thoughtful consumption

Wow, what a catch this week! I listed everything in yesterday’s post, but here’s another look.

While laying out this food for the picture, I realized spreading the food out and then putting it away is vital to my planning and prepping for the week. Having my hands on the food seems to inspire meal ideas better than anything else.

For instance, I saw the ground beef, the potatoes, and the cutest little onions but didn’t put them together until I was separating the chives and chamomile. Then I thought, “Chives! A beef, onion, and potato skillet dish would be tasty, and I could add chives at the end.” That’s what I made last night along with some leftover Portobello mushrooms, winter savory, half a bay leaf, garlic powder, salt and pepper. And we had salad with sliced radishes and carrots on the side.

Every week I get excited opening up my box and seeing what’s in there. (I know, I’m a total goob). But I try to ride that momentum into prepping stuff for the coming week. Sometimes it works. Usually I stall out somewhere in the middle.

But I got a lot done yesterday. I picked through the outside leaves of the lettuce, washed some for supper, and put the rest away. I trimmed the root veggies and chopped up the Asian turnips. The turnips will be part of today’s fried rice. Everything’s ready and I get to use up some leftovers: watermelon radish, turnips, kohlrabi stems, onion, cabbage, and watermelon radish greens. I’m not going to add shrimp this time but instead use at least four eggs.

I also made candied pecans to send to a friend. I have to get them out today or tomorrow or I’ll break down and tear into them. Or I could just shell more pecans, I suppose. What a treat to get shelled pecans! I’ve shelled a bunch lately and still have more to go. I use this hand cracker that relies on some sort of ratcheting system that I don’t fully understand. (My husband doesn’t get how it works either, so it’s not just my girl genes.)

In the same package, I’m also sending some lavender hand cream. I put the dried lavender from last week in a jar and poured warm sweet almond oil over it. In a few more days, I’ll strain the lavender flowers out and combine the oil with some shaved beeswax and vitamin E. Hopefully, it will smell really nice.

I also made a pound and a half of garlic scape pesto with all the scapes. Chopping garlic scapes is kind of frustrating. They have all these unwieldy curves and never stay where you put them. I’m glad only to have to chop them into inch pieces or so for pesto.

Then I grind some cheese (Romano and Asiago this time) and some pine nuts, add the scape pieces and some olive oil, and grind it some more. I add enough olive oil to keep the mixture sticky. I made 5 4-oz. containers of pesto for the freezer and one larger one for this weekend. I’m going to cook shrimp in some of it and then toss it with pasta.

It's the leaning tower of pesto!

I also hope to get around to the 5 pounds of cooking apples today. Cooking apples are apples that have been around awhile. They have some wrinkles, spots, or bulges, and aren’t as pretty or firm as maybe they once were. But they’re still good at – I mean, for – lots of things. (I’m starting to suspect that I bought these apples more out of sympathy than anything else.)

Good lighting always helps.

I’m thinking about making Patricia’s Quick Apple Betty from the Farmers’ Fresh Cookbook. Or I may just slice and dry them all for now. Nancy Garry (of recent celebrity here and here) taught me about rehydrating dried apples for baking. The problem is it’s too easy to eat dried apples plain. I can sit down with a bag and munch through ten or twelve apples worth. That can’t be good.