Week of Eats: 6/7

I concluded my New Recipes: May post by saying I tend to cook less in the warmer months, and I am finding that to be very much the case as summer arrives.  It's halfway through the month, and I've only tried one new recipe!  Instead, my meals have been a combination of eating out, improvisation, and revisiting previous recipes.

"Old" meals

Last week, I put a lot of my farmer's market bounty to use in these savory "hand-pies."  The turnovers are good cold for lunch, and thanks to my disregard for measuring, I ended up with a substantial amount of extra filling, which makes an excellent hash with egg on top.

I walked into work one morning and found this waiting for me at my desk!  It wasn't totally a surprise, my co-worker had asked if I liked kimchi the day before, and said she would bring me in some from the batch she had made.  There's only about half of it left now; I've sandwiched it with cheese in corn tortillas (inspired by my meal from the Kogi truck a few summers ago) and used it as a condiment on vegetable ramen.

Sorry for the awful lighting in the ramen picture.  The power went out for about 90 minutes during a storm this week; thankfully the kitchen upstairs has a gas range, so I could finish cooking dinner and the battery in my camping headlight worked!  I was also glad the power came back before I went to bed, so that I wasn't woken up in the middle of the night with all of the lights coming back on!

A made-up meal

The pinkish hue in the dish below is courtesy of beets from the farmer's market.  This dish was completely made up and I had my doubts as it was coming together, but it turned out alright.  I was trying to recreate a very tasty curried couscous salad I had at bridal shower a few weeks back, but this was nothing like that at all.  Oh well.

A very lazy meal

I didn't shop at the farmer's market this weekend, but why should I when there's some fresh produce right in my backyard?!?  I have basil, lettuces, and kale that are all ready to harvest, two big zucchini plants that are coming along nicely (I am expecting some tiny zukes any day now!) and some small cucumber, yellow squash and carrot plants. Pardon all of the weeds in this photo; I spent some time out there this morning tidying up and it looks a little better now.

Tonight's dinner was leftover pizza and fresh kale chips, plus a hard boiled egg because waiting 6 minutes for the pizza to reheat and the kale to crisp was just too long.

This week I have a dinner event on Wednesday and a potluck to go to on Thursday.  I have a new recipe all picked out for my contribution to the potluck; I hope it's easy since the only time I will have to put it together is right after work on Thursday.  Stay tuned to see how it turns out in the June re-cap!

Oldies but goodies

After a week of mostly made-up on the spot meals, thanks to grocery shopping without a list last Monday, I was looking forward to meal planning for this week.  Instead I went to the farmer's market on Saturday and came home with my first real haul of the summer--chard, broccoli, cabbage, little round potatoes, beets and an irresistible pack of sticky buns--thus changing the order of my usual recipe browsing, list making, grocery shopping, and then cooking routine.  This week went shopping (vegetables), recipes, shopping (everything else), followed of course by cooking, but it's only the second day in and I have already departed from the meals I planned.

rainbow chard and precious little potatoes from the farmer's market

When I got back from my run at a little past 7 this evening, I wanted my dinner to be something more filling than the couscous salad I had planned.  Dinner also had to be quick--enter the classic tuna cheesy, served with roasted veggies (that were originally going to go in the salad).  

roasted veggies + ketchup = "fries"

More protein, and really easy to clean up after.

Speaking of cleaning...another oldie but goody that everyone should put into practice is the magical power of vinegar and baking soda.  I like to use it on my stainless sink to get rid of soap scum and water marks, but this past weekend I had the idea to use it in the shower too.  Yes, the bathroom smelled a little vinegar-y when I was done, but only until I took my next shower, and I prefer vinegar smell to chemical fumes any day.  Baking soda, vinegar and an old toothbrush also took care of a pair of dingy earrings that hadn't responded to either jewelry wipes or a soak in a tinfoil lined bowl.  Simple, cheap, and I feel oh so accomplished--a feeling I hope to maintain throughout the week!