liamsaunt

I got an email this morning that they are crediting me for the full retail value of this week's box due to my dismay at some of the produce quality in this shipment, so I am satisfied with that resolution. Tonight I made yellow beet posole with salsa verde (additional beet obtained on my lunch walk since they only sent me one small beet in the shipment). The stew used both hominy and amaranth to thicken it. There are plenty of leftovers for lunches. My main objectives in using this service are to 1. give me interesting ideas for vegan meals that I can pull off quickly during the week after getting home from work pretty late and 2. cut down on mid-week food waste. I am actually saving money, and am definitely throwing out less food, but I am very aware that my situation is different from most folks in that I feed more people Friday-Sunday than I do Monday-Thursday. I have basically eliminated shopping for weekdays completely (well, except for that beet today haha), and now just shop for the weekends. However, once the local summer produce starts coming in, I will pause this service for a while to take advantage of that.

I did not take a picture of the contents of this week's TB12 Purple Carrot box because I was running late and also was annoyed that some of the produce was not up to snuff and/or was in wrong amounts. I sent a message to customer service so I will see what their response is. The first box had one not so fresh vegetable (which I complained about and they got back to me quickly). All the other boxes have been great, quality-wise, so this box really surprised me. Anyway, by default, I made the one recipe for which enough of the ingredients were in good shape (actually, the cilantro was not but I happened to have cilantro in the fridge anyway, so it worked out): Chickpea dumplings with curry spiked tomato sauce and mustard greens. The dumplings are made with garbanzo flour, vegan yogurt, cilantro, onion, oil, baking powder and salt. They were very tender. I did not think I was going to like this, but I ended up eating almost the entire plate of food. I have more for lunch tomorrow. More mustard greens would have been nice but I had to really pick through what they sent me as about half of them were wilted/slimy/yellowed. Hopefully this is a one-time bad week for the produce with this program. Oddly, the photo on the recipe card shows green peas scattered over the top of the dish, but there is no mention of them in the recipe! Maybe the recipe developers decided peas are too polarizing :-)

That fish looks delectable. I'd love to taste it!

So, the project I mentioned earlier is finally happening this week. Well, this week and next week. Floor to ceiling built in triangular bookcases with bottom cabinets, and a fireplace refacing. The bottom cabinets will hold the cooking magazines I keep. I lost the battle with my husband to have a rolling ladder to access the top shelves of this project so I will probably put decorative items on the very top. In his defense, I am very accident prone. Here is the project site, cleared and ready to go And all of my exiled books, piled up in my weekday dining room. Haha in this picture in addition to books I use often I see books I have not opened since college (Moosewood) and ones that were gifts that I have never even looked at (ahem, Robuchon). They are mine though and I like them, and they are about to get an awesome new home. This project is the first part of what will eventually be a complete gut to the studs kitchen renovation, as the main kitchen in my home is open to this family room.

grilled sandwiches. There were three kinds: chicken, nueskes bacon, avocado and brie; prosciutto, fig jam, and gouda; and caprese. Not a typical Sunday meal but my kitchen area is under construction.

So this week I only prepared one of the three meals using the ingredients as they were meant to be used. Here's the ingredients for the first meal, Crispy tofu with pumpkin seed mole, Spanish rice and chayote squash (minus the garlic--I forgot to put the garlic in the photo again) I don't eat tofu, so swapped in some fish. The tofu got donated to the community section of my office fridge. People bring in unwanted unopened food and leave it in a specific spot for anyone to take. It was gone at the end of the day. The plated meal: Verdict: pretty tasty. I forgot to put the sour cream on the plate, and am glad I did not use the full amount of chipotles included--2 whole peppers plus about 3 tbsp adobo sauce. That would have made the sauce much too spicy for my taste. There was far too much mole sauce for two people, so I now have a bag of mole sauce in the freezer. Meal number two: Cauliflower steaks with smashed potatoes, asparagus and roasted red pepper pesto. I remembered the garlic this time :-) Plated result: This was very easy to pull together. It also made way too much food! I could only manage half of this plate. The red pepper pesto was really garlicky so I could not take the leftovers to work for lunch. I'll use them up in a sort of salad this weekend. My husband cheated and made his meal non-vegan with some leftover lamb from Sunday: The third meal was meant to be cannellini bean burgers with tzatziki sauce and carrot fries. I saved the beans for another day and made salmon burgers with the recipe ingredients instead. That result is posted on the Dinner! thread.

salmon burger with tzatziki sauce and pickled onions and a mix of potato and carrot "fries"

Staff meeting catered lunch. Boring...

I am saving money because I am not buying any meat during the week, and I am also not buying so many vegetables and herbs that things go bad before I have a chance to use them. I like having a wide variety of veggies to choose from but when cooking for two it's hard to use everything up. I would not like eating from kits exclusively. It's fun a couple of nights a week but I want to do my own thing the rest of the time. I also don't necessarily use the ingredients as they are meant to be used. For example, last night's meal was supposed to utilize tofu, but I don't eat tofu so I swapped in some fish from my fish share.

scallop roll and tater tots

Union Square Cafe racks of lamb Chicken piccata for the non lamb eaters (which includes me) Pimiento cheese stuffed potatoes Not pictured: the first local asparagus of this season

antipasto

My local Whole Foods has been selling beans in tetra packs for many years. The other groceries around me only have them in cans. So, here are the other TB12 meals from this week. Wednesday we had BBQ jackfruit over green chili polenta with a collard green apple-radish slaw This was my first time cooking with jackfruit. I guess vegans use it as a sub for pulled pork. It was interesting. I would not go out of my way to seek out more, but I would eat it again. The polenta and slaw were tasty. Last night we had Thai green curry vegetables over lemongrass-ginger quinoa with a tomato-Thai basil salad and tamari almond garnish Very tasty. The curry had a whole Thai bird chili with seeds so it had a little heat. The amount of quinoa given was way too much for two people. I have a container of it in my fridge to be repurposed into some sort of salad later. Back to non TB12 food until next Tuesday.

This week's TB12 Purple Carrot box arrived today. Here is the outside, with Tom Brady's food philosophy, which, if you have seen my posts in the Dinner! thread, you know I do not follow. I'm really trying to cut down on fresh food waste while still enjoying a wide variety of vegetables, so I thought this was worth a try. Plus, my husband likes Tom Brady haha. The contents of this week's box. You can see what I mean about the packaging. I am able to recycle 100%, but I know that is not true for all locations. Since we were not having a TB12 meal tonight, I chose to cook one of the meals for my husband and I to take for lunches this week. I picked the pasta fagioli since it's supposed to rain tomorrow and soup is always good on a rainy day. Here are most of the ingredients for the soup--I forgot to put the garlic, celery, and asparagus in the picture. I was multi-tasking--making our dinner while taking these photos. And the final soup, plated for a picture. Mine looks greener than the recipe card because I stirred all of the pistou in since I am portioning it out for lunches. This meal made enough soup for two lunches each. I did not use the "brown rice english muffin" from the ingredients photo. The recipe card instructed you to make garlic bread out of it. No thanks, I will have no garlic bread at all before I eat garlic bread made from a brown rice english muffin. I tossed it in the freezer for some other person's breakfast someday.

I got way too much hake in my fish share yesterday, so tonight we had fish and chips. I fried all of the fish yesterday--it was still really crispy after a reheat in a hot oven on a wire rack this evening.

Thanks! I love the boards. I'll be using the big one this weekend. Massive antipasto planned :-) Tonight, sort of baja style fish tacos

I am a current subscriber to Purple Carrots' TB12 meal kit. I have been reporting my results on the Dinner! thread but will post here from now on. I will say that I am very pleased with the food, and it is definitely saving me money and massively cutting down on food waste. I have an unusual setup in that Mon-Thurs it is just my husband and myself, but Fri-Sun I have a minimum of six and as many as 12 people to feed dinner to. So, I have been doing Purple Carrot Tue-Thu, eating my fish share on Mondays, and then just shopping for the weekend. After factoring in the cost of the meal kit, I would estimate my weekly grocery savings to be around 25%. One big problem with meal kits is the amount of packaging. The recycling rules in my town allow me to recycle 100% of the packing materials, but if that was not the case it would probably give me pause. There are a lot of little plastic bags and containers to deal with.

Last night I grilled a beer can chicken and a ribeye steak sautéed some shredded brussel sprouts and made a baked cheesey pasta with cauliflower and capers

Thursday's Purple Carrot meal was mung bean dal with popped sorghum and (gluten free) flatbread. I was not thrilled by the idea of this meal, but the dal was actually very pleasant and the sorghum gave it a nice crunch when mixed in. The gluten free flatbread though...let's just say that I am glad I don't have celiac disease. I'll be sticking with gluten-ful naan going forward. Last night, lettuce wraps and pineapple rice

I have been very good about not buying cookbooks lately because my long awaited renovation of my cookbook shelving is about to begin, but your series of photos of recipes from this book has had me wavering, and this photo sent me over the edge. Book ordered.

I had some leftover vegetable paella from dinner the other night--the last leftovers in my fridge. For sad desk lunch today I heated it up, drained the oil off a small tin of Ortiz tuna in olive oil and added that in along with the juice of half a lemon and salt and pepper. Leftovers gone just in time for the weekend.

This meal was another Purple Carrot TB12 recipe, and they called it a vinaigrette. It was roasted peppers, walnuts, olive oil, lemon juice, pomegranate molasses, cumin, Aleppo pepper, scallions, and salt and pepper all blended together. Basically on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays I am doing Purple Carrot TB12 until I get bored with it. I've been substituting things when I want--like Tuesday's salmon dish was supposed to be made with tofu, but I like salmon better.

Roasted Japanese sweet potato with ras al hanout coated crispy chickpeas, sautéed kale, muhamurra vinaigrette, and cucumber-parsley salad.

Teriyaki salmon with coconut cauliflower "rice" and spicy cucumbers

It was very easy to make. I sauteed two onions, two bell peppers, and four cloves of garlic in olive oil until tender, then added two cups of rice, a good pinch of saffron, and about 1 tsp. each of smoked paprika and cumin, and cooked for a few minutes. Then I added about three cups of stock, salt and pepper, and brought to a boil, and topped with a pint of cherry tomatoes and a package of thawed artichoke hearts, I then baked it at 400 for about 25 minutes. When it came out of the oven, I squeezed over a lemon and topped it with fava beans and parsely, plus a "walnut chorizo" which was just walnuts ground up in a food processor with some olive oil, salt and chorizo seasoning. This made six servings. I got the idea from one of the recipes that came in my Purple Carrot box last week, but I needed more than two servings so bumped up all of the vegetables and used paella rice instead of the brown basmati rice that came in the Purple Carrot box.