March Cook at Home Challenge

[Rosemary]

Started off the month with an easy dinner - pasta and marinara (roasted summer squash for me), chicken sausage, and steamed broccoli with leftover homemade sauce from the bibim bap we had earlier this week. But while that was cooking I spent about an hour chopping up vegetables for the next few days. Also roasted some carrots, which are a favorite snack of mine, warm or cold.

DH had to bring snacks to a meeting last night. He took a bag of clementines, some oat-cranberry-chocolate chip cookies I made, and this beautiful pastry ring that I baked yesterday, which was apparently greatly appreciated. The entire recipe had only 1/4c sugar. The filling was dried figs soaked in warm water and rum and a little butter. The dough was a standard sweet cardamom recipe.


Tonight DD has a dinner-hour activity so she'll have leftovers from last night as an early dinner after school, and a snack after her activity, and I'll have a big salad before we leave.

[Bastelmutti]

Mmmmm!

Last night we had chickpea curry from the Smitten Kitchen recipe (Chana Masala) - it's a good one.

I also made my first foray into lacto-fermented vegetables a la Sandor Katz. I bought his book Wild Fermentation a while ago, but had only done pickles so far. This jar is green and red cabbage and carrots with garlic, ginger and hot pepper. This is the method I used:
http://earthmother-intheraw.blogspot...egetables.html (scroll down for video)

[Azure]

That's beautiful, Rosemary! I bet it was delicious too.

We had a chicken fajita salad for dinner last night. Plus some muffins.
Thursday the guys really liked the broccoli beef pasta from the crockpot. I wasn't crazy about it though.
Tonight I'll do something with shrimp. Not sure what though.
Sunday - simple coq au vin in the crockpot.

[Stella]

Rosemary that is beautiful!

FIL made dinner last night, homemade cornbread (he even ground the flour) and tuna salad sandwiches.

[domestic goddess]

On Thursday I made chicken stroganoff. Didn't cook last night, as there were some leftovers and sandwich fixin's. Today, I just want to go to bed, so we'll see if I get up on time to make anything. Didn't eat at all at work last night, but I had 2 donuts this morning. At least I won't be too hungry to sleep now.

Rosemany, your coffee cake looks lovely, and I bet it tastes as good as it looks!

[Anne Lee]

Tonight will be chicken breasts.
I need to cobble together some dinners for the rest of the week...

So for this week in no particular order:
Roasted Chicken
Spaghetti
White Chili (using leftover chicken)
Beef Stroganoff and Noodles
Tacos
Beans and 'Taters

[treehugger]

I think I mentioned last week that I have been having trouble cooking during the week, due to working longer hours now, but we make do with leftovers and easy, always-on-hand things like quesadillas and bean burritos. Not the most varied of diets, but it's cheap and filling. Anyway, now I have a new personal Cook-at-Home Challenge: to use up the contents of my CSA box that will be delivered every third Wednesday. No wasting food allowed!

On the 29th, our first box from Farm Fresh to You arrived and it was very exciting! On a whim that night, I cooked dinner instead of working late. In the box: leeks, spring onions, green garlic, endive, 1 large rutabega, turnips, collards, mixed baby lettuces, fennel bulb, radicchio, endive, and kiwi. Everything looks so good and fresh. Plus, there are some new-to-me things in there (at least to cook), which is a great challenge.

That first night, I used those fat, gorgeous leeks, some potatoes I had on hand, and homemade chicken broth from the freezer to make the most flavorful leek and potato soup I have ever had, let alone made. Wow! And it tastes so rich and satisfying, even though it only has 6 ingredients (including salt and pepper). I had some yeasted corn bread in the freezer, so that came out and got warmed in the oven to go with the soup.

This morning I spent some time going through a few trusted cookbooks and wrote down some recipes that feature the vegetables I have to cook with. Some that sound really good: balsamic-glazed endive; braised and glazed turnips; collards with fermented black bean sauce; roasted broccoli and radicchio with lemon; lentil stew with winter vegetables and goat cheese; baked fennel. Goodbye vegetable rut!

One of those dishes will be dinner tonight, along with some steaks I just took out of the freezer. Tomorrow, I will at least make the lentil stew (to eat during the week), along with one or two other things.

Kara

[Rosemary]

balsamic-glazed endive; braised and glazed turnips; collards with fermented black bean sauce; roasted broccoli and radicchio with lemon; lentil stew with winter vegetables and goat cheese; baked fennel

YUM.

[Blackdog Lin]

I am put to shame by treehugger (you go girl!) Have been working lately with increasing our vegetable usage and dishes: my only ideas and tryings so far are garlic-braised brussels sprouts, dijon-glazed carrots, and even MORE ways to use up a head of cheap winter cabbage. And treehugger is feasting on dishes like balsamic-glazed endive and lentil stew with winter vegetables and goat cheese (I LOVE goat cheese, BTW, when I can get it).

Therefore I am so jealous that you have a DH/family that will let you try these awesome-sounding vegetable side dishes. Alas, I can tell already that DH is not gonna get onboard with tonight's dijon-glazed carrots......

[Rosemary]

Alas, I can tell already that DH is not gonna get onboard with tonight's dijon-glazed carrots......

I also have family members who are not as excited as I am about various vegetable preparations. I still make them, but I also put on the table the assorted chopped raw vegetables that I always keep ready in the fridge so that they can make a salad instead, while I happily munch on the more adventurous veggies. They are both willing to try things, at least, and the food never goes to waste as I eat it for lunch or, if the flavors work, 'recycle' it in a soup the next day.