We got lots of melons this week also but fortunately Jaeger is finally back! It looks like we’re starting to get more tomatoes too. I hope the trend continues. You can never buy good tomatoes in the grocery store and I’m hopeless at growing them.

This week’s haul:

• 2 lbs 2 oz tomatoes (3)
• 3 lbs 5oz honeydew
• 5 lbs 10 oz muskmelon
• 9 oz green beans
• 6 oz broccoli
• 6 1/2 oz globe eggplant (white)
• 4 oz poblano peppers (2)
• 5 oz green pepper
• 3 oz lemon cucumbers (2 sm)
• 1 lb 8 oz cucumber (2)
• 15 oz carrots
• 1 lb 9 oz patty pan squash
• 14 oz summer squash
• 2 lbs 15 oz fingerling potatoes
• 2 lbs 13 oz white onions
• 15 lb watermelon

Jaeger got back from Australia late afternoon on Saturday. Since even under normal circumstances I have a compulsion to feed people, I figured Sunday morning was a good time to have Sweet Rolls.

Sweet Rolls are one of those recipes that require multiple hours of prepapation. I didn’t feel like getting up in the wee hours of the morning on Sunday so I made most of it ahead on Saturday. One recipe makes 18 sweet rolls which is way more than Jaeger and I can eat by ourselves (at least, when we’re trying to be marginally healthy). So, I settled for making a half recipe.

I’ve probably mentioned before that I’ve become infatuated with White Whole Wheat flour (a whole wheat flour made from white wheat berry instead of red wheat berry like the more common whole wheat flour). When making the sweet rolls this time, I used the white whole wheat flour for about 1/2 of the flour the recipe calls for. After they were finished, I asked Jaeger if he noticed the whole wheat taste and he said no. Also, I used the optional 2 egg whites instead of 1 egg (remembering that I cut the recipe in half). Other than that, I mixed everything up as specified and let it raise a half hour at room temperature. After that, I put it in the refrigerator and let it rise another 10 hrs.

After Jaeger and I got back from the airport and had supper, I finished putting the sweet rolls together and popped them in the fridge to rise overnight.

Previously, I’ve had trouble with the topping (which goes on the bottom of the pan when baking) being burned before the sweet dough has finished baking. However, this morning I decided to try baking the bread in a water bath. I put the 8 X 8 pan that contained the chilled sweet rolls in a 9 X 13 pan and poured 2 cups of warm (not boiling) water around it. I then placed the whole contraption in the oven and turned the oven on to 350 degrees. I didn’t preheat the oven since the sweet rolls had been refrigerated the entire night and I didn’t want to risk my baking dish cracking with the sudden exposure to heat. I baked the sweet rolls like this for 45 minutes and then checked them. They were obviously not done yet so I raised the oven temperature to 375 degrees and let them bake another 30 minutes (part way through I did need to cover the top of the sweet rolls with foil to keep the top from getting too dark).

The sweet rolls ended up perfect. Next time I think I’ll try the same method over again but this time start with a higher oven temp. Jaeger and I only ate 2 of the 9 sweet rolls so I individually wrapped the remaining sweet rolls and stuck them in the freezer. I’m not sure how well they’ll reheat but I think they have a decent chance of still being tasty.

Still have melons coming out of my ears . . .

• 9 oz Tomato (1)
• 4 lb 10 oz Musk Melon
• 4 lb 12 oz Musk Melon
• 3lb 13 oz White Honeydew
• 5 lbs 15 oz corn (12 ears)
• 13 oz green beans
• 7 oz Anaheim peppers
• 1 lb 4 oz carrots
• 3/4 oz jalapeno peppers
• 1 lb 7 oz cucumbers (2)
• 8 oz lemon cucumbers (2)
• 2 lbs 12 oz onions
• 12 oz cabbage
• 1 lb 2 oz patty pan summer squash
• 1 lb 3 oz beets (without greens)
• 1 medium Watermelon (forgot to weigh it before giving it away — there’s only so much watermelon 1 person can eat)

Last week I went out to Washington State to visit my family. It was a really nice visit (and lovely weather). However, I flew out Thursday and so couldn’t pickup the weekly produce. I called some friends of ours and had them pick it up and try it out instead of risking Jaeger not getting around to picking it up and failing to eat everything in time.

Even though this is technically the 7th week of produce, it’s the 5th week I’ve received any (I also missed the very first shipment).

Jaeger’s in Australia now for work. Of course, this would be the biggest produce amount so far

We got:

• 5lbs 13 oz Cantaloupe
• 4 lbs 6 oz Yellow Watermelon
• 10.2 lbs Red watermelon (it was too heavy for my kitchen scale so I had to use the bathroom scale to weigh it)
• 2 lbs 14 oz Corn (5 ears)
• 5 lbs 2 oz Melons (2 of some variety of cantaloupe?)
• 7 oz Tomato
• 15 oz Yellow Beans
• 1 lb 4 oz bright orange Squash (not sure what kind — shaped kind of like a zucchini but with a bright orange skin)
• 1 lb 2 oz Zucchini
• 1 lb 5 oz Cucumber (2)
• 7 oz Yellow Squash
• 3 lbs 2 oz Red Onions
• 9 oz Carrots
• 3 lbs Red Potatoes
• 2 oz Lemon Cucumber (1)

As you can see, we received a total of 4 melons. It’s really too bad that Jaeger’s gone because he like melons much more than I do. Thursday night I ate one of the smaller cantaloupe (at least, I think it was a cantaloupe). It was a very good cantaloupe but I think I overdosed by trying to eat the whole thing by myself. Friday I took the watermelon into work and let others work on consuming it. Today, I ate 1/4 of the yellow watermelon and am probably going to seed, chop and freeze the rest (anyone ever had frozen watermelon before?). Assuming it lasts, I’m going to take the biggest cantaloupe in to work on Monday. This still leaves one more cantaloupe to dispose of. I’m considering various options including Cantaloupe Cream Pie and Cantaloupe Bread.

Last night I roasted the yellow beans and ate them with pasta. I also made potato salad for today. However, I still had some red potatoes from 2 weeks ago and so it didn’t make much of a dent in this week’s distribution. This morning I made hash browns and did manage to finish of the Yukon potatoes from 3 weeks ago.

Now I need to figure out how to use the rest of the produce before next Thursday. As I said, from a produce point of view, this was a bad week for Jaeger to be gone

I have a new website! It’s http://gemsvegetariancooking.com/. I moved my recipe wiki from kiesa.festing.org to this new website for a couple of reasons.

First, sometimes my coworkers indicate interest in vegetarian recipes and so I’ll direct them to my website. While I don’t mind them visiting here, I would prefer a slightly more distinct line between my private and work life (though properly Googling me turns up this website anyway).

Second, http://kiesa.festing.org/wiki/ was a bit of a mouthful for people to remember. Occasionally my family will direct people to my recipe wiki if they are looking for a particular recipe of my mother’s or mother-in-law’s. Hopefully this new website makes it a little easier to share

As I’ve mentioned before, I started working on losing weight last fall. This decision was mainly prompted by my desire to be at an ideal weight before I became pregnant. Since I had a couple of years to reach this goal, it was easy for me to take this fairly slow and after the first couple of months, it wasn’t very stressful (retraining myself on what an appropriate portion size was hard and in the beginning I did go to bed hungry).

I’m now securely in the “normal” weight category and very close to what I’m going to consider my ideal. Now that I’ve almost reached my goal weight, I’m starting to examine other aspects of my diet.

One reason I love Nutribase, the application I’ve been using to help with my weight loss, is that it doesn’t just stick to counting calories. It also shows me how many calories are coming from protein, carbs and fat. In addition, it suggests goals for other nutrients such as vitamins and minerals and then calculates each day how close I come to those goals.

After analyzing the nutritional information for about a month, I’ve discovered that I’m often a little shy of my protein goal and, if I don’t take a multi-vitamin or some other “enriched” food, usually don’t get enough Vitamin E, Iron and Zinc. At this point, I’m not too concerned about the deficiencies. However, I want to start figuring out how to boost these area for when I’m pregnant. I’m sure once I’m pregnant I’ll be put on prenatal vitamins. However, I’d prefer to get as many of my nutrients as possible from real food.

While Nutribase does have the ability to sort by various nutritional elements, the display is a little awkward. A couple of weeks ago, it occurred to me that I could use the categories in my recipe wiki to see what recipes are a “high source” or “good source” of a particular nutrient (the FDA has specific guidelines on these labels — click here to see them).

I’m just starting on this project so at the moment most of the recipes in the wiki don’t have a nutritional breakdown and even fewer have nutritional categories attached to them. However, I have started entering this information for the recipes I frequently prepare. Eventually, I’ll be able to go to the Nutrition Search page, click on the High in Zinc link and it’ll give me a list of recipes that contain at least 20% of the DV for zinc.

I think this project should be great fun

During the last Megafest I made Corn Meal Griddle Cakes. Traditionally, my familiy tops Corn Cakes with honey. However, Nemo mentioned that he thought this would go well with some savory toppings also. I forgot about this conversation until a couple of days ago when I was wandering around my recipe wiki looking for breakfast ideas for today. I stumbled across the recipe for Balkins Breakfast which the Logans had introduced me to.

Last week, I had made corn cakes for myself and froze the extras. As I was looking at the Balkins Breakfast recipe, it ocurred to me that I could use the corn cakes in place of the cornbread in this recipe. However, one of the key ingredients in this recipe is egg. I’m not a big fan of eggs unless they’re hidden in a bread and/or dessert. I started thinking about what I could replace the egg with and the obvious answer was black beans. Thinking a little longer, I decided that since this was a savory recipe, I might as well add some vegetables too it. Suddenly, the recipe was looking less like Balkins Breakfast and more like my Cuban Black Bean recipe.

Today I tried out my experiment and created a new recipe: Corn Meal Griddle Cakes with Cuban Black Beans. Jaeger refused to try it (he had already eaten breakfast anyway in preparation for another death march). However, I thought it tasted pretty good. I think I’ll probably try it out at the next Fest and see what everyone thinks.

Last night, I also got a craving for homemade applesauce. I looked at a couple of applesauce recipes but no one recipe seemed quite right. So, I combined a couple of recipes together to come up with Chunky Applesauce with Raisins.

Altogether, I felt it was a pretty good breakfast. My breakfast ended up being 495 calories (the official Corn Meal Griddle Cake with Cuban Black Bean recipe has fewer beans than I put on my serving). 11% of the calories came from protein, 71% from carbs and 18% from fat.

Today was the fourth Thursday I received produce from Monroe Organic Farms. This week we got:

• 1 head of Lettuce
• 1 lb 6 oz Green Beans
• 1 lb 5 oz head of Cabbage
• 1 lb Zucchini (just the right amount )
• 1 lb 4 oz Yellow Squash
• 1 lb 10 oz Cucumbers
• 1 lb 14 oz Onions
• 9 oz Carrots (with tops)
• 4 oz Basil
• 2lbs 15 oz Red Potatoes

On the days I work, I usually eat oatmeal with some variety of fruit and nuts. This is a very filling breakfast with just about the right amount of calories to get me through to lunch. However, on my days off, I like making a more varied breakfast. Some of my favorite breakfast foods include sweet bread products (sweet rolls, waffles, muffins, etc). Unfortunately, these tend to be fairly high calorie foods that don’t fill me up till lunch.

Today, I actually managed to make an interesting filling breakfast for around 500 calories. I tried a new recipe I had found in Cook’s Illustrated called Potato Roesti, made Scrambled Tofu and ate 1/4 of a cantaloupe. It was tasty, filling and not too calorie intense (though I’m going to have to watch my fat intake for the rest of the day ).

Today was the third Thursday I received produce from Monroe Organic Farms. This week we got:

• 1 head of Lettuce
• 4 lbs 7 oz of Zucchini (of course I had to make Zucchini Bread)
• 1 lb 14 oz Beets
• 12 oz Beet Greens
• 1 lb 5 oz Red Onions
• 2.5 oz Pickling Cucumber (yes, it was small )
• 3 lbs 7 oz Yukon Potatoes (I used some of these to make an excellent Potato Roesti)
• 1 lb Green Beans
• 3 oz Broccoli