Picking up from the May 16 post. So much cooking early on, I had to break this post into two.
Tuesday: Started my morning like I did on Monday: a kale banana smoothie. These suckers really fill me up for most of the morning and they’re full of amazing things. Since the kale is chopped and in the fridge, I just grab a fistful and add it to the immersion blender cup. My FB friends are getting sick of hearing about kale. They’re telling me to my face, it’s so bad.
After furiously cooking on Sunday and enjoying leftovers on Monday, I had totally planned to make something with the Swiss chard. I decided I wasn’t crazy about the meal I was going to make, so I found two different recipes on the NYTimes site: one for carmelized onion and chard pizza and one for spanikopita with chard. I opted for the latter, in part because it needed more chard. Ran to the store to buy an onion, came home and found out that I didn’t have chard after all! Darn! Now I was disappointed. Maybe next week.
This meant that we ate the kale pesto after all, which is quite good. There’s plenty for tomorrow as well, and I’m going to grill the squash to add to the pasta. As of Tuesday night, I have left: a lot of romaine (had lunch dates this week, so the rest of the salads at lunch will be huge), a bunch of radishes (will be gifting a lot of those), two squashes, chopped up kale for smoothies and the collards.
Wednesday: Wednesday is a Jazzercise night, so I try to do leftovers on Wednesday. That helps because it’s also trash night. So, another serving of the kale pesto on the bowties, simple. But, I also want to get in a short run tomorrow and I’ve invited the parents over for dinner. Since I grew up in SC, I have to make collards and black eyed peas at least once. If I do it the conventional way, I won’t have time to do both. So, this one will be made in the slow cooker. All the (fairly) dry ingredients are in the crock pot in the fridge. In the morning, I’ll fill it with water and let it cook all day. The collards are fairly quick.
Thursday: So I thought I was being a genius by making my hopping john in the crock pot. I love thinking of ways to cook efficiently, so it doesn’t mess with my exercise addiction. If I did this, I could still get a short run finished! I prepped everything on Wednesday night, stuck the pot in the fridge, pulled it out in the morning and set it on low. When I came home it smelled good … but the rice had turned to mush. If you like your rice totally mushy, then I highly recommend this method. Otherwise, make the rice separately and add it in when the peas are cooked. Here’s the basic recipe:
- One onion, chopped
- One green pepper, chopped
- One cup of dried black eyed peas
- 4 cups of water
- Tumeric, about a teaspoon
- Smoked paprika, about a tablespoon
- I added some tempeh just because I needed to use it up
Throw the whole mess in the crockpot and cook for 6-8 hours. You can also do this in a pressure cooker too. Either way, beats cooking it for 2+ hours on the stove.
I also made collards, which I boiled some water with salt, pepper and a little bit of olive oil and threw in the chopped collards for 20 minutes, then added more salt and some vinegar. Not bad. I ate it with the hopping john and some salsa.
Friday, we’ll still eat the mushy hopping john and the rest of the collards, then get ready to use the next farm share that I get tomorrow. The back half of the week was not as successful as the front half, but it wasn’t so terrible that we couldn’t eat it. I’d keep the kale pasta and the smoothies, adjust how I did the southern meal. And, make sure I pick up the chard! Dangit.
Thoughts from the end of the world 