Menu a la Week: 6/21/08 - 6/27/08

It's a day late, but what follows is this week's menu (and what happened last week).

Recap: Friday night we had nothing for dinner since we both had big lunches and Thursday night my husband had oatmeal and raisins since I went out drinking for the departure of a colleague to grad school (Bye Sarah! See you soon for cocktails).

Since the broccoli head from our first CSA share looked a bit wilty, we started with that first. ("Bob" passed on the offer of broccoli leaves since he couldn't think of anything to do with them; I've since learned you can use them like kale and as a base for broccoli soup). About a third of the broccoli florets was used for last night's salad. We also had one of the frozen chicken pot pies (and it was fine without the egg wash, just not as glistening and pretty).

Since we didn't get through all of our frozen foods last week, we'll have more things to choose from in our freezer this week. With all the planting we did yesterday, there wasn't much time to cook anyway.

This week, we'll have to get through the broccoli (easy) and the scapes. What are scapes, you ask? A green flower from the garlic bulb. These shoots emerge from the ground and are ripe for harvesting for about 2 to 3 weeks. Check out The New York Times article on scapes that was published last week.

There are so many English peas, that they'll be coming out of our ears by Friday. As for the spinach, I know what not to make with it. I also have some new ideas on how to prepare it. For lunch Friday, I had a great Indian spinach dish (I believe it is called palak paneer). Now I'm on the hunt for a good recipe for it. I already have a good semi-Italian spinach recipe, and, of course, spinach will be incorporated into our salads. Armed with four or more recipes/uses, we should be able to get through all the spinach they throw at us.

By the looks of this week's menu, we'll be needing plenty of ginger. In searching around for various pesto recipes (Gail needed some basil/pesto advice), I came across this blog: Kalyn's Kitchen. This post talks about freezing basil but I also noticed that she freezes ginger root. I didn't know that could be done.

My freezer is going to be jealous of hers. Hers is so much better looking.


Hers
vs.

Mine

Menu 6/21/08 - 6/27/08
Saturday June 21, 2008
Chicken pot pie and salad (with broccoli and red leaf lettuce and mustard vinaigrette)

Sunday June 22, 2008
Garlic scape pesto with pasta and salad

Monday June 23, 2008
Ginger chicken and broccoli stir fry with brown rice

Tuesday June 24, 2008
Chicken and palak/saag paneer

Wednesday June 25, 2008
Scape pesto and green salad

Thursday June 26, 2008
Turkey meatloaf and herbed English peas and carrots (with garlic scapes!)

Friday June 27, 2008
English pea Asian chicken soup (or some other English pea soup)