Local Box 3/21/13 - Vegan Greenling Meal Plan

Brrrrr, why? why is it cold again. Oh well it helped me in one of my meal decisions this week

first I will start off with a couple of items left over from the last box:

Here is the broccoli tempeh saute from Eat Vegan on $4 a Day, served with brown rice. Super easy and tasty

Here is a salad that uses the red leaf lettuce, some raw broccoli and shredded beets

Ok on to this weeks box (or last weeks as i'm writing this, sigh)

Pea Shoots
Avocado
Mint
Radishes
Kale
Spring Mix
Lettuce
Cauliflower
Celery
Limes

Pea Shoots, Spring Mix, Lettuce, Radishes, Avocado all go in Salads like this one - gee, i could add celery and cauliflower and kale and pretty much use the whole box for salads.

However, thanks to the cold weather, I am going to use the Cauliflower in a creamy vegetable curry from How it All Vegan, an old staple cook book by Tanya Bernard & Sarah Kramer. It's really good an been ages since I made it.

Whenever i get Mint - i have to make my fave salad dressing in the world - Goddess Mint Dressing from the Blissful Chef's cookbook Blissful Bites - so easy, toss it all in a blender! I doubled the recipe so I could have it all week.

This weeks radish bunch was HUGE - so I'm going to use another recipe from Blissful Bites and make Broccoli Salad with creamy mustard dressing.  In the past i've also made Radish Sandwiches which are weirdly good.

Limes - I haven't decided, maybe raspberry lime muffins i used to make if i can find that recipe. They make good salad dressings, and are in a lot of recipes here and there that I may not plan

Kale - I haven't made a good kale salad in a while

getting back to my roots

actually, I don't even know if Fennel is considered a root veg - it is a bulb, that would be under ground, so I'm taking it.

I did chop it up, along with a couple of the beets, and some turnips left over from a box of yore, and one purple potato I randomly had left over. I used very little oil, and just some salt and pepper.

Here it is as a side dish to some very good tempeh chick'n salad that I got from the Go Vegan app on my iphone - it's an app with recipes from the great Sarah Kramer. Very handy when in the store at a loss for what to cook for dinner. Anyway, it didn't call for it, but I added Dill to it.

Here is the cheesy broccoli with baked potato - from Forks over Knives cookbook. I loved it, the kids not so much. Could be that the idea of cheese sauce that's not cheese is going to be a process to get used to. could be that this particular cheese sauce recipe is essentially raw, with an entire raw onion, blended in the vitamix. The onion taste is strong. It's my goal to try all the cheezy sauces in all my cookbooks till I find one they like.

That is it! like I said in the last post the spinach, orange and grapefruits went into smoothies, and the lettuce & radishes in Salads

I still have some dill and have the potatoes to make the potato salad, also there is some broccoli left and I may make a stir fry with tempeh from the cookbook Eat Vegan on $4 a Day - by Ellen Jaffe Jones

It's the change of seasons - I love seeing how the box contents start changing! Till Thursday...

Local Box 3/7/13 - Vegan Greenling Meal Plan

Hello folks, so this two weeks are budget week. I'm trying to shop as little as possible and see what I can make from what I already have. I have a pretty well stocked pantry, but I often feel a lot of pressure from my massive stockpile of cookbooks, and even from writing this blog, to make new and appealing looking recipes each week.  I will definitely still do that, it's a joy of mine as well, but let's see how this goes.

Here are the box contents:

Spinach

Broccoli

Winter Salad Mix

Fennel

Herbs (dill)

Red Leaf Lettuce

Red Radish

Beets

Orange 

Grapefruit

I actually have already used most of the spinach - here I used it in some left over pasta from Bucca di Beppo. The "side" of whole wheat penne marinara was gigantic of course, so the next night i warmed it up, added chopped spinach and defrosted frozen peas, and it was 10x better than it was in the restaurant.

I've also been using the spinach in my morning smoothies, I made an amazing one this morning that also used grapefruit! here's the recipe - Almond milk, half a banana, grapefruit, half an apple, half a cup of frozen mango, a teaspoon of Maca powder, 12 cashews, spinach.

I also used the oranges in smoothies, but I added Cacao powder, and chia and no cashews.  mmmm chocolate orange. 

Broccoli - I have some russet potatoes, on sale at one of my grocery stores, so I'm going to make the cheezy sauce from Forks Over Knives and have broccoli cheezy potatoes

Winter Salad Mix, Red Leaf Lettuce and Red Radish will go in salads! I made an amazing salad dresssing calld Chef AJ's house dressing, google it. You will thank me. I want to eat salads 3 times a day. Except i added Dill to it. Delish

Fennel & Beet - I will roast, I actually have a couple of Turnips left from a few boxes ago, they seem to last almost forever, so will throw those in too, and have a nice roasted root veg side dish. 

Dill - I may scour the grocery store sale flyers and find some small potatoes on sale and make a potato salad.  Like this amazing looking Creamy Dill Potato Salad

Muffins & Stuff

slipping this one in before my new box comes this afternoon!

I didn't make a lot of the things i said i was gonna... but here are some things i did

Blueberry Lemon Muffins from The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick Goudreau - these are my son's faves right now, and i gave one to my kid's baby brother who i don't know what to call - and he chowed down.

Indian food night - Aloo Gobi with the cauliflower from The Vegan Table by Colleen Patrick Goudreau and Curried Chickpeas & Kale from Fat Free Vegan - for some reason these both needed more flavor, but still tasted good

Purple Mashed Potatoes - i threw this meal in here because my son added some of the Garlic Chives in the mashers. The color of these is so amazing!

This photo sucks but the food didn't! Here is Spaghetti Squash with Brussels Sprouts & Chickpeas - from Fat Free Vegan - this is so amazing because it's so rich in flavor, satisfying, filling and totally low in calories and zero fat.

I ate the spinach just sauteed one day as a side dish. The Chard also.  Sometimes i just get tired of making so many recipes and planning and shopping :)

Oh and next week - it's "budget" week, so with the next box i am going to try to do just that, make what i can from what i have already with minimal shopping. I love a good challenge