Update on Veggie Status

We've made some real progress this week. I have a feeling there will be a few items left, but I will either plant them (garlic, for instance) or offer them up to my brother.

So here are some of the things we ate this week:

 This bread salad was killer. We ate it a few times this week and probably would have eaten more if we hadn't run out of basil. Delicious!

I know, not super exciting. This has been my typical lunch recently. Working my way through the carrots and stone fruits. The second picture was arguably a failure. We were shooting for sopes, but were just using what we had on hand (which did not include masa harina). It ended up being more like a piece of cornbread with a bunch of stuff on top. It tasted alright, but it wasn't what we were really going for. Oh well. The good news was that B made fresh salsa and guacamole that turned out perfectly.

Roasted green beans. Yum. And sweet potato hash. This is one of my favorite breakfasts. It's decadent, for sure, but really delicious.

Chicken Caesar salad on naan. Totally a no-brainer recipe after a long work day. And an almond-plum tart. The opposite of a no-brainer. For us, anyway. I don't think we pulled this out of the oven until 10pm. I didn't even want any by that time, but I took a small slice and was really pleased with the results. We've been enjoying it all week and I swear it's gotten better (more almondy) over time.

We've also roasted up broccoli, made a pasta with the zucchini and ricotta and I think B had a big traditional lettuce salad for lunch once or twice.

We probably would have gotten through everything, but we ended up missing some meals at home. Tonight, our neighborhood is hosting a block party and we plan to cut up some remaining items in the fridge for a veggie platter to share with everyone.

Dude, that's a lot of vegetables.

This is totally how I feel right now.

We've been receiving produce from a CSA for about a year and half now and I love it. We've tried new produce we'd never tried before. We've eaten seasonally and it's all organic. And maybe best of all, we've gotten creative about making sure to plan our cooking around what's left in the fridge.

Things were going great until there was a new CSA offering two whole deliveries for free with no commitment. How could I pass that up?!

So I put CSA #1 on hold for a couple weeks. And it turned out I liked CSA #2, especially because they offered add-ons like local cheese, honey, and bread.

I should have just cancelled CSA #1 at that point, but unfortunately they didn't have an option to cancel by email and for some reason I only ever remembered this at times outside of business hours. (Isn't that always how it is?) I just kept going online to remove a single delivery at a time. It was kind of dumb, but it solved the problem.

Until it didn't.

I totally forgot to remove the delivery for yesterday! And we received a box from CSA #2 on Monday. So now we're drowning in fresh produce. AND we're going to be away for several days next week.

I tried to turn it into a positive. Make lemonade from the lemons, if you will. (Ooh, good way to use up the lemons.) I challenged B and myself to eat ALL THE PRODUCE in the next week.

So here's what we've got:

• 3 heads of lettuce
• 12 heirloom tomatos
• 1 bunch of celery
• 1 pound of green beans
• 4 potatoes
• 2 zucchinis
• 1 cucumber
• 6 small sweet potatoes
• 2 heads of broccoli
• 6 peaches
• 4 pluots
• 6 plums
• 1 GIANT canteloupe
• 2 red onions
• 2 lemons
• 3 heads of garlic
• 8 carrots
• 5 avocados

Did I mention that there are just two of us??

Wish us luck! I will post an update with how we packed it all away! My first thought is that I should freeze whatever is freezable, or prepare and freeze recipes with some of these things in 'em.

NO VEGGIES LEFT BEHIND!

image from here