Lunch Leftovers

Week Two, Tuesday

Roy heated up some leftover bison meatballs and rice from the last couple nights' dinners for lunch. It's a good thing too, because my dinner had no Fair Shares food in it.



I am just really proud of myself. I cooked dinner every night in Week 2. I don't think I've ever cooked seven nights in a row before. I made a commitment to eat out less at the beginning of this year. Before that, we ate dinner out 2-3 times a week. After the start of the year, it was down to 1 or maybe 2.

However, this night was different. I was going to the Pearl Jam concert, and concerts were always a reason to go out to dinner. I made a real quick meal, spaghetti and grilled chicken.

Roasted Chicken and Un-fried Rice

Week Two, Monday

This is a repeat of the meal I made on my first night of having the Fair Shares food. I make roasted chicken often. It tastes good and there's little prep time. I cooked the brown rice to go along with it, and I added some baked onion, bell peppers, and garlic (and butter) to the rice.

We also had a salad with the last of this week's lettuce. I've been using the Kreta Reserve olive oil as a salad dressing. We finished that bottle. I don't know if I'm going to buy more of it, or find a cheaper, similar tasting oil to use in the future.

This meal used the brown rice from last week, olive oil, lettuce, and radish shoots.

Bison Meatball Sandwich

Week Two, Sunday

When I made spaghetti and meatballs with the ground lamb last week, Roy suggested I make a meatball sandwich next. I did this using my remaining ground bison. I used this recipe. I grew up in Philadelphia, so I bought hoagie rolls for the bread. (I was glad to find them here.)

I make macaroni and cheese every once in a while. I've never done it baked, with the crust of cheese on top. It's more like cheesy buttered noodles. I usually use cheddar and mozzarella, but I got a chunk of gouda cheese from Fair Shares this week. I grated the gouda and added that in.

So far, I've liked the lamb better than the bison. My favorite meat dish of all the food I've gotten from Fair Shares so far is the lamb burger. This time, I wasn't sure if the meat had the right consistency (I've never eaten a meatball sandwich before) and the flavor was drowned out by the sauce and the cheese. It tasted good, but I'd rather the meat come through more. There were a few leftover meatballs that didn't fit into the sandwich. Roy can have them for lunch this week.

The mac and cheese was kind of disappointing. I thought I put a fair amount of cheese in, but it didn't taste all that much different than buttered noodles. I've never cooked with gouda before, so I don't know what it's supposed to be like. Mostly, I've eaten it as samples in Whole Foods. Maybe I should just cut the remaining cheese into little cubes and eat it as an appetizer.

Meatball sandwich and macaroni and cheese

Close-up of meatball sandwich

This meal used ground bison, egg, and gouda cheese.

Breakfast for Dinner

Week Two, Saturday

I had a big day on Saturday. I participated in the Open Streets, walking on Lindell in the Central West End and Locust through Midtown to downtown St. Louis. We got take-out from Cicero's for lunch. It was one of those weekends where if I didn't already have the menu planned out, I wouldn't have cooked dinner either.

I made a spinach omelet and salad for dinner.


I used the following foods from Fair Shares: eggs, spinach, lettuce, radish shoots, olive oil.

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.