Ravings of a Textual Deviant

Today, I wrote and mailed the check to completely pay off my student loan from graduate school!

So, I still haven’t done anything with the beets from week 1 (and really need to at this point). I did use the rest of the cabbage and the green pepper, though, in the following manner:

Saute one small chopped onion and chopped green pepper in olive oil. Optionally, add in some cubed bacon or pancetta. Add shredded cabbage and caraway or fennel. When the cabbage is cooked, deglaze the pan with red wine vinegar.

The zucchini, yellow squash, another green pepper and one of the eggplants went into a batch of spaghetti sauce, along with half of the mushrooms. The other half of the mushrooms went into an asparagus, mushroom, and crab surimi risotto that got stuffed into the remaining green pepper and a couple of red pepppers, then topped with a little bit of cheese and baked.

Still untouched from week 2 are one small eggplant, the napa cabbage, and two cucumbers.

Mama Duck hatched me
I’m ugly as I can be
Other ducks won’t quack with me
Turn their back on me
Just want a lack of me
In the barnyard family
I don’t know yet
That I’m a cygnet
I leave the nest
‘Cos mama knows best
And I head out west
For a place to rest
Flying fast as I can
To Detroit, Michigan
Take my swan sound
On down to Motown
Now I’m on the one
And havin’ some fun
Listen to my swan song
Don’t treat your chicks wrong
And don’t you go punkin’
This ugly duckling

Still left over from Week 1 - three small beets, half a head of cabbage, half a head of lettuce, and a small green bell pepper. I am of a mind to make colcannon with the remaining cabbage, and roast the beets with rosemary and olive oil (small portion won’t matter, as spouse doesn’t care for beets anyway), and serve the lot of it with some sort of fish.

Speaking of which, remind me to post the fish taco recipe sometime.

New for Week 2 - two more small green bell peppers, a head of napa cabbage, two miniature Asian eggplants (bright, bright purple!) three small cucumbers, a zucchini, a pomegranate-shaped yellow squash, a handful of cherry tomatoes, fresh basil and parsley, and a hefty bag of mushrooms.

I think that the zucchini, squash, and peppers are going to end up in a chunky vegetable tomato sauce over pasta, and I’ll try something from my relatively-new Indian cookbook for the eggplant and napa cabbage. The cucumbers and tomatoes will probably end up in a salad with last week’s lettuce and some marinated mozzarella. And maybe I’ll break out the food processor for some homemade pesto sauce, using the herbs.

A: You cannot get nine women together and have a baby in one month.

B: I did it because I was told there would be extra credit. And when I was a student, if there was extra credit, you did it.
C: There is, but the reward is virtual.
D: Are you saying that virtual is its own reward?

E: It’s a staff meeting. As opposed to a strep meeting.
D: I’ll penicillin it in.

F: Looks like the honeymoon is over.
A: That means I’m moving into spouse mode, and you do not want that. Just ask my husband.

We’ve had a fair bit of green salad lately, what with all the lettuce that came in the CSA box. I like variety, and I found, in one of my cookbooks, an excellent addition to the leafy greens.

Slice a small log of very cold goat cheese into medium rounds. Dip each round into beaten egg white, then coat with finely ground almonds. Fry the goat cheese rounds in a little bot of olive oil just until the almonds are brown and fragrant. Serve on top of mixed greens, arugula, or spnach.

Also, for an awesome ice cream topping or salad addition (but not a floor wax), slice some strawberries into a bowl, and let them sit in the fridge for an hour or so with a little bit of balsamic vinegar.

After an interesting day at work, I decided to fall back to one of my favorite, simple meals.

It started with a basic green salad, using the smaller head of lettuce and both cucumbers from the CSA box, as well as some tiny tomatoes I had picked up at the farmer’s market. (Hey, it’s a quick solution for adding vegetables to a meal.)

I had some refrigerated pierogi from Trader Joe’s, which only needed a few minutes in boiling water, and a sauce. For that, I sliced up the mushrooms from the CSA share and sauteed them in a mix of butter and olive oil on medium heat. While they were cooking, I chopped up some crab-flavored surimi (usually I prefer lobster-flavored for this dish, but both are good, or you can skip it altogether and add extra mushroomsfor a vegetarian version) and added it to the mushrooms. As soon as it was warm and blended, I deglazed the pan with vermouth, and let the alcohol cook off. I added some alfredo sauce from a jar, stirred everything together, and reduced the heat. Finally, I stirred in some dried parsley. The sauce thickens up very nicely on low heat, and is also good on pasta, mashed potatoes, and rice.

I had an eggplant and some spinach already in the fridge that I needed to use, and pile of zucchini. I wanted something with a lot of vegetables in it, but didn’t feel like fussing around with a ratatouille or lasgana noodles.

So I skipped the noodles. I sprayed down my usual lasagna pan with olive oil, and got to work.

I sliced the eggplant and zucchini into planks, sliced up an onion and some mushrooms, and pulled a bag of baby spinach out of the fridge. Using the veggie planks in place of noodles, I layered everything with tomato sauce from a jar (told you I was feeling lazy) and some various odds and ends of cheese; fresh mozzarella, shredded parmesan, and an Italian four-cheese blend. (I seem to end up with a lot of odds and ends of cheese, but never enough of any one kind to use up on its own.) I covered the pan with foil to keep the cheese and onion on top from burning.

It went into the oven at 375 degrees (Farenheit; I’m an American, after all, and we can’t be bothered with that metric nonsense) and it’s there even as I type. After 40 minutes of baking time, I’ll take the foil off and let the top get brown and bubbly. Maybe by then, I’ll have gotten of my lazy behind and cooked up some gnocchi or whatever to go under it.

And I still need to figure out what to do with a rather substantial amount of cabbage.

ETA: Shouldn’t have skipped the noodles. This tasted pretty good, but was very watery.

ETA: I ended up putting the lot of it in a blender with some tomato paste and canned, diced tomates. After several hours on low heat and the addition of some Italian sausage meatballs, it turned out very well indeed…sort of, but not quite, a Bolognese.

I had three yellow summer squashes of various configurations, and no idea what to do with them. After thirty minutes of looking through cookbooks ranging from Janet Kessel Fletcher’s Fresh from the Farmer’s Market to Dale Carson’s New Native American Cooking, I still didn’t have a recipe that struck my fancy.

I decided to wing it. I started off my sauteeing chopped onions in olive oil, for the sake of making a decision that left me a lot of options. As soon as the onions started to turn translucent, I added some cubed pancetta. I cut the squashes into something approximating bite-sized cubes, and added them to the pan after the onions started to turn golden-brown. The squash took a while to cook down and soften up, but when it did, I added some dried basil and oregano, then deglazed the pan with a splash of white wine.

To go with it, Spouse roasted a chicken on top of some potatoes, onions and carrots, so we ended up with lots of veggies, and I suspect I am going to be making chicken soup in the not-too-distant future.

Last night’s dinner was sauteed mixed greens from the CSA box, with duck, water chestnuts, and mushrooms.

The beet greens from the box were not in great shape (it’s been a very buggy season so far here, what with all the rain), but there was plenty of cabbage to fill out. I cut the greens into fairly large shreds, as they shrink down a lot when you cook them. The pickup point for the CSA produce is a lovely little neighborhood market that had some duck breast, which I always have a hard time turning down. Half a pound was fine for two servings, with a little bit left over. I also had some shiitake mushrooms that predated the CSA muchrooms, so I sliced them up.

I started the mushrooms in the pan first with a little bit of olive oil, then added the duck, cut into bite-size chunks. I probably should have added the greens earlier than I did, as the cabbage was fairly robust stuff, but it came out quite edible despite that. The diced water chestnuts went in next, and as soon as they were warm, I poured some of Trader Joe’s Five-Spice sauce over the lot. The saute went over plain rice, and was absolutely delicious.

Before I knew I could get the duck, I was planning to do this as a vegetarian dish with tofu. Next time, perhaps. I still have a lot of cabbage left over.