May 24, 2020

Menu: Week of 05/24/20

Saturday afternoon is usually the time when (at some point) I review the contents of the fridge in anticipation of the next day’s weekly grocery and CSA box delivery. I wipe down all of the shelves, figure out what will be part of the following day’s “pantry raid” dinner (though admittedly I splurged this week instead), and cook and preserve what I haven’t gotten around to using quite yet in order to start the week fresh, so to speak. I have found that this weekly investment of an hour or two of my time really pays off in the long run.

Yesterday was the perfect day for this task since it was gray, rainy, and depressing. I derived a certain satisfaction mid-afternoon in lining mason jars of Shichimi Togarashi Roasted Daikon and Carrot Soup up in a neat row for the freezer, adding pints of "Allium Paste" to the ball jars of homemade condiments already taking up an entire shelf in the fridge, and to having a batch of 18-hour sandwich bread dough happily proving (AKA proofing) to show for my afternoon endeavors. Under an hour of my time expended and my return on investment came to: 6 future lunches, 4 fragrant pints of assorted alliums, cooked down to a paste in olive oil that I can use by the spoonful in a myriad of dishes in the weeks to come and give to family and friends from 6 feet away, and – as I write this, since the dough finished its second proving a few minutes ago – the comforting smell of the bread from my beloved grandmother’s recipe baking (in said grandmother’s loaf pan by the way), just in time for sandwiches for today’s lunch. I will post the finished product on Instagram when it is done since I want to get this out into the ether.

Last week was another strange week for the blog – repeat recipes, bonus recipes, photos on Instagram and not anything to report in terms of new recipe blog posts. Sorry… Still, plenty of scope for culinary inspiration if you just do a bit of browsing. Have at it.

This Week's CSA box contained:

Herbs: a bunch each of cilantro, mint and knock your socks off fragrant basil

Greens: 2 enormous heads of red leaf lettuce (mommy, one will be included in this afternoon's drop-off bag of goodies so do not suit up and go out to buy lettuce), a beautiful bunch of spinach, a baggie of young green kale, 2 heads of emerald green baby bok choy, and a huge bunch of Rainbow chard

Alliums: 6 white scallions

Vegetables: a couple of Russet potatoes, a punnet of cherry tomatoes on the vine, a purple cabbage, 4 heirloom tomatoes (mommy, ditto tomatoes), and 3 gorgeous saucer sized Portobello mushrooms

Fruit: -

Remainders: a couple of stems of green garlic, 4 mini cucumbers (thank goodness no more came this week), and 1/3 of a salad spinner full of washed and chopped assorted greens from last week’s supply.

So, with the addition of the above remainders, and a couple of avocadoes that were on sale at a price I could not resist, the contents of this week's box (minus whatever we use for lunches ) will be transformed into: