Despite our best attempts to redress them, both L and my appetites and sleep schedules are still shot so not every dinner got made last week as planned. We also broke down and treated ourselves to Chinese takeout once so not a lot of recipes got posted either, though there are still a lot of links in last week’s menu post to pretty pictures on Instagram of what we ate. And the beet recipes posted are, IMHO, stellar.
I have had to amp up my presentation game even further – a serious weakness of mine – since L. and I decided to each plate our own dinners and then send the photos of the dishes (labelled A and B for purposes of fair judging) to his dad, the professional chef, to determine their merit. It is early days yet, but so far, we are tied.
L. has always verbally graded my dinners, out of 20 as per the French educational system, in order to ensure that I knew what he really wished I would not make again. He has decided to while away the time in self isolation by taking this hobby a bit further. As of last week, he has been keeping a spreadsheet which also breaks down my performance, this time with ratings from 0 to 5, into the categories of taste, presentation, creativity, and ease of eating. All this comes with tasting notes and is color coded for easy viewing of where I have done well and where I have failed his palate. Lucky, lucky me…Such fun we have!
As of this week, as well as enumerating the contents of the CSA box, I will be adding a list of items left from the week before that I have yet to use and need to incorporate into the upcoming menu. I was recently asked by a friend if I ever cheated on menus and about my food waste, so this will hopefully be helpful to answer her question about where my ingredients come from.
This Week's CSA box was not an inspiring one so, actually, thank goodness for the above-mentioned remainders! It contained:
Herbs: -
Greens: a purple baby bok choy, a bunch of spinach, a beautiful bunch of green veined, purply-red with a silver overlay red mustard greens (illustrated above) and 2 huge heads of green leaf lettuce
Alliums: a bunch each of red scallions and green garlic
Vegetables: 8 more (sigh) mini cucumbers, 4 beautiful smelling, on the vine tomatoes, 4 ears of young corn and a bunch of rainbow carrots
Fruit: -
Remainders: a lemon from a few weeks ago, a handful of sugar snap peas, 1 stem of green garlic, ¼ bunch of Italian parsley, ½ head of green cabbage, 4 mini cucumbers, 1/3 of a leek from who knows when (white part only and still good), some radishes, a few sprigs of red kale, a couple of beets, the nubs from a couple of scallions from the CSA box from 2 weeks ago, and 2 artichokes that mysteriously appeared from the back of the refrigerator. I was quite perplexed by them until I remembered buying them from the local fruit and veg stand last week to make a lunch for L. and me that never happened. Since they were not in the part of the fridge where I “file” the vegetables, I forgot all about them.
So, with the addition of the above remainders, the contents of this week's box will be transformed into the following, and lockdown lunches:
Sunday “Pantry Roulette”; fridge, freezer, and pantry item dinner]
Green Salad
Yakisoba 🔁
Monday [Wildcard; a more complex or fiddly dish than usual to test my culinary skills]
Back by popular request but with a twist
L.’s favorite Pork Wraps (this week wrapped in mustard greens rather than lettuce) 🔁
Tuesday [Pasta]
Mixed Salad
Wednesday [L.'s choice]
Tomato Salad
Roast Chicken
Yorkshire Pudding
Chicken Jus Braised Peas and Lettuce
Thursday [Fish]
Green Salad
Seared Scallops and Chorizo with Corn Purée and Garlic Croutons
Friday [Veggie-centric]
Mixed Salad
Grilled Steelhead Salmon with Firecracker Glaze
Vegetable Stir Fry
Steamed Rice
Saturday ["Picnic"; something that is easy to assemble and easy to eat in front of a movie]
Mozzarella In Carrozza with Anchovies
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