Consistent Deliciousness

Been a little lacking on my Monday updates and for that I apologize, my lone reader or three :)

Last Friday (not this past one, but the one before), my roommate and I started receiving a CSA from Growing Power. For those of you who don't know, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and is a way to connect folks to local farmers, as opposed to running out to Jewel where your mangos may come from Chile and most of the fruits and vegetables are "seasonless". I have thought about joining a CSA for some time but couldn't justify the cost and amount of food alone, so N and I are splitting the cost and getting a big bag of fruits and vegetables delivered every other week. We're due for our second shipment this upcoming Friday and so I sat down with her on Thusday and was like, "let's do this thing"... meaning plan out our meals for the next week or so to ensure maximum usage of our veggies. She laughed at me and thought it was all too domestic but it's actually worked out pretty great and we've gotten some amazing meals made over the past few days.

Our CSA included a huge head of cabbage that neither one of us wanted to touch with a ten foot pole. I suggested making cabbage rolls, which I had eaten at the amazing German restaurant up on Lincoln with M and her parents after first moving to Lincoln Square. We looked up a recipe on Smitten Kitchen and were not disappointed. With a whole head of cabbage, however, we definitely got more rolls than we bargained for. Guess who's having cabbage rolls for lunch a lot this week? This girl. Luckily the recipe did state that they freeze well, so when we're just about over it we'll probably stick the rest in the ice box.

Amazingly, we still had a few leaves of cabbage left that were too small to roll up. So last night we decided to take the cabbage, shred it, and make fish tacos. Again, this is not something I would readily advocate for. Despite my family's embrace of fish tacos since moving to California I have always been a bit wary. Yet... these were delicious! We actually made two kinds, fish tacos from this book (yeah Martha Stewart!), and black bean tacos from the ever lovely Smitten Kitchen. I also made the other Martha's guacamole :) and we had a very complete and satisfying meal. As N remarked, "It's nice to know that Smitten Kitchen is so consistently good." And I had to agree.

Meanwhile, for those keeping score, I've only mentioned one vegetable out of our entire two week CSA! We also received a bag of spinach, which M and I hardly made a dent in when we made a yummy spinach lasagne. The rest of that will be used in a quiche sometime this week, probably tonight. We also have a head of broccoli and a bag of green beans, used in a stir fry to come, as well as potatoes, mixed greens, mangos, (sadly from Chile, so we're a bit confused as to how they made their way into our bag) and apples. I'm sure there's more but I can't think of it all right now, but be assured that we have had many incredible, easy, homemade meals around these parts lately, which completely curbs the desire to eat out. For real. As the weather gets colder, I am excited to have more and more recipes under my belt so I can leave the house less and warm the kicthen more. Mmmm hibernation. Get excited.

Spontenaity

As I've mentioned several times before, I'm not the best at throwing stuff in a pan and calling it a day. Usually I try to follow some semblance of a recipe but it doesn't get me very far as I can't always seem to read a whole recipe before diving in and finding out I'm missing an ingredient when I'm covered in flour, butter, or what have you.

Last night, however, I had a definite plan in mind for the chicken that was left over from last, last Sunday's potluck (mmm, tasty). I had some zucchini and yellow squash I had picked up from Jewel and the chicken thighs. I also had a $1 can of tomatoes picked up from the Dominick's here on campus. Let me tell you that I do not miss shopping at this Dominick's! It is stressful and small and everyone and their brother's uncle comes to shop here, and they never, ever have more than three check out lanes open... seriously. One time the lady at the customer service desk told me that they're basically the 7/11 of Dominick's, in that they carry just enough of everything but not hardly enough of anything. I think they don't even really have any frozen vegetables. Not that that's a great tragedy or anything, but just sayin'.

So I went home, cut up the squash, cut up the chicken, used the chicken skin to grease the pan (no olive oil! of course) and cooked up the squash, dumped the tomatoes in (I should note that these were special canned tomatoes, garlic and oregano seasoned, yum!)

and threw in the shredded chicken. It was done in about 20 minutes. Maybe less. And it was fabulous. Could even be served with a tidge of pasta. It practically required no thought at all. My roommate ate it with some crumbled feta and lots of black pepper, and some crusty bread, aaaand she had two servings :) Probably because she had just come home from class and was starving, but I like to think it was my awesomeness.

So there you go! Sometimes it does work, this "throwing stuff in a pot on a wing and prayer." Here's hoping to more happy experiments in the future.