thoughtful consumption

Here’s this week’s haul from Farmers’ Fresh:

par-cel, cilantro, and winter savory

Big, Beautiful, Bordeaux spinach

yummy lettuce!

Fall-appropriate vegetables!

Not-so-fall-appropriate vegetables. (But we’ll take them!)

Pac choi and popping corn

Ground beef and Taco Spice Mix

I did some ordering from the store, too.

sorrel, yogury, honey, and eggs

catnip for tea!

catnip mice and a herb-flower wreath for early holiday gifts

So far and other plans…

We’ve been enjoying the lettuce with carrots as well as radishes from last week. We haven’t used the little tomatoes for salad because we had other plans…

This is the start of bruschetta for a late supper tonight. It’s just tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, red wine, and salt and pepper. I’ve got some bread ready, so when we get back from the gym, we’ll just slice it, top it with tomato stuff and Parmesan cheese, and put the slices under the broiler for a few minutes. Can’t wait!

I’m planning to make beef stock and then beef stew this weekend. We’ve got these nice carrots and par-cel this week. From weeks past, we have beef bones and potatoes. I’ve had the beef-stock-making-plan before, and it fell through. I’m hoping the lure of beef stew will make the difference this time.

I did finally make and freeze some chicken stock. So someday soon for lunch or even breakfast, I’m going to make chicken and egg soup for one using stock, an egg, ramen noodles, garlic, dried peppers, and cilantro. (It’s for soup for one because Chris doesn’t like cilantro.)

These apples are unbelievable good. I hope there are more to come!

Salisbury Steak

While the taco spice mix is very nice with ground beef (it has this delicious dry-sweetness to it), I’d been itching to make this Salisbury Steak For Grown-Ups recipe from Nourished Kitchen. However, I haven’t yet made my beef stock, so I had to use bouillon. Which kind of violates the whole Nourished Kitchen philosophy, but oh, well. I also used a white onion instead of shallots. Everything else, I pretty much followed.

Brown onions in ghee.

(Ghee is great! Especially when Farmers’ Fresh runs out of butter on the online store. You can buy ghee in a tub made from organic milk from pasture-raised cows. And it can sit out and stay good for months!)

Chop and brown mushrooms.

Make patties from beef, diced onions/shallots, a beaten egg yolk, and salt and pepper.

After searing the patties on both sides, smother with onions and mushrooms.

Go back in time and start the sauce (2 cups stock, 2 cups wine, 2 sprigs of thyme). Reduce by half, remove the thyme, and then dump over the patties, onions, and mushrooms.

Serve with roasted sweet potatoes and winter savory and lettuce!