This week is looking rather delicious! Even so, I'm not exactly the world's most enthusiastic cook or dishwasher, so what I try to do is make everything at once (with one massive clean up effort) and then pick at it all week (usually putting it in smaller containers for packed lunches). Here's this week's spread:1) chunky tomato soup (tomatoes, spinach, onion, parsley, oregano, milk - local farmers market and dairy farm; flour, salt, pepper, olive oil - grocery).
The soup will get packed into glass jars to take in for lunches. I save all my mayo, jelly, peanut butter, etc jars. They are perfect sizes for a lunch portion of soup and since they are glass you don't have to worry about the toxins in plastic leaching into your food when you re-heat. I bring an ice-cream spoon with me for lunch - handle is extra long - to make it easy to eat out of the jar.
2) salad (tomatoes, onion, sugar snap peas - farmers market; olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper - grocery)
This is just one portion of the salad. I filled one container for each of my lunches this week to accompany the soup. I enjoyed my make-it-up-as-you-go salad dressing from last week so much(posted here), I made it again to go over these raw veggies.
3) stir fry spinach and onion (spinach, onion - farmers market; salt, pepper, and olive oil - grocery)
I'd have given my mother a dirty look if she ever tried to feed this to me as a kid, but I absolutely love it now. Go figure. A little something to nibble on for dinner or at lunch if I feel a need for something other than soup and salad.
So one morning at the farmers market (and early in the season, I might add) and I was able to make 3 completely different dishes that are absolutely delicious. A little bit of toasted homemade bread and jam (from the farmers market) or cheese (from the dairy) and I'm set! It's going to be a yummy week!
6 comments:
That looks delicious!
I love your idea of jam jars for reheating portions of soup. I'm still reheating in reusable plastic containers which I know is not good, but I hadn't thought of using jam/salsa jars, etc.
Thanks, Theresa! Another tip to help with using jars is when filling them, use a canning funnel. The canning funnel is the perfect size to sit in the top of a peanut butter or mayonnaise jar and it makes it so much easier to ladle soup into. (And the funnel only cost $1!)
I've been meaning to get a canning funnel, since I plan on trying my hand at canning this summer - this gives me a good reason to get one! I'll wait 'til April is over though, until Crunchy Chicken's Buy Nothing Challenge is finished....
Canning! Will you be blogging about it (I added your RSS feed to my favorites and am enjoying your posts)? I'm hoping to try that next year but have no experience and no real idea where to start. I'd love to hear how it goes!
I didn't technically sign up for Crunchy's buy nothing month, but I've been doing it too. I have my eye on a mixer and am holding off. We borrowed a friend's for a test drive and really like it. I haven't had a mixer in years so although it's a splurge, it will certainly come in handy.
I'm sure I will be blogging about it, since I have absolutely no experience at it, and I'm sure I will commit some hilariously inept mistakes! But what the heck, I'm going to try. I did make some freezer jam and marmalade last year that I blogged about, but that isn't really canning even though I did use canning jars. The local "Value Village" thrift store is likely where I'll get a lot of my canning things, once Crunchy's challenge is over! I am quite liking how much money this challenge is saving me so far. A good mixer would be a solid investment, I'm sure!
Thank you for the kind words - I just found your blog today and I'm very much enjoying it as well. Your comment on Crunchy's post about how your relationship with food has changed really resonated with me, and is one of the main reasons I would like to get my hands on those Pollan books at some point, either via the library or the used book store.
I've thought about doing some freezer jam this year. We did it growing up one year when I was in high school. It was fun. I'm going to be doing tons of berry picking anyway since I'm going to try to freeze enough fruit to get me through the winter. That's the plan anyway, so a few jars of jam would be a fun change of pace. I'll have to look up your old post and find out more. Thanks!
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