Fresh farm food meals
A few weeks ago I signed up for a CSA (community supported agriculture) subscription where a local farm delivers vegetables and herbs (and some other items sometimes) to my door once a week and then I scramble to use all of it before more arrives.
I've done those home chef ones before where they send you portioned ingredients and you follow a recipe, but this lets me get a little more creative. These things seem fancy not because I am a fancy chef but because I am getting fancy farm ingredients. All I'm really doing is, cutting, sauteeing, and roasting things. My bases are usually steamed in the microwave or canned.
Coupled with some pre-marinated chicken from Trader Joe's and whatever other ingredients I had picked up at the store, I made...
Harvest grains with sauteed cabbage and mushrooms, pesto chicken (from Trader Joe's), with microgreens and cranberries. topped with parsley and tzatziki.
Soft fontina cheese on toast with sunchokes and mushrooms, broccoli micro greens and parsley. Served with an apple and a plum on a paper plate lest you forget I'm not fancy.
Roasted cabbage, spring mix, mushrooms, and sunchokes topped with microgreens, parsley, grapes, and cottage cheese.
This first week I learned all about sunchokes. They're also called Jerusalem artichokes. At first I thought it was ginger. Roasted or sauteed, you get a potatoy texture, but they taste nutty and sweet.
They have a high concentration of inulin which is a prebiotic fiber that passes through the small intestine undigested (but your lil gut bacteria guys LOVE it). It makes you gassy and bloated and has a common nickname of fartichokes.
I just got my second bag yesterday. (It's actually my third but the first was a trial bag and didn't include the full set of vegetables.) It's the first bag of the spring produce! Part of why I did this was to get closer to seasonal foods so I'm excited. I've only used an onion so far.
This is a "use the last of the previous bag and eat all the greens before they go bad" meal. White and red quinoa base with chickpeas, sauteed cabbage, parsley, onions, heated leafy green mix, fontina cheese sliced and warmed on the heated greens, topped with sliced savory herb chicken thigh (also from Trader Joe's).
It has layers.
