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

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

• 2 lbs 3 oz red potatoes
• 1 lb 12 oz zucchini
• 8 oz yellow squash
• 1 head lettuce
• 1 lb 13 oz beets (with greens)
• 13 oz green peas
• 1 lb 11 oz onions

Jaeger’s mother is here so she’s going to teach me how to make potato salad her way with the red potatoes. I have a rough recipe here but it’s one of the few recipes where she doesn’t have precise measurements.

Today was the first day I received produce from the CSA farm I joined a couple of months back. They started distributing last week but Jaeger and I were in DC for the ALA conference (American Library Association). With the produce came a newsletter that contained general information and included tips on how to prepare various vegetables. Last week they distributed kohlrabi which apparently many people didn’t know what to do with. I was hoping for some this week since they are too expensive in the grocery store and I was curious to try them. However, we didn’t get any this time.

The newsletter stated that the first couple of weeks will be a little sparse as they wait for the crops to mature. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the variety we got this week:

• a little over a 1/2 lb of snow peas (maybe more but I’ve been snacking on them all night )
• 6 small turnips
• 1 head of red leafed lettuce
• 1 small zucchini
• 1 broccoli crown
• 4 onions (with greens still attached)
• 2 lbs of small red potatoes

I didn’t realize that turnips grew in the early summer. I always associated them with fall and soup. So, I’ll get a chance to try preparing them a different way (it’s not soup weather right now). I’m tentatively planning to use them in a Maple-Glazed Turnips recipe I have from The Roasted Vegetable. I understand the greens are technically edible but I suspect I’ll give them up as a lost cause. I like chard, spinach and beet greens but I’m a little dubious about other greens.

We’ll be receiving produce everything Thursday from now until the end of the produce season. It’s going to be a little bit like Christmas every week

Early this spring I decided to join an organic csa. They pick most of the produce and pack it into boxes which are shipped off to various distribution centers scattered around Colorado for pickup by members. However, there are two crops that require the members to pick if they want any: asparagus and strawberries. I decided not to pick asparagus because I didn’t think I’d want enough to make it worth a drive to the farm. However, I love strawberries so I made an appointment to pick.

It’s been years (decades?) since I last picked strawberries and I couldn’t really remember what was involved. When I called the farm, I was told to bring “flat” boxes (strawberries get squished if piled too high on top of each other). I wandered down in our basement and discovered that the top of paper ream boxes seemed about the perfect size.

Today turned out to be very cloudy and windy. Fortunately, Colorado has a tendency to rain so I had stuck in a rain coat but it was still colder than I expected. Usually I take a walk during lunch but decided to abort the exercise today due to the wind. Unfortunately, the wind hadn’t stopped by the time I was ready to leave for the farm. As I pulled up, another car pulled up and two women from Denver emerged. They had also picked the 6:00 time slot to pick.

We were each given a row to pick and told we could pick as much as we wanted. It was nice having two other people in the vicinity to talk to as we picked. I discovered that I’m quite pampered. My back doesn’t like picking strawberries for extended periods of time. I was also very surprised by the state of the strawberry rows. Granted the last time I picked was years ago but I rememberd neat rows of strawberries with lots of fruit to pick. Probably due to the organic nature of this farm, the strawberry plants were in neat rows but they also had a fare number of weeds interspersed with the strawberry plants.

By the time I filled two boxes, the other two people decided they had enough of the wind and quit. I figured this was a good time for me to quit too. I didn’t end up picking as much as I would have preferred but I did get more than I was afraid I might. When I arrived back home, I weighed the strawberries and discovered I had picked around 14 lbs.

Growing up, mom spent a lot of the summer canning and freezing. Mom allowed us to watch movies if we helped her which was a treat for us. So, I spent many hours during the summer watching The Sound of Music, The King and I, and Fiddler on the Roof. Feeling a bit nostalgic, I decided to listen to Fiddler on the Roof as I washed, stemmed and froze the extra strawberries.

The experience was kind of fun. However, I’m very glad that I don’t have to do this for a living!