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Farmer’s Market Finds – 4/5/2012

6 Apr

I didn’t get a chance to go last week, but I my girls and I went to the Farmer’s Market this week.  They love to go and pick up goodies for the week.  And this week, we got a lot!

Mequite jumbles, a small cheery pie, and a gluten-free carrot cupcake from Big Skye Bakers for $13.50.  The mesquite jumbles were really good, they put raisins, roasted almonds, dark chocolate chips, roasted pecans, and are made with wheat and mesquite flour.  The cherry pie again was excellent.  The carrot cupcake tasted a little different from what I’m used to, but I think that’s because it was made with rice flour, tapioca, and potato starch instead of wheat flour that I’m used to.  It was still good, just different for me.

Asiago Garlic bread and French bread from Gabe the Bread Man for $6 each.  His bread was great last time I got it, and this bread is excellent was well.  Plus, he’s cheerful and happy, I can tell he enjoys making the bread and selling it at the market to meet and speak with people.

Plain with light salt goat cheese from Canelo Prairie Dairy for $6.50.  My older daughter was begging for this again.  Of course, last time she wouldn’t touch it, said it looked gross, then when she actually tried it, found out she really did like it.  And, finished off what was left!  It’s going pretty fast this time too.

Honey sticks, 5 for $1.  I’m not even sure what flavors we ended up with since the girls had trouble deciding which ones to get!

Next week, I think we’re going to try out some tamales.  I guess we’ll see when we get there!

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Weekly Meal Plan: 4/1/2012 – 4/7/2012

3 Apr

Here is what I will be making this week, subject to change at any time:

 

Sunday: Schwan’s frozen 6 cheese tortellini with meat sauce

Monday: Bierock Casserole

Tuesday: Italian Crescent Zucchini Pie, using zucchini, onion, fresh basil, fresh oregano

Wednesday: Eggplant Lasagna, using eggplant, mushrooms, onion, and basil

Thursday:  Lemon Chicken & Potatoes, Asparagus

Friday: Grilled shrimp and asparagus

Saturday: Takeout

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Basket Breakdown – 3/31/2012

31 Mar

This week, I got the conventional basket, the Italian themed veggie pack, and the DIY cookie kit.  Here is what was in the baskets this week.

 

The conventional basket had Romaine lettuce, grape tomatoes, cauliflower, asparagus, Mexican squash (pretty similar to zucchini), butter gold potatoes, bananas, Granny Smith apples, minneolas, grapefruit, and pineapple.

The Italian themed veggie pack had yellow onion, red onion, green onion, garlic, eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms, lemon, rosemary, Italian flat parsley, and lemons.

The DIY cookie pack had egg shaped cookies and white, yellow, red, and blue colored frosting.  My girls and I had fun decorating (and eating) these today.

 

I’m working on a meal plan this week, but here are some previous recipes I’ve made using what was in today’s baskets and veggie pack.

Cauliflower: Twice Baked Cauliflower, Cauliflower Pizza Crust, Garlic Herb Chicken with Broccoli and Cauliflower, Roasted Cauliflower

Asparagus: Roasted Asparagus, Grilled Asparagus, in a stir fry

Mexican squash/Zucchini: Moussaka, Ratatouille, Italian Zucchini Crescent Pie, Easy Cheesy Zucchini Bake, Sausage, Zucchini, and Tomatoes over Rice

Potatoes: Crash Hot Potatoes, Mashed Potatoes, Slow Cooker Potato Soup, Kotopoulo Lemonato, Sausage and Potato PIe

Eggplant: Moussaka, Eggplant Pizzas, Ratatouille

And lots more!  Hoping to get the meal plan worked out tomorrow.

 

Note: The type and amount of food may vary from another basket because of geographic location and because of variances in how the ends of produce cases are distributed after everything has been distributed evenly.  I also volunteered this week and got 1 extra item for volunteering.

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Crunchy Cod

30 Mar

 

Since we got a lot of cod recently from a Zaycon Foods event, I have been coming up with different ways to use it.  My usual standby for white fish like cod is Fish Tacos, but I needed something different.  My husband isn’t thrilled with breaded fish normally, but I wted to make something my kids wouldn’t immediately turn their noses up at.  Turns out my husband really liked it, and my kids at least tried some, but weren’t overly crazy about it.  And I thought it was really good as well.  What I like about this is that it can be versatile.  I used Italian dressing, but I think it would be good with ranch dressing as well.  I used Panko, but regular or seasoned bread crumbs would work, or you could crush stuffing mix to use.  I like when I can easily substitute what I have on hand.  Tonight, I served it with Roasted Asparagus.

 

Crunchy Cod 

What you need:

1/4 cup Italian or ranch salad dressing
2 cups bread crumbs (Panko, seasoned, or crushed stuffing mix)
1 pound cod fillet, cut into smaller pieces
Olive oil

How to make it:

Preheat oven to 425 F.  Line a baking sheet with foil and spray with non-stick spray.

Dip each piece of cod in the salad dressing, then in the bread crumbs to fully coat.  Place on baking sheet, and generously spray each with olive oil.

Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, or until flaky.  For best results, flip each piece of cod over halfway through cooking.

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Weekly Meal Plan: 3/25/2012 – 3/31/2012

28 Mar

Better late then never, right!

Sunday: Chicken and Green Chile Enchiladas, used green chiles, green onion, and small corn tortillas from Bountiful Baskets

Monday: Ultimate Chicken Fingers, using Zaycon Foods chicken, and Green Beans with Cherry Tomatoes, using green beans and cherry tomatoes from Bountiful Baskets

Tuesday: Grilled 1/3 lb burgers, using Zaycon Foods ground beef, topped with Romaine lettuce from Bountiful Baskets and feta cheese, grilled asparagus from Bountiful Baskets, and Crash Hot Potatoes, using butter gold potatoes from Bountiful Baskets

Wednesday: Pizza

Thursday: Pasta with meat sauce

Friday: Crunchy Cod, Roasted asparagus

Saturday: Not sure yet…

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Ultimate Chicken Fingers and Green Beans with Cherry Tomatoes

28 Mar

I had a bag of Zaycon Foods chicken I had kept in the refrigerator instead of the freezer, and I was having trouble deciding how to cook it.  On Sunday, my girls wanted pancakes, so while I was making them using Bisquick, a recipe on the box for Ultimate Chicken Fingers caught my attention, and I decided that would be how I would cook the chicken.  Then, this week I received green beans and cherry tomatoes from Bountiful Baskets, and I thought they would make a nice side for the chicken fingers.  So, here are the recipes for both!

 

Ultimate Chicken Fingers
Based on recipe here

What you need:

2/3 cup Bisquick mix
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt or garlic salt (I used garlic salt)
1/2 teaspoon paprika (I didn’t use paprika)
3 boneless skinless chicken breast halves, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch strips
1 egg, slightly beaten
Olive oil
How to make it:
Preheat oven to 450 F.  Line a baking sheet with foil, and spray with cooking spray.
Mix Bisquick mix, Parmesan cheese, salt and paprika in 1-gallon plastic zipper bag. Dip half the chicken strips into the beaten egg; place in bag of Bisquick mixture. Seal bag; shake to coat. Place chicken on baking sheet. Repeat with remaining chicken. Spray or brush with olive oil.  
Bake 12 to 14 minutes, turning halfway through cooking, until no longer pink in center.
Green Beans with Cherry Tomatoes
Based on recipe here
What you need:
1 1/2 pounds green beans, trimmed and cut into 2 inch pieces
1/4 cup olive oil
3/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh basil
2 cups cherry tomato halves
How to make it:
Place green beans in a large saucepan, and add enough water to just cover the green beans.  Cover pan, and bring to a boil.  Turn heat to low, and simmer until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain off water, and set aside.
Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in garlic salt, pepper and basil. Add tomatoes, and cook stirring gently just until soft. Add green beans, and toss gently to blend.  Cook just another minute or so, then remove from heat.

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Basket Breakdown – 3/24/2012

24 Mar

This week was the first week running the new site I helped to open.  We didn’t find out until Monday that we were on for this weekend, so it was a little hectic this week making sure we had everything together.  We had some great volunteers show up this morning, who helped us keep things on track when the truck was running a little late this morning.  We had a lot of fun, a couple of kinks to work out, and looking forward to the future at this site!  Plus, with a view like this, who can complain on a sunny day at the site?:

Here is what we had this week.  Please note that in my picture, I have an extra romaine lettuce and 2 extra green onions from a friend that didn’t want those items.

Granny smith apples, bananas, pineapple, canary melon, minneolas, Romaine lettuce, asparagus, green onions, cherry tomatoes, cauliflower, and green beans.  Very pleased with today’s basket!  My youngest was so excited that I had Toy Story apples.  I’m working on my meal plan for the week, hopefully will get it posted tomorrow.

Note: The type and amount of food may vary from another basket because of geographic location and because of variances in how the ends of produce cases are distributed after everything has been distributed evenly.  I also volunteered this week and got 1 extra item for volunteering.

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Zaycon Foods Chicken

23 Mar

I’m really liking Zaycon Foods so far.  You order and pay online, then when you pick it up, you don’t even have to get out of the car, they load it for you.  Buying meat this way, then getting produce from Bountiful Baskets, makes it so that I don’t have to be in the grocery store as much.  This is nice for a couple of reasons, one is that I don’t have a lot of time for long trips, and another is that I don’t have to make my kids be in the grocery store as long.

This week, Zaycon Foods had a boneless, skinless chicken breast event here in my town.  Chicken is their trademark event, and I have seen pictures of others who have gotten it, and I decided I wanted to try it.  This time, I didn’t share the case, I just bought one for me.  It was a 40 pound unit, and the price this time was $1.89 per pound.  Sometimes the grocery stores will have chicken as low as $1.67 per pound, but it’s not often and hard to get a good quantity since they usually have limits.  I can’t get to the grocery store every day to get daily limit to stock up, so I was happy for this opportunity to stock up.  So, what does a 40 pound box of boneless, skinless chicken look like?  Like this:

Inside the box was a large, sealed bag that contained 4 unsealed bags of chicken breasts.  Lots of juices are with this chicken, so you need to have a workspace prepared in case of spills.  Here is how each piece of chicken looks:

This was actually one of the largest ones, weighing about 2 pounds.  I first cut it down the middle, then trimmed off the extra fat.  I also trimmed some of the chicken from the undersides.  Those pieces I cut in smaller pieces and collected in a measuring cup to get to 2 cups.  The recipes I use that call for diced chicken or pre-cooked chicken typically are for 1 cups of chicken, and this ends up being about 1 pound worth of chicken.  Once that was all done, I decided to put 1.5 to 2 pounds of whole chicken breasts into each bag.  I used a roll on my FoodSaver to create my own size bags for this.  I cut the larger size chicken breasts in half, so those bags had 4 chicken pieces, then the smaller ones I would put 3 pieces in a bag.  It was a lot of work!

I ended up with 16 bags of whole chicken breasts, weighing between 1.5 – 2 pounds each and 4 bags of diced chicken pieces, that were 2 cups or 1 pound each.

My freezer is now just about full!  So, I guess my hopes of buying a 1/4 cow are on hold for now.   I’m happy to have the chicken and looking forward to getting to try it out!  Now that I have a variety of meat in the freezer, when I make my meal plan for the week, I can take out the meat I need for the week and not worry about if I can get the meat on sale at the grocery store.   This also means I need to have a good system for labeling and inventory of the freezer, which I will talk about in a later post.

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Farmer’s Market Finds – 3/22/2012

22 Mar

I didn’t end up making it to the market last week, but was happy to get to go again this week.  Here is what I got this week:

 

1 cherry and 1 apple pie, both from Big Skye Bakers.  My daughter was taste testing the cherry one on the way home, that’s why there is a chunk missing.  These were $5 each.  They bake using mesquite flour, and also have some gluten-free options. I may be stopping by there again next week, they had a variety of pies, gluten-free carrot cupcakes, goat cheese quiche, and mesquite jumble cookies that all looked delicious!

The cup is Soft Fresh Goat Cheese, plain with light salt, from Canelo Prairie Dairy.  It was $6.50.  This is a yummy spread, tastes a lot like cream cheese, just made from goat’s milk.  She offered a free sample before I made my purchase, which I gladly tried to make sure I would like it.  I definitely did, and I’m sure this won’t last long!  It’s amazing!

And of course, the honey sticks, 5 for $1!  This week my daughter picked root beer, green apple, and peach for the flavors.

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Twice Baked Cauliflower

21 Mar

This is another low-carb recipe that my friend, Jen, shared a while back.  It’s been on my list to try, and tonight I finally got to try it.  It was very good!  It really doesn’t taste much like cauliflower with all the extras in there.  A nice alternative to potatoes.  I added in some fresh rosemary, and I didn’t have cream cheese, so I used sour cream instead because that’s what I had.  I served this as a side with some Zaycon Foods hot dogs and German sausage that I grilled.

Twice Baked Cauliflower

What you need:

1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
5 slices bacon, crisped and crumbled (I used turkey bacon)
3 tbsp cream cheese (I used sour cream)
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
4 green onions, chopped
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
Salt and pepper to taste

How to make it:

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Butter or spray an 8×8 baking dish or 2 qt casserole dish.

Steam cauliflower until tender.  In a medium/large bowl, add cream cheese and then put steamed cauliflower on top to melt.  Mash with potato masher but leave chunky.  Mix in 1 1/2 cups of the cheddar cheese, 3 pieces worth of the crumbled bacon, green onions, rosemary, salt, and pepper.

Place mixture in the prepared casserole dish, and spread evenly.  Top with the remaining cheese and bacon.

Bake in the preheated oven for 25 – 30 minutes, or until bubbly and browning on top.

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