Archive for June, 2009

Farmer’s Market

My book club book for May/June was “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver. The book got me interested in buying locally where I can. Here in the Gulf South, it’s easy to buy local shrimp and other seafood. Today I went to the farmer’s market in my town and picked up some local produce, too.

As a result, I’m not only going to have to plan the main dishes for our meals this week, but also the sides, so we can be sure to use up all the vegetables before everybody leaves for our June road trips. I bought six tomatoes, a pound of green beans, two crowns of broccoli, two GINORMOUS green peppers, six sweet banana peppers, two very large sweet potatoes, two pints of blueberries and about two cups of basil. Here are the menus that will use up all this food:

Dinner tonight: Basil Cream Chicken with Pasta, Country Green Beans (both recipes from allrecipes.com.

Sunday lunch: Pepper Quesadillas, tomato salad.
Sunday dinner: some sort of casserole, broccoli

Monday lunch: tuna and tomato salad, bread
Monday dinner: Pork ribs, sweet potato casserole, Country Green Beans (again) (green beans and sweet potatoes are used up at this point.

Tuesday: A shrimpy pasta thing; tomatoes and probably the basil are used up at this point

Wednesday: Pepper quesadillas for lunch again, green and banana peppers are used up at this point.

Thursday: another casserole thing, broccoli. Broccoli is used up at this point.

Whew! That was a lot of work just planning it. But we’ll have lots of green things to eat this week, and they’re all from within 100 miles of here.

What I Cooked Today

  1. Two and a half pounds of ground beef, with diced onion and garlic. I divided the final product into three equal portions and put them in the freezer.
  2. Four dozen meatballs, divided into two equal portions and frozen.
  3. Homemade egg noodles. I had a hankering. I mixed them up in the food processor in just seconds, then rolled the dough out, sliced into wide noodles, and dried for two hours. I cooked them in chicken broth (not homemade; I didn’t have any) and served them with
  4. Fried chicken, cooked crispy with a cracker crumb crust.

I was going to make brownies but a nap interfered. Maybe tomorrow.