Local Produce Box: Week 2

On Tuesday afternoon I picked up our second produce box.

Our pickup location is inside a local garden center. With hundreds of hanging baskets, rows and rows of flowers, veggie plants, herbs, and gorgeous planters, it an amazing place that I am happy I get to visit weekly for the next several months. I love wandering the aisles and looking at all the plants, which I did on Tuesday because as luck would have it they were having a huge 40% off sale at the time so some pretty flowers had to come home with me, you know how it is.

Driving home on a sunny afternoon with fresh fruits and veggies and new plants for the garden made me very happy.

In this week's box we had: kale, butter crunch lettuce, chives, peppermint, rhubarb, green onions, radishes, strawberries, salad greens and maple syrup.

Now I thought I would do something a little different this week and not only show you what was in our produce box, but also some of the dishes I made from it. My absolute favorite thing about getting a produce box is cooking and preparing meals from what comes in the box each week. So fun.

From left to right:

1. Spring Green Salad with Mint Vinaigrette - butter crunch lettuce, green onions, grape tomatoes and a delicious mint vinaigrette dressing (the recipe was included in last week's box). 
2. Rhubarb Muffins - using a recipe I got from my Mom. These muffins are absolutely delicious and between last week's and this week's box, I had enough rhubarb to make four dozen muffins. 
3. Radish Butter Toast - This was so good; I could not make it fast enough, the girls were just gobbling it up. Recipe courtesy of The Forest Feast
4. Spring Green Salad with Fruit - my own creation using salad greens, strawberries, blueberries, mint and pecans.

I also added mint to some cubed watermelon, dressed it lightly in olive oil, and sprinkled pecans on top to make a simple salad.

Likewise, I added the kale to a bunch of veggies I had on hand which I then cooked and stirred together with some wheat berries - a personal variation of this salad recipe from The Forest Feast (have I mentioned I love this book and blog)   

And I have plans to make a chive salad dressing...

Like I said last week, happy times in the kitchen making delicious food.....