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!