Sunday Dinner: Comfort Food

It's been quite a long time since my last Sunday Dinner post. Perhaps it's more of an Autumn/Winter sort of thing for me.

Yesterday, in an effort to make sure we continue to use up all of the produce from our Harvest Box, Jonathan and I went through the fridge and made a list of everything we had. It was a lot. It looked something like this:

Carrots (about a thousand)
Spinach
Beets (gross - I don't know what I will do with these)
Swiss chard
Kale (x2)
Beet greens
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Radicchio
Sweet Peppers (x6)
Eggplant
Potatoes (x3 bags)
Delicata Squash (x3)
Sunshine Squash

So I set out on a mission to try to use up some of this produce before the weekend was over otherwise there won't be any room for our new produce on Tuesday! My list now looks like this:

Carrots (still about a thousand)
Spinach
Beets (still gross, but I think I found a way to use them in a chocolate cake)
Swiss chard
Kale (x2)
Beet greens
Broccoli
Cauliflower (only partially crossed since I only used half of it)
Radicchio
Sweet Peppers (x6 x3)
Eggplant
Potatoes (x3 bags x2 bags)
Delicata Squash (x3 x2)
Sunshine Squash
Not quite the progress I had hoped, but it's a start. I also have plans to finish the kale, chard, and beet greens tomorrow so that will be helpful.

On to comfort food though - I definitely have seasonal cravings. I've been eyeing those delicata squash for awhile, I think they are best served simple - sliced, tossed in some olive oil, salt and pepper, and roasted until tender. I've also been really wanting one of Field Roast's Celebration Roasts, but turns out I can't find it anywhere in Corvallis anymore! This makes me very sad.

The co-op did have their version of meatloaf though, which Jonathan convinced me to try even though "meatloaf" is kind of freaky. I don't typically attempt to recreate vegetarian versions of items I wouldn't have eaten in their regular animal product form, but since I was severely lacking in the other Field Roast departments I thought I might as well give it a shot. Turns out it's pretty delicious! I should have known - those people at Field Roast never let me down.

We ended up having "meatloaf", roasted delicata squash, rosemary roasted potatoes, and kale salad with cranberries and pepitas. I was pretty happy with all of the end results - I seriously love this season, hope you're enjoying it too!

-C

Leftover Redo

Once upon a time, maybe it was around New Year's, I decided to try to be better about meal planning for each week. That didn't last long. Then a couple of weeks ago I realized how inefficient we were being with our food - going to the grocery store almost every day to grab stuff instead of doing one large trip, eating out for lunch way more than we should, etc.

So we created a new food budget and decided to make Sunday mornings our shopping time. This of course means that we need to know what we're shopping for, so here I am back at meal planning! Long story short - planning out our meals means we usually have leftovers available for lunch the next day!

That steak with avocado sauce from Sunday became these delicious "steak" sandwiches! Grilled onions, spinach, sliced seitan steak, and avocado aji sauce - lunch couldn't be much better in my opinion.

Anyone have any good quick lunch recipes that they use often? I hate running out of leftovers and being forced to eat work cafeteria food.  :)

-C

Breaking News!

We didn't win the Mega Millions $355 million jackpot. Not really a surprise - but what did surprise me when I searched for the winning numbers was how many people care about Mega Millions. The real-time results in Google were flying by like crazy! I've never actually bought any sort of loto ticket before (personally at least, Jonathan does on occasion) - I had no idea it was such a big deal.

In other breaking news, my meal planning is already not going well. Safeway never has what I am looking for, and today they didn't even have what I needed for my back-up dinner plan! I ended up making Saturday's Mac & Cheese tonight thereby completely confusing the weeks plan (but it was delicious, so I'm not going to complain anymore... mmm cheese with bread).

Speaking of bread, I made a loaf of 50/50 white/wheat bread yesterday and it turned out amazing! It rose much more than my first loaf - not sure if that's because I used a new jar of yeast or because I tweaked the method slightly, but either way I am quite happy with this whole bread making situation!

Also, that vegan fried fish I tried to make the other day? Not very fishy. However the beer batter was kind of nice, perhaps I can find something else to use that on. I don't really like deep frying though, not because of any health reasons exactly but more because I don't like wasting all that oil and I don't know what to do with it afterward. Also, I usually end up hurting myself.

Vegan Fish & Chips

Enough rambling - the real reason I started writing this was to share something I found online that I thought was really neat. It's a calendar designed by The Cottage Industrialist that tells you what produce is in season on a given month, and it is adorable. Here's a link to this year's design. I stumbled on last year's calendar first, and I actually think it's a little cuter - but not so much that I'm willing to go through and manually edit all of the dates to match this year. If you have the patience here is a link to 2010 as well!

I haven't spent a lot of time looking at this blog, but so far the things she has posted are great. I only wish I could be that artistic! Hope you enjoy the calendars - I know I am printing out two copies tomorrow!

-C

New Year - New Recipes

Happy New Year! I can't believe how fast 2010 went... seems like only a few months ago we were celebrating last New Year's Eve. Best part about the past year? Finding my passion for cooking! I always enjoyed cooking, but I was never as excited about it as I am now. Getting the Harvest Box really helped to spark that interest and I'm so excited for it to return in June!

I received a ton of great cooking related gifts for Christmas (a lot having to do with cookies - I think my coworkers will be happy about that too, or not - depending on their New Year's resolutions :-) ). But right now my new favorite thing is the Kitchen Aid stand mixer I just bought at Costco! I'm really excited about bread making - I tried my first loaf ever this past week and it went pretty well! It was definitely time consuming, although not really involved, I'll just have to keep that in mind for tomorrow when I try out some more recipes!

We ate half the loaf the first night with some Havarti cheese (I found vegetarian Havarti, yay!). It reminded me of working Saturdays in the bakery when lunch would be fresh rolls with Havarti cheese from the block that must have weighed 10 pounds in the back room. This was before I found out the cheese had rennet - saddest day ever. But all that is fixed now - I can have all the bread and Havarti I want!

Fresh Bread!

This week I will try to make a french bread to go with the stew we'll have on Tuesday (New Year's resolution: work on planning out meals for the week and reduce the number of grocery trips we make) and pizza dough for Pizza Friday (I don't think this planning will last long - but I might as well give it a shot).

On a non-bread related note, tonight I am attempting to make vegan fried fish. Weird, right? I thought it sounded interesting though and even though I wasn't really a fan of actual fish, I did have some vegan fried fish at a place in Portland once and it was amazing! Last I heard though, that place had turned into a vegan strip club (only in Portland), and so there will be no more delicious fake fish for me anymore. Fingers crossed this recipe turns out edible!

-C