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Recap of Week 1 vegbox and week 2 preview

December 19th, 2008 Posted in family, food, vegbox

So how did we do going through our week 1 veg-box? Last weekend we spent Phoebe’s naptime cooking. On Saturday we made Two Bean Soup with Ham, and Cabbage Roll Casserole. On Sunday we made R&R Pudding and Persimmon Cookies. Other meals we had were Salad and baked sweet potato, Baked Sweet potatoes, salad and steak, and a steak-ceasar salad. We also steamed carrots to go along side the casserole mentioned above, and ate the R&R pudding on the side of the casserole. All four of these recipes were hits! Phoebe loves the cabbage roll casserole and R&R pudding! We did not go through all of our soup or casserole, but came close by week’s end. If we’d not eaten out so much for lunch this week, we would have gone through all that we prepared. The soup was probably the least liked, though I did like the collard greens in it more than I thought I would. I think in the future we will use thicker chunks of ham than the recipe calls for, and maybe less greens. After having them in the soup and liking them that way, I think we’re also willing to try the greens cooked by themselves as a side dish as well.

At the end of the week we have used up all of our cabbage, carrots, lettuce, grape tomatoes, and sweet potatoes. We have about half of our rutabagas, persimmons, and collard greens. We didn’t touch the broccoli or grapefruit.

Yesterday we received our new box. It came with probably twice as much broccoli as last week, zucchini, pole beans (which are apparently green beans), 3 bags of new potatoes (we opted to get more potatoes in place of turnip greens this week), carrots, celery, one humongous mushroom (what do we do with this???), lettuce, some tangerines, and two more grapefruit. Fortunately we don’t get another delivery for about a month due to the holidays. This will be more than enough time to go through all of these veggies. However, once the deliveries start back, they will be coming in weekly again and we’ll have to continue to strive to use what we’ve got each week and actually eat it. I don’t think we’re too far off from hitting that mark, however. I’m confident that we can manage to do just that. I’ll continue to update our progress as we go.

Now, send us your best broccoli recipes! ;) We like it cooked and raw, but not in the quantities we’ve acquired the past couple of weeks!

  1. 6 Responses to “Recap of Week 1 vegbox and week 2 preview”

  2. By kat on Dec 19, 2008

    A couple broccoli options:
    - Stir Fry: shave the stems like you would a carrot and cut all of it into small chunks. It takes about as long as bell pepper does to cook. Quite tasty.
    - Steamed: This is our old standby. I never get tired of it this way.
    - Broccoli Quiche: Toss some bacon or ham with broccoli into a quiche. Yum! (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bobby-flay/savory-3-cheese-quiche-recipe/index.html)
    - Broccoli Casserole: (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/broccoli-casserole-recipe/index.html) The blue cheese dressing in the recipe sounds weird, but you can’t taste it. I absolutely adore this recipe.
    - Chicken and Broccoli Skillet: This is a one skillet recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. Quick, easy and delicious. I’ll e-mail this to you, as I only have it in PDF format printed off of their site.
    - Large baked potatoes for dinner. Cheese, broccoli, bacon, sour cream. This is the dinner for when Sean and I can’t think of anything else and we cram broccoli into our potatoes.

    That should at least get you started with broccoli. :)

  3. By Jessica on Dec 19, 2008

    Thanks for the ideas, Kat!

  4. By Misty on Dec 20, 2008

    You might want to get a copy of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison. It has tons of recipes based on individual veggies also how to clean and store them. I’ve used my copy A LOT both while we were practicing vegetarians and since then as well.

  5. By Jessica on Dec 20, 2008

    Thanks Misty! I went on ahead and purchased it through amazon. We have a different vegetarian cookbook too that I think we’re going to start looking at again. We used to use it more, but haven’t looked at it in years now. Now’s the time to look some more!

  6. By sharah on Dec 26, 2008

    1-2 heads broccoli, 1/2 onion, ~1 cup carrots all diced fine.

    saute in big stock pot in 2 tbsp butter until onions are translucent

    add 2 tablespoons flour and let brown until butter/flour mix is golden brown

    add 4-6 cups chicken stock, or water with chicken boullion cubes. simmer until veggies are mushy tender.

    carefully pour soup into blender, or use a stick blender, to cream the veg/broth mixture

    pour back into pot, add 1/2 cup half-and-half or cream or about 2-3 inches worth of a block of velveeta cut into cubes. salt and pepper to taste.

    Best Broccoli soup ever. I’ve also added squash that was about to go bad, and I’m tempted to try some cauliflower mixed in as well.

  7. By Jessica on Dec 29, 2008

    I think we’ll try that one. Thanks sharah!

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