up here.) Even with my big pot on the stove, the AC was pushing the gas flame around. And the little bit of water in the pot wouldn't boil. (This finally pushed me to do something. We bought a $1 air vent deflector at Home Depot on Saturday. I hope it works.)


And there was so much noise from the steak cooking, the TV on, the lid was on the pot, I couldn't tell if the water was boiling or not, so I had to keep taking the lid and steamer insert out to check. All this was going on while the steak was turning gray and the timer went off for the potatoes in the oven. I was freaking out.


I made a little cheese sauce for the broccoli by melting some cheddar cheese and butter. By the time we ate dinner, the meat was luke-warm and gray, the broccoli was okay but cooling, and the potatoes were fine. I made salads earlier, after I put the potatoes in the oven. I ate mine then, but Roy was exercising at the time. He ate his with dinner.

I used the following Fair Shares foods: strip steak, cheddar, broccoli, lettuce, radishes, scallions, olive oil.

I decided I'd feel a lot better after this meal if we had one of my favorite foods, movie theater popcorn. So we saw Princess Kaiulani at Plaza Frontenac and had some popcorn.

Turnips

Week Six, Thursday

I think I've only eaten turnips once before, in a mixed roasted vegetable platter. I don't try to avoid them, but they don't seem to show up in too many restaurant dishes. This week, we were getting turnip greens, but they came with the turnips attached. (Bonus turnips?) I decided to use both the greens and the bulb for dinner tonight.


I found these pretty easy to work with. I treated the greens like spinach and sauteed them with an onion. I peeled the turnips and seasoned them like I do a potato. They just cook quicker. I made crunchy garlic chicken to go along with it.


I liked the roasted turnip bulbs. The consistency reminded me of a crisp apple. I didn't care too much for the greens, but Roy liked them. A bunch of the greens didn't look that great, so I discarded them. I was left with about half of the original total for this dish.

Another highlight is that we finally got to eat outside for dinner. I live in a condo building, and we have a deck looking over a small park in back.




I can't remember if I had a salad this night. The only thing from Fair Shares I used in the main course was the turnips. I also used the honey roasted peanut butter for breakfast, since I usually have an English muffin with peanut butter for breakfast anyway.

Broccoli and Mushrooms

Week Six, Wednesday

Looking back on entries in this blog, Wednesdays have been kind of stressful. I have to go pick up the new food from Fair Shares, figure out what to do with it, clean it, and then cook dinner. Even more stressful today, it rained heavily, pounding against our front window. Some of the rain made it through to our floor and damaged some papers. Roy was drying off things while I was cooking.

I made a salad first before I started preparing any of the other foods. I barely dented the head of lettuce I got last week. I used that for the salad.

It amazes me how my food habits changed since getting this food every week from Fair Shares. I used to avoid mushrooms and broccoli. I'd only eat them in a veggie lasagna where they'd be buried with other flavors and not be easily removed. And here I am, making a meal with both of those vegetables. They're not my favorite things to eat, but not as yucky as they've seemed in the past.

We got more eggs this week. I still had four eggs left over from last week, so we made omelets with sauteed mushrooms and broccoli.

The broccoli was scary though. These stalks were huge. I'd never bought broccoli before, but I cut most of the stems off.

I used the two smaller stalks for dinner tonight.


I used several foods from Fair Shares. For the salad, I used the head of lettuce, radish, scallions, olive oil. For the main course, I used the eggs, broccoli, mushrooms, and cheddar cheese. Roy used the last of the sun-dried tomato bread from last week.

Week Six Share

Week Six

New York Strip Steak
Berger Bluff Cilantro
Ozark Forest Fresh Mushrooms
Yellow Wood Turnip Greens
Blue Heron Head Lettuce
Yellow Wood Broccoli
Sunshine Strawberries
Pilgrims' Acres Eggs
Sappington Market Honey Roasted Peanut Butter
Marble Creek Maple Syrup

I did a trade this week. Our meat selection this week was pork sausage. I don't eat pork, so we were able to put the cost of the pork towards any of the extra frozen meats in the cooler. I chose a NY strip steak. I've never cooked that before, but we'll see how it goes.

I've also never bought cilantro, turnip greens, and broccoli before. (The same was true of mushrooms a few weeks ago!)

Sometimes Cooking Anything is a Big Deal

Week Five, Tuesday

Busy couple of days. Roy and I were out of town on Monday, eating every meal out. There were a couple nights of staying up too late and having to wake up early. I got home around 2pm on Tuesday, and slept for close to five hours. Roy figured I wasn't going to cook dinner, so he had a frozen dinner. I surprised him though.

I made chicken spaghetti, and I even used a Fair Shares food, the spaghetti sauce.

Lost Finale

Week Five, Sunday

I tried to make french toast for breakfast. I'd seen my dad make it when I was a kid, so it didn't seem like it would be that hard. I wanted to use some eggs and the apple syrup I got from Fair Shares a few weeks back. I wasn't all that happy with the results.

I made the batter using this recipe, except I used two whole eggs instead of one whole and two egg whites.


I used two slices of whole wheat bread, cut in half. These four half-slices soaked up all the egg mix. I wasn't expecting that.


I melted some butter in the frying pan before putting the bread in, but something went wrong. The bread stuck to the pan and made this mess. (This is why I'm calling this a disaster.)


I heated the apple syrup up in the microwave. It tasted good, but overwhelmed the bread. Everything was edible, but not as good as I'd get out.


This was a big night for us. Roy and I didn't watch Lost from the beginning. About a year or two ago, we borrowed season one from the library, and we got hooked. We caught up with the series just before this last season aired. I had a special dinner planned for the last episode.

Grilled and Cheesy

Week Five, Saturday

My grill pan got a double workout today. I'm really glad I bought it.

Two of the foods we got this week from Fair Shares were a sundried tomato bread and a brick of cheddar cheese. Doesn't grilled cheese sound great for lunch?




Dinner didn't work out quite as I planned. I wanted to make roasted red peppers. Not the kind when you stick peppers in the oven for a long time, but when you let the pepper char and slip the skin off. I've bought them before but never made them. I stuck the pepper on the grill pan and it must take much longer than I thought. The first side was just beginning to blister when I needed the space on the pan for the chicken. I ended up cutting the pepper into strips and fitting them onto the pan to grill. It all tasted good, but it wasn't my goal. I also grilled the white parts of the green onions I got from Fair Shares this week.



I had hoped to eat dinner outside today. I spent part of the afternoon cleaning bird droppings off of our deck furniture so we could use it again. I put our food on our "outdoor" plates. But we decided it was too hot out.

Cube Steak Surprise

Week Five, Friday

I'd never heard of cube steak before. We had the choice of different kinds of beef this week at Fair Shares, and Roy had had this as a kid. I learned that it's the cut used in chicken fried steak. I found this recipe for it that seemed do-able. I used the variation in the comments that suggested tomato sauce in place of the water. The lady at Fair Shares told us this meat had to be cooked in liquid for a long time, so this fit the bill.

I had also never browned meat before in a skillet before cooking it in the oven. I remember once years ago, when I first moved in with Roy and we were trying to come up with meals I could make. He suggested a box of hamburger helper with noodles. We bought the box, but I did not understand "browning meat" - that you could just put ground meat on a frying pan without making burgers or meatballs out of it. I never did use it. This time, I just did it. I cooked the meat until the outside was brown, and I hope that was enough time and not too much.

I covered the meat with onions, garlic, green bell peppers, and a can of tomato sauce. I put some aluminum foil over it and hoped for the best.

I had time to make a salad using the last of the two week old lettuce. I put strawberries in Roy's salad again. I used the lettuce, scallions, radishes, mint, and olive oil in mine.

I've never eaten collard greens before either. When they're offered in restaurants, they're always cooked with pork. I had trouble finding a recipe until I searched for "vegetarian collard greens". This one looked like I would like it. I liked all the flavors and it balanced out the bitterness of the greens. My downstairs neighbors Gwen and Michael came to my aid by letting me use their ginger and honey. It saved me from having to buy them myself. Thanks!


The cube steak was supposed to cook for 1 1/2 hours. Roy and I pulled it out at the one hour mark. I couldn't tell what it was supposed to look like when done, so I had no idea how to judge it. We put it back in for the recommended time.



I didn't like the meat all that much. I did like the extra stuff in the recipe - the peppers and onions in sauce were great. But the meat was dry and chewy. Maybe we cooked it too long? I don't know. I taste-tested one of the leaves of the collard greens before adding the sauce to it. I didn't like it by itself, but the sweet and tangy sauce managed to hide, um, better to say complement, the taste of the greens. I would definitely make this again. I wouldn't get this kind of meat again though.

Fettuccine Alfredo

Week Five, Thursday

The classic sauce to have with fettuccine is alfredo sauce. I never made it before, but I wanted to try it. I used this recipe which didn't look too hard. I bought shredded gruyere cheese. I found out that what's called "heavy cream" in the recipe is called "heavy whipping cream" on the packaging. The cashier at the grocery store told me they were the same thing. One thing I should have looked up, but thought I knew, was how much butter is in a quarter cup.

Two weeks ago, we got multiple bags of lettuce. There was one bag that I just didn't get to. Finally, I opened the bag and looked through it. The lettuce that still looked good was enough for four servings; I discarded the rest. I made Roy's salad with strawberries in place of tomatoes. He really liked it. Mine had a whole bunch of things from Fair Shares: scallions, radishes, mint, in addition to the lettuce and olive oil.


I had some veggies left over from last week, asparagus and mushrooms, so I cooked them to add into the sauce. I don't know if I really need to do this, but I made them separately, sauteeing the mushrooms in butter and grilling the asparagus. The mushrooms ended up being unnoticeable in the sauce, but the asparagus held up well and had a good crunch and flavor.

Since last night's grilled chicken turned out so well, I made it the same way this night.

And then there's the sauce. I didn't realize this for another day (I'm writing this on Friday night.) But I have to be honest here. For some reason, I thought a quarter cup of butter was a whole stick. So that's what I put in the sauce pan. Tonight's dinner also used some butter, and that's when I noticed the conversion factors on the butter wrapper. I'm not sure if what I made ended up being alfredo sauce. It didn't look thick enough, but it smelled like it should. I asked Roy to taste test it, and he loved it. The sauce left over on my plate looked like melted butter, and now I know why.

At least it isn't normally as fattening as I made mine. That is an eye opener, seeing all that butter, cream, and cheese. No wonder this dish was called a "heart attack on a plate". I have some of the sauce left over, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it.



This meal used the fettuccine, sundried tomato bread, mushrooms, asparagus, and some chopped scallions from Fair Shares.

Grilled Chicken and Pasta

Week Five, Wednesday

We got fresh pasta and spaghetti sauce this week. I was ready to make a pasta dish on Wednesday, since I had all the ingredients on hand. My usual pasta dish is chicken spaghetti, with chicken breasts cooked on the Foreman Grill and cut up into little pieces before being thrown in the sauce. The Foreman doesn't do a great job, the chicken ends up dry, but it's easy and works for this meal. I wouldn't eat grilled chicken by itself cooked that way.

The chicken breasts I had were from the Fair Shares chicken last week. I was determined to make good use of them, with how I prepared them. The Foreman Grill technique was not good enough. I marinated the chicken in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, some salt and pepper, and I cooked it in my grill pan. It turned out really well.

Chicken breasts in marinade

I went ahead with my usual addition to this meal. I cut up a bell pepper, microwaved it, and stirred the pieces into the sauce. It worked well with this sweet spaghetti sauce.



The final piece to this meal was the sun-dried tomato bread. Roy mentioned that this meal probably had the most food sourced from Fair Shares since we started. For the salad, we used the remainder of last week's mixed green lettuce, a mint leaf, olive oil, and a scallion. For dinner, we used the fettuccine, spaghetti sauce, chicken, and bread. Only the butter, bell pepper, and parmesan cheese came from the store.



Just like the last time we got pasta from Fair Shares, I cooked it all and we had half of it left over.

Week Five Share

Week Five

This bag looks like it belongs to one of those stereotypical movie characters, walking home from grocery shopping with a loaf of bread and greens sticking out the top of the bag.


This week we got some nice specialty items, fresh pasta and nice bread. The complete list is
American Grassfed Beef Wildcard (we got cube steak)
Claverach Pea Shoots
Biver Farm Head Lettuce
Yellow Wood Collards
Girod Radishes
Girod Green Onions
Sunshine Strawberries
Mangia Fettuccine
Morningland Cheese Choice - (med. sharp cheddar)
Mel's Spaghetti Sauce
Companion Sundried Tomato Bread



I've always washed all the produce we've gotten from Fair Shares, but this is the first time any had actual dirt on it. The head of lettuce was pretty bad, and I threw out some of the outer leaves. My mother-in-law says it's best to wash the greens just before I use them, but I know I will never wash a single leaf of lettuce to add on a sandwich, in the morning when I'm making lunch for work. It's better for me to wash it all now and stick it in a Produce Keeper to keep fresh. I washed each leaf individually to make sure I got them all clean. As I'm doing this, I can't believe I'm spending the time on this. I miss pre-washed lettuce!

Rhea Vs. the Chicken

Week Four, Tuesday

This is the week we got a whole chicken from Fair Shares. I was determined to butcher it into pieces, even though I had never done that before and had no idea what I was doing. Roy stood by me, provided moral support, read the instructions out loud, and took pictures when my hands were covered in chicken goop.

I've roasted a whole chicken before, but I didn't want to do that here. It said the giblets were removed, but I wasn't sure that meant everything inside was gone (it didn't). Plus, cooking the individual parts takes less time than doing the whole thing.

The instructions were from my Betty Crocker cookbook, and I had trouble with them. I couldn't find the joints, had to cut through the bone... Eventually I got the wings and thighs off. After trying to separate the leg and thigh once, I didn't try with the other. I ended up cutting the breast meat directly off the carcass, not even dealing with popping the breastbone out and deboning it. And did I mention that even though I put the chicken in the fridge to defrost on Friday, there was still a little frost on it, and my hands were freezing while I was trying to cut it up?



One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces

My results: two chicken wings, one thigh, one leg, one combined thigh and leg, and two boneless skinless chicken breasts.

There was more meat left on the carcass, but I had gotten enough out to feel productive and not wasteful.

Dinner itself was pretty easy after all that. I roasted the dark meat, and made potatoes, carrots, and celery as a side dish. I don't know if the chicken was the best I'd ever had, but it was juicy and the skin crisped up nicely. We were happy with it.

It was a relief tonight to put all the food in the oven, and know I was basically done with cooking for an hour. I had plenty of time to make salads for Roy and me, and I had time to sit down and eat it.

My Fair Shares foods used tonight were: mixed greens lettuce, mint, and olive oil in the salad, chicken and olive oil for the main course.

One of the reasons I wanted to do Fair Shares was to push me out of my comfort zone and expand my cooking skills. I think next time I'll find someone to show me how to really cut up a chicken or cook it whole, but I learned a lot tonight.

Crunchy Garlic Chicken, Again

Week Four, Monday

I got really stressed out cooking dinner this night. It wasn't even a new recipe, but one that's a standard for me. I had some errands to run after work, so I didn't start cooking until late. I made crunchy garlic chicken with roasted potatoes and sauteed spinach and onions.

I'm getting a different meat each week from Fair Shares, but I ran out of extra meat in the freezer, so I got some more chicken breasts at Whole Foods. I put the potatoes in the oven, and started dividing up the chicken to vacuum and freeze. It took longer than I expected. I still had to get some chicken ready for dinner. The timer went off to say it was time to put the chicken in the oven, but it wasn't ready yet! Agghh. Roy helped out by making the salad, and I got the chicken ready without overcooking the potatoes.

Roy also cut up an onion for me, for the sauteed spinach and onions. Everything tasted great, but we didn't get to eat until 8pm.






This meal used the following foods from Fair Shares: mixed greens and olive oil in the salad, and spinach as a side dish.

I ended up not exercising or getting any paperwork done this night. Actually went to bed on time though. I was spent after the weekend trip and busy dinner.

Weekend Getaway

Week Four, Saturday

Roy and I are headed up to Chicago to see a concert by bass player Tony Levin. Deep dish pizza for dinner tonight. This is all I've cooked at home today.

Spicy Mostarda

Week Four, Friday

Somehow, I got home from work at 5:15 and didn't eat dinner until 7:45. I don't know where all the time went. I wasn't just cooking the whole time, I was getting ready for a weekend trip and doing some laundry, but still...

I made a salad using the Fair Shares mixed greens lettuce, mint, and olive oil. (I've decided to stop taking pictures of the mostly same salads over and over again.) I made this first and ate it before I started cooking the main course.

Dinner was a mushroom spinach omelet with sauteed potatoes and onions. Also toast. We got a dried fruit condiment called mostarda from Fair Shares this week. I was going to try it on my toast. I saw that the last ingredient was chili flakes. I don't like spicy food, so I asked Roy to taste-test it for me. He said it was sweet. And spicy, too spicy for me.


If any of my Yesfan friends are reading this, these three mushrooms remind me of a Roger Dean stage set. Alan could be playing the drums under this, like the crab nebula.

My eggs are so inconsistent. I've been making them regularly for dinner since we started getting eggs from Fair Shares. I still can't flip them over well. This night, Roy's turned out fine. I cleaned out the frying pan, but my eggs stuck to it and made a mess. It all tasted alright, but it's frustrating. I don't know what I did differently. Here's a picture of Roy's eggs.


Dinner used eggs, spinach and mushrooms from Fair Shares. I also had a bagel for breakfast, and Roy ate some strawberries as a snack.

Veggie Spectacular

Week 4, Thursday

I'm going away this weekend, which will cut short the number of dinners I'm cooking this week. We got a bunch of interesting vegetables. Why don't I cook a little of everything all at once? It seemed like a good idea, and with Roy's help, we got it all done at the same time.

I was out of meats at home, and the chicken we got this week from Fair Shares is still frozen. I stopped at the market after work. I've really been enjoying the burgers I've made recently, so I bought some ground beef and hamburger buns. I used to make turkey burgers once a week or so, but I got tired of them. I also bought a sweet potato.

I had a lot of prep work to do. We were having sauteed kale, grilled spring onions, and sauteed mushrooms. Let's see:
Kale - this was already washed, but I had to cut the stems off and chop it
Spring onions - I had to figure out what parts of the spring onions we were supposed to eat (I needed Roy's help on that) and clean them
Mushrooms - I had to clean these and cut some of them up

cut up spring onions

I didn't know what I was doing, so I wanted to follow the instructions exactly. So I cooked all three separately. If I had gotten all of the prep work done first, it might have been okay. But I put the sweet potatoes in the oven and set the timer.
prepping the sweet potato

I had the kale and spring onions ready to go when the timer hit 20 minutes. I had to start cooking them soon, and I still had to mix some things into the ground beef and clean the mushrooms. Roy helped wilting the kale and turning the onions on the grill while I finished prepping. There was a lot going on at once! I'm not doing all of this again! It did turn out well.

mushrooms, kale, and spring onions




Oh yeah, Roy and I both had bagels for breakfast, and Roy's been snacking on the strawberries.