Boston Organics

[magid]

Small box, two-thirds veg.

• small head of cauliflower
  
• a bag (half a pound?) of green beans
  
• eight ounces of white mushrooms
  
• three medium zucchini
  
• three medium-small onions
  
• a medium kabocha squash (one of my favorite kinds; yum)
  
• two oranges
  
• two lemons
  
• two kiwis

I'm glad I remembered to change my list with them, so it's mostly things I don't already have tons of. Especially since I was gifted with a hubbard squash and a biggish head of red cabbage. Which inspired me to finally try making sauerkraut (again; the first time was an extremely failed experiment): I now have two crocks of it fermenting, one purple, one mostly white.

Comments

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

Ah, we both have cauliflower this week! I've been roasting mine lately, which I think I picked up from you. I have been picking random temperatures (from 350 to 450) to do this. Would you have a suggestion for a good temperature?

Also, I have been making the weirdest stir fried noodles lately -- stir fried greens, noodles, baked tofu and roasted veggies. It tastes great, but all of the roasting takes away from the quickness.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I tend to roast at 425-450; lower doesn't lead to the caramelization I most like. Strangely, this week I didn't roast the cauliflower at all: last night I made one of those strange one-pot meals with it instead (sautee onion, diced sweet potato, cauliflower in florets, a can of black beans, slivered almonds, and lots of probably too old curry powder). It totally fit my mood (plus fit my tight schedule last night).

Those stir-fried noodles sound yummy. Have you considered doing a huge batch of roasting one evening when the veggies arrive, then using that through the week?

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought about doing large batches. I had considered roasting beets as well for tonight's dinner, but that's too much for us to eat in one night. The problem is that in the past the roasted beets hadn't stored very well -- they turned black after being refridgerated.

I could roast some of the yams and potatoes, but I never know how we will actually use something. Two weeks ago I made gnocchi out of the potatoes and last week it was soup.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I admit, I don't tend to store roasted veggies very long; they get et pretty fast. That said, if it's not warm out, I'm fine with leaving them out of the fridge for a day; there's no protein to go off. (And in my case, leftovers are often recycled into lunch, so it's not even that long.)

Mmm... gnocchi.

I guess I cook whatever I'm in the mood to cook, and if there are leftovers, then I have something to work off of, rather than starting from scratch.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

There are two things this conversation has been bringing up.

First of all, I've been thinking for some time that Z and I need to plan out our week's food a little better. When I was single, I ate mostly soy burgers, so there was no planning. Because there is no planning right now, at some point during the day the person who is on point to cook has to negotiate with the non-point person and sometimes the point person has to be changed. This has lead to us sometimes discussing this in front of coworkers, which is a little odd although one set of coworkers always want to help negoiate dinner plans ("What about tacos!?"). This also means that we go to the grocery store nearly every day and sometimes multiple times a day. I've been wanting to move to a new model, but we're not there yet.

Second, we basically start from scratch every time. Granted, most of leftovers that I create I freeze and eat them for lunch. So many it's fine or maybe it is an out growth of our lack of planning.

[magid.livejournal.com]

A lot of times dinner leftovers become tomorrow's lunch, and that's that. I try to aim for cooking lots of extra for Shabbat, especially veggies, to have something to use for fast-yet-somewhat-interesting meals the following week. Doesn't always work, unfortunately.

I'm a big proponent of pantry cooking, using the stuff I already have if possible, rather than daily shopping. Not that I hate daily shopping; I used to do that in Israel, and it was fun. But when I'm working, my schedule feels too tight to fit that in every day. With the organics delivery/farm share, I've got a regular influx of produce to work with, and keeping a bunch of longer-lived stuff around means that I have flexibility.

I think a lot of people work this the other way round, though, deciding what they want to eat and getting that food. (Even when I'm shopping at a supermarket, I tend to see what looks good/is on sale/is particularly interesting before finalizing my menu.)

If you're using your leftovers, and are happy cooking every night, then it doesn't seem like you need to change. If you'd rather not take as much time with meal prep every night, I know there are once a week/once a month cooking sites out there that have some great ideas for things that could be made in larger quantities.