Local Produce Box: Week 6

This week's box included: onions, beets, tomatoes, kohlrabi, peas, cherries, broccoli, chard, nevada lettuce, parsley, and garlic

I cut the kohlrabi up and we ate it with hummus...delicious. Kohlrabi is a vegetable that I ate as a child from my parents' garden, but until we started getting it in our produce box it was one that I ignored at the supermarket; I'm so glad I was reintroduced to this vegetable as it has become a family favorite.

The cherries were amazing; I needed to strictly ration myself and the girls so that we did not eat them all in one go.

And I am still making salad, though this week's lettuce was not as tasty as in previous weeks.  

As for cooking, here is what I prepared this week:

(from left to right)

1. Broccoli and Rice Casserole - recipe courtesy of Forks Over Knives The Cookbook. This dish required a great deal of prep work, made a lot of dishes, and was kind of bland tasting; not something that I would make again
2. Millet Stuffed Chard Rolls - recipe courtesy of Forks Over Knives The Cookbook. Again, a very labor intensive dish, and while this one tasted better, it did not taste as great as it should have for all the work involved.
3. Roasted Broccoli with Garlic - recipe adapted from The Forest Feast. A simple recipe - cue a huge sigh of relief
4. Roasted Beets with Rosemary - recipe from The Forest Feast. Another simple one, and I used fresh rosemary from our garden.

In my cooking this week, I reaffirmed something that I really already knew: I prefer simple dishes. This is the reason why I rave about The Forest Feast cookbook so much: the recipes have minimal ingredients, are simple to put together, and are always tasty. I'm not lazy in the kitchen, but a recipe that requires three pots, the blender, a baking tray, and a casserole dish is really a little much, especially at the end of the work day.

When we were on vacation last summer we ate lunch at a fantastic restaurant that had some really great quotes written on the walls. One has stood out in my mind since then, "Good food is very often, even most often, simple food." After this week's marathon sessions in the kitchen (on top of planning and preparing food for Claire's birthday party) I am back to simple dishes. Let me roast some veggies with a little olive oil and sea salt and I will be a happy lady....