CSA Week 7

In our seventh CSA box we got: 1.5 lb Austrian crescent fingerling potatoes, 2 "red of Tropea" onions, 2 fresh sweet onions, 1 bunch carrots, 3 beets, 1 lb zucchini, 1 patty pan squash, 1 zapalito squash, 1 cucumber, 1 green bell pepper, 2 mild jalapenos, 2 lb fava beans, 2 heads green leaf lettuce, 1 bunch chard, 1 bunch Italian parsley, 1 bunch basil

Yay for summer squash!

So much food it makes me tired to think about preparing (so we went out tonight, ha!), but here's the plan:

Fava beans braised with salt pork (recipe called for pancetta, but have salt pork in the freezer, we'll use some parsley here too); lemon-garlic fingerling potato salad

Grilled chicken; grilled sweet onion and bell pepper; quinoa with garlic, red onion, tomato

Borscht (including beet greens; I'm following this recipe but with my friend's edits) and green salad

Steak; grilled summer squash (zucchini, patty pan, zapalito) with parsley; buttered egg noodles with garlic, parsley, and bread crumbs

Chard-basil-garlic pesto (add juice of half a lemon to this recipe; double or triple this and freeze in dinner portions for a taste of summer in the winter!) with zucchini "pasta", peas, sauteed sweet onion, sausage; green salad with carrots and sweet onions  (Note:  I've got a spiralizer and we got another big zucchini free, so we're going to whirl it into noodles!)

Spicy (jalapeno) shrimp and avocado salad on a bed of lettuce

That's six dinners and we went out the first night, so we'll have to be diligent to make this happen! 

We're also having salads for lunch, I'm making veggie stock with all our snippets and wilted bits (it'll go in the borscht), and I'm making rice vinegar pickled carrots, daikon, and jalapeno for banh mi.

CSA Week 6

In our sixth CSA box, we got: 2 lbs new potatoes, 2 "Red of Tropea" onions, 1 fresh sweet onion, 1 bunch carrots, .75 lb zucchini (three small), .75 lb snap peas, 1 lb shelling peas, 2 lb fava beans, 1 head red leaf lettuce, 1 head green leaf lettuce, 1 bunch kale, 1 head garlic, 1 bunch sage, 1 bunch basil

OMG, so much!

This was a weird week.  We had a dear old friend to dinner on Wednesday, the day we picked up the box, then were at my parents' house Thursday and Friday night (with a plan for Saturday night, though we came back early).  I didn't meal plan, needless to say.  To compensate, I created a elaborate meal for our dinner party using as much of our box as possible.  :D

The big meal consisted of the following: 

Lamb and Fava Bean Stew.  I got the butcher at my local grocery with a decent meat department to cut up a leg of lamb into stew meat chunks.  They gave me the weight I wanted without the bone and changed the same price per lb as the whole leg with the bone in; love those guys!  From the box I used both red onions, garlic, and the fava beans.  I also used the homemade veggie stock in this.  We're saving all the discard bits for stock and it's working out very well!  The lamb stew turned out great.  I totally recommend it.

Hashbrowns made with the potatoes, sweet onion, and sage.  This was okay.  I tried to broil it to make the multi-dish meal easier on me, but I should have fried them.  Just so you know, the key to crispy hashbrowns is to shred, then rinse the starch away, just like you rinse rice before cooking it.  Then drain and throw it in a salad spinner to get it as dry as possible.

Garden salad using red leaf lettuce, sweet onion, carrot, and snap peas from the box and arugula (from our garden!) and tomato.

I dressed the salad with this avocado dressing, to which I added a bunch of basil from the box.  This dressing is good, but THICK, so be careful not to over-dress the salad.  Soooo easy to do.

We ended up taking the most of the remaining produce to my parents house, eating some and leaving the rest there.  In trade we brought home a ton of freshly shelled peas from their garden traded peas in shell for shelled peas, haha), a couple of HUGE daikon radish, and a bunch of garlic scapes.  Tried roasting the scapes, but they were pretty tough, so I think they are past their delicate prime.  I'll probably cut them way down to get rid of the tough stalks and make more pesto out of them and what's left of the basil.

Tonight we had brown butter pan-fried hake, fried sage leaves, and herbed rice and wild rice (with a bit of shredded carrots mixed in) with those roasted scapes.  Let me tell you the hake and sage more than made up for the scape failure (the failed scape?).  It turned out to be brown butter because I put the butter in the pan to melt then forgot about it.  Haha.  Luckily I caught it before it burned.  Anyway, fried the hake in the butter and it tasted like LOBSTER.  Except more tender and juicy.  It tasted like lobster WISHES it tasted.  It was so good!

Doesn't look like lobster, but sure tastes like it.

Tomorrow we're having chicken burgers (purchased from Costco, quite good!) on Dave's Killer Bread buns.  I'm thinking I'll make a lemon-sage aioli, and top it with more arugula from our garden.  Carrots from the box and peas from dad's garden.

What did you eat this week?

CSA Week 5

In our fifth CSA box, we got: 2 lbs new potatoes, 1 bunch carrots, 1 bunch beets, 1.5 lbs snap peas, 1 lb shelling peas, 1 lb fava beans (I picked up an extra lb, seen in picture, because I love favas), .25 lb snow peas, 1 butter lettuce, 1 head green leaf lettuce, bit of beet thinnings (called beetniks by Tolstoy), 1 bunch garlic scapes, 1 bunch chard, 1 head garlic, 1 bunch Italian parsley 

The haul just keeps getting bigger!

Last week I didn't meal plan beyond the a few notes and it was a mistake. So, here's my plan for this week:

Tortilla Española (using half the potatoes, and some of the parsley); a salad of butter lettuce, beetniks, shelling peas, radish sprouts.

Grilled teriyaki salmon; marinated snow peas, baby zucchini, scapes, bean sprouts, green onions.

Beef bulgogi (we'll see if I cheat and pick up some pre-marinated, or go fully homemade); sauteed snap peas; steamed rice.

Nigella's "Back from The Bar Snack." I make this for a meal, not a snack. It's super yummy!

Fava bean, mushroom, and scape Farrotto (risotto with farro, using garlic and parsley, maybe homemade veggie stock, otherwise chicken stock); sauteed chard and beet greens with garlic.

I'll be saving all the pods and other veggie trimmings this week to make stock. Hopefully I'll have my act together and have the stock ready for the farrotto.

Chocolate-beet cake!

If you want to try out some of these recipes, check out the links above!

Updated to add: maybe don't try that Esquire recipe for Tortilla Española; it's not as good as I've had before.  Still looking for a good recipe, I guess.  Have one to share?

Homemade, traditional, whole (etc) foods

So far most of my posts have been about food.  This will probably be a theme because (a) I love food, (b) I love cooking, and now most importantly (c) I want my adorable daughter and beloved family to grow on nourishing and delicious foods.  They deserve it!  That is why we joined a CSA this year.  That is why we started a garden this year.  And that is why, even with all that, we're still going to enjoy veggies from my dad's garden, too!  I'm staying home to raise my daughter the best I can, and that means I get to sneak in some homemade foods and beverages that I might not have time for if I were working.

I'm not very good at getting pictures for the blog, but I'm trying to fix that!

I've done a few things to help me make sure I'm keeping up on providing the kind of food I want for my family on a regular basis.  

This may sound silly, but joining a Facebook group of other people committed to giving their families whole, Real Food, has been very important.  Everyone is such an inspiration and a great resource of information for when I try out something new (homemade bean sprouts!).

I have committed to making all the sliced bread my family eats.  It's 100% whole wheat and pretty good, especially toasted with butter and honey!  I still buy burger buns, but maybe I'll conquer that someday.

Almost all our beverages are homemade.  I make kombucha, almond milk, cold brew [decaf] coffee (we also have a fabulous set up for hot coffee too, upon which Jeremy insisted), and iced chamomile infusion (this is naturally sweet and light and no caffeine so good for PomPom all the time and everyone in the evenings).  My dad makes beer and wine, which we're sometimes privileged to have in our fridge.  Other than that, we're only buying alcohol (yeah, not totally ascetic).  The upshot of making your beverages, which I admit involves a bit of time, but not too much, is that you control the ingredients and their quality. There's no excess sugar, and you can substitute other sweeteners if you want. Hello maple syrup! There's absolutely NO high fructose corn syrup.  No one needs that , HFCS is not your friend. And no shady ingredients like colorings and hydrogenated oils (yeah, those are in store bought beverages all the time!).

Joining the CSA has forced us to integrate more and better quality veggies into our diet.  They just keep coming, so we have to use them!

Meal planning a week at a time not only ensures that we use up the CSA veggies, but also ensures that I'm not  staring into the fridge scratching my head at dinner time, or berating myself for not starting those dry beans yesterday.

We joined a drop for Azure Standard.  It's an online bulk foods company that allows you to get some amazing deals on flours, nuts, seeds, dry fruits, tomato products in GLASS (because cans are lined in BPA, a suspected endochrine disruptor; unless you get Eden Organic, but they don't support the kind of social policies I do within their company, so I'm boycotting them), etc.  You have to check to make sure you're getting a good deal, but what I've found is that if Costco has it, it's cheaper at Costco, otherwise get it from Azure Standard.  

I'm trying to get more fermented foods into our lives.  They are brimming with naturally occurring probiotics and those little bugs keep you healthy!  Kombucha is fermented and that's the only regular so far, but I'm looking forward to making more fermented veggies like sauerkraut, traditional ketchup, and chutneys.  It's mostly condiments, as you can see, so you get a little probiotics in at all your meals. 

I'm sure there are a bunch of other little things that make our whole foods journey possible, but those are the big ones!

CSA Week Four

Last week was the Fourth of July, so I got a little lazy and didn't post; I'm catching up now. In our fourth CSA box, we got: 1 bunch baby carrots, 1 bunch beets (3 last week, 4 this week), 2 pints strawberries (they say this is the last week for these), 1 lb snap peas, 1/4 lb snow peas, 2 head spinach, 2 lettuce, 1 bunch garlic scapes, 1 bunch kale, 1 bunch green onions, 1 bunch dill. Terrible photo, I know; took it with my tablet. Won't make that mistake again. 

Beautiful veggies and fruit!

I didn't meal plan, but made a few notes for a Real Food Facebook group I'm a part of: 

Maybe I saute those baby carrots and toss with some chopped dill (didn't do that). And then maybe make a marinated veg salad with dill and snow peas among other veggies (didn't do this). 

I'll also do garlic scape and spinach pesto pasta salad with snap peas. (I did make this and brought to share at a Fourth of July dinner, and then continued eating all week! We used some pesto on BLTs, and I still have some leftover!)

Homemade Michoacan style carnitas tacos with kale, sweet corn, and green onion slaw. (This was awesome!  I'll definitely post about how to make this recipe that Jeremy perfected.)

Several salads with all the lettuce; probably use up the green onion that way and use the beets in the salad, too; some raw and grated, some roasted, cooked, cubed. (Made a salad of arugula from our garden, roasted beets, chevre; had a few other simple salads, but still have a couple beets and green onions leftover).

We ate those delicious strawberries and snow peas out of hand.

I ended up making those carrots as honey-ginger sauteed carrots, which were delicious.  Had those with some hake grilled and slapped with a little dill at the end (PomPom did not enjoy the dill, she usually loves fish!). Enjoyed the beet and arugula salad with this meal.

Wow, was that a disorganized holiday week.  Can't do that again.  The mixing of tenses in blog posts is kind of distasteful to me (haha), but the quantity of the produce in our box will gradually ramp up and I can't have leftovers from the previous week!

CSA Week Three

In our third CSA box we got: 1 bunch beets, 1 bulb fresh garlic, 4 PINTS STRAWBERRIES, 2 heads of spinach, 1 huge lettuce, 1 bunch of radishes, 1 bunch of chard, 1 Napa cabbage, 1 bunch of green onions, 1 bunch peppermint. I also picked up a coral mushroom, an extra bunch of radishes, and a leg of goat!

We have even more strawberries this week! And, oh man, are these the best strawberries ever! So sweet and tasty. Also, a little known advantage of small berries is that you don't have to cut them up for little toothless (nearly toothless in our case) baby mouths. Score!

Yummy!

Check out this crazy mushroom.

Here's my plan for the week:

Dinners:

Frozen spinach pizza from Trader Joe's (hey, sometimes we need a break and this will be PomPom's first pizza) and salad using lettuce from the box

Penne in mushroom-garlic butter sauce; roasted beet and chevre salad with sunflower seeds and balsamic vinaigrette

Grilled salmon with cabbage-mint slaw

Stir-fried cabbage, chard, beet greens, and radish greens (including green onions, garlic, ginger) with chicken and jasmine rice

Goat "Bourguignone" with roasted radishes (these were SO good last week) and roasted and smashed gold potatoes with wilted green onions and chevre

Breakfast/Snacks:

Spinach and strawberries will go into smoothies, besides eating straight strawberries

Lunch:

Grilled strawberry and chevre sandwich

Drinks:

Mojitos with that mint!

As you can see the CSA box is getting more and more dense.  As the season goes on we'll be eating out of the box breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  As it is, we had three vegetarian dinners in a row this week (Indian from last week's box, spinach pizza and salad, mushroom pasta and salad).  You'll probably notice us go vegetarian more frequently through the summer.  I was vegetarian for a few years, so I'm totally comfortable with it.  PomPom has no preconceived notions, of course.  And Jeremy will eat what's made! Haha.

A Day in the Life

Let me share with you how we're spending our days.  Indulge me please, because we are so lucky to have our lifestyle, so I'll be bragging a little.

Technically I'm a lawyer.  I went to law school (loved it), took the California Bar Exam (hated it), and then never practiced (I guess I'm indifferent) for reasons that are too boring to talk about now.  Anyway, I now have the inordinate good luck to be a stay at home mom.  Not only that, Jeremy works from home! No kidding.  He's got stuff going on of course, but it's almost as if PomPom has both parents at home raising her on the daily.  Lucky girl!

PomPom plays in her first fort!

Things change all the time, but here's what staying home looks like for us:

We get up between 8-9 AM.  Oh yeah, baby.  It used to be more like 7-8 AM, but PomPom has now been night weaned (no longer nurses in the middle of the night), and she started sleeping later!  Totally the opposite of what I expected.  Anyway, night weaning is another post.

PomPom nurses, gets a diaper change, and we dress her.  I say we because she's pretty helpful these days--pushing her arms through and trying to put on her shoes.

We have breakfast.  That means PomPom gets breakfast and I sneak a few bites she doesn't eat.  From my understanding this kind of parent-scavaging is typical.  Never in my life would I have thought I would eat what's leftover from my kid's meal, but there you have it.  I do. PomPom's breakfasts are pretty awesome if I say so myself.  Her favorite thing is buckwheat-banana pancakes (Gwyneth Paltrow's recipe, no less).  We mash the bananas and mix into the batter instead of slices.  Make up a big batch, freeze them flat, then toss in a bag in the freezer.  You can pop them in the toaster and PRESTO, pancakes for breakfast every day!  You'll thank me for this tip.  We also give her some fruit (strawberries and oranges are favorites these days) and try to get her to eat some Greek yogurt.  She loves Greek yogurt, plain and unsweetened, but it's a little tough getting her to eat it right now because she enjoys feeding herself but does not yet use a spoon...so we have to convince her to let us give her the odd spoonful through breakfast.  While PomPom eats, I'm usually in eyesight in the bathroom brushing teeth, washing face, and slapping on a bit of make up.  Jeremy gets up at  8:40 (unless he has something scheduled early), and heads to his office in the basement to start work at 9 AM (lucky guy!).

After breakfast, it really depends on the day.  We might have a playdate, or be meeting up with other mamas and babies for some exercise, or running errands.  Sometimes we stay in the house so I can get some household chores done while PomPom entertains herself.  That self-entertaining thing is not happening so easily right now.  She used to play self-directed for over an hour.  I think she's starting to get to the point where her usual activities are old hat and not stimulating enough.  So, then I end up playing, reading, and dancing to music with PomPom.  If you haven't discovered Caspar Babypants, please give him a listen on Pandora.  Raffi is great and all, but Caspar Babypants is where it's at.  Jeremy is, of course, working during this time, but sometimes we luck out and he comes up for a visit, and sometimes even brings me a steaming cup of awesome (I mean coffee).

About 11 AM PomPom starts to lose her mind.  That means it's time for lunch followed closely by nap.  She might nurse before lunch, sometimes not.  We're getting to a stage where she's decreasing her nursing.  Totally fine by me.  Lunch is usually vegetarian, consisting of beans, veggies, and cheese.  Again, she digs feeding herself and makes a giant mess, but it's cool.  It's all in the name of development, right?

PomPom's critical naptime start is between 12 and 12:30 PM.  She'll usually sleep about two hours, but not if you get her into her crib after 12:30 PM.  Talk to other parents, most will tell you that naptime rules their schedules.  A well-rested baby really makes everything else possible!

I try to get as much as possible done during naptime, but I can't do anything too noisy after she has been sleeping for over an hour or she'll wake up.  There is definitely some strategy going on here.  Today I got some beets roasting (from our CSA box!) to put in a salad at dinner, called Azure Standard (an online bulk natural foods company) about a problem with my order, made lunch for myself and Jeremy, planted some plant starts in the garden, and started some beansprouts.  I meant to fold diapers and do this blog post also, but I got to chat with a dear friend instead.

Today PomPom woke up at 2:15 PM, though it varies.  She nursed a bit, had a snack (graham cracker, orange pieces), and then I tried to make her play by herself while I started some homemade coconut milk.  I made it happen, but PomPom was holding up her arms ("up") and whining the whole time.  I moved into the living room to fold those diapers and she "read" a couple books, but was still whining at me.  We turned on the Caspar Babypants station and danced a bit.  She's finally playing right now, as I blog!  Sometimes after nap we go out and do stuff, just not today.

At about 3:30 PM PomPom starts to get hungry and will snack consistently until dinner, and then eat a full dinner. Maybe I need to just make a fourth meal after nap, but I haven't tried that yet.  We're dealing with snacking now.  We'll see what happens.

At 5 PM, [ideally] Jeremy comes up from work and entertains PomPom while I make dinner and we're eating by 6 PM.  Tonight I'm going to a workout at six, so hopefully dinner will come together a little quicker.

Following dinner, it's bath time for PomPom.  She LOVES baths, but recently went through a stage where she was absolutely freaked out by the bath.  It was so strange, but we got her over it by having her shower with me instead.  It totally worked (thanks to our pediatrician, Dr. Thompson, for suggesting this) and now we do either shower, or bath.  Please note, if you want to shower with your baby, there is some finesse required.  A wet and sudsy baby is slippery.  Try not to drop your baby in the shower!

Jeremy is in charge of bath time.  Which goes: wash up, play in the water a bit, dry off and lotion up (if necessary), coat the bottoms of her feet and spine with doTERRA essential oil blends Balance and Serenity to help her calm down and go to sleep (ask me about doTERRA if you're interested in essential oils!), and stuff her in some jammies.  Then it's bedtime!

It's about 7 PM when she's ready to lay down.  I nurse her one last time if she's interested then read her a book.  We close the blinds, turn off the lights (PomPom has been flipping the switch herself for months!), turn on the space heater set to 75 (if necessary), turn on the white noise, and giver her Ducky (a Wubbanub pacifier with a little plush duck attached).  I usually sing her a lullaby unless she's pushing off me to get into her bed.  Tuck her in (she graduated to a blanket at a year), give her back a little rub as she's a tummy sleeper, and head out.  She's sleeping until between 5-6 AM when she needs help going back to sleep (give her Ducky, which is usually on the floor, and lay her down again).  She goes back to sleep and we're ready to start again at 8 or 9 AM the next day!

It goes without saying, I hope, that every family is different and parents do the best they can for their children.  This post is not meant to be a judgment of others' lifestyle, nor is it an invitation for others to judge us.  Thank you.  ;)