by Sam Tackeff | Jul 11, 2016 | Farm, Meal Planning
Happy Week! I thought I’d catch up this afternoon with a quick “From the field update”. I’m heading back to the farm on Tuesday – and I haven’t eaten through enough of last week’s produce yet, so my meal planning this week is focused on eating through as much of this as I can! I also have a Walden delivery – coming on the 21st, so I have a good amount of eggs and meat to make my way through. (Don’t forget you can get $20 off a Walden share through August with my referral code thesecondlunch)
:: June 28th produce at Stearns Farm CSA ::
To pick: 2 quarts of sugar snaps, 1 quart of snow peas, and I grabbed some yerba buena (a type of mint) from the herb garden.
Pre-picked: 2 lbs. zucchini, 2 large cucumbers, 1 head lettuce, collard greens (or kale!), 1 bunch scallions, 1 bunch salad turnips, 1 bunch kohlrabi, 1 bunch beets.
And here’s how I organize my CSA share.
This week’s prep: here’s what I’ll be making with my produce and some of the meat share. Most of the produce will be for my lunches.
- hard boil eggs and pre-peel some of them
- a batch of Turkish zucchini
- cook down collards
- pickle turnips
- spiralize kohlrabi for kohlrabi slaw
- sauté beet greens and kohlrabi greens with olive oil and garlic
- prep snacks: sugar snaps, baba gannoush, and green tahini
Here’s what I’m thinking for dinners this week:
Monday: pork chops and apple-kohlrabi slaw
Tuesday: crab, mango, and avocado salad
Wednesday: ground beef with salsa, cauliflower rice, and guacamole
Thursday: butter chicken with rice and salsa
Friday: out!
Happy week!
by Sam Tackeff | Jun 23, 2016 | Farm, Meal Planning, Meat
Summer is here, and we are feasting! Each summer, I get a good percentage of my food from my two CSA’s – our summertime farm share, and our meat share. The rest I supplement from local farmers markets, Trader Joes, and Whole Foods.
Our meat and eggs are from Walden Local Meat Co. – if you are interested in trying out a meat share, you can get a $20 referral discount to Walden this month (and through August 30th) by leaving my name – Sam Tackeff or thesecondlunch – as your referral! They do home and office deliveries in the greater Boston area, and the small packages start at just under $50 a month.
Life is just better when farm season has started. We had the first farm pickup of the season last week, and I headed out on Friday afternoon to get my bounty. It’s actually quite a schlep from home – over an hour – to get to the farm, but I’ve been a sharer at Stearns Farm CSA since I went to college at Wellesley, and it’s definitely one of my happy places! We get an alternate share, so I only go once every two weeks.
:: June 17th produce at Stearns Farm CSA ::
To pick: 1 quart strawberries, and I snuck a small handful of mint and thyme.
Pre-picked: a large head of escarole, three heads of lettuce, lots of bok choy, a pound of spinach, a bunch of radishes, and garlic scapes.
If you are overwhelmed with your own share, or curious how I organize: here’s a post I wrote for tips for organizing my CSA share. I have a great system down!
:: The Weekly Meal Plan: Week of June 20th, 2016 ::
This week’s prep: hard boil eggs and pre-peel some of them, defrost and cook another piece of meat from my meat CSA (chicken thighs, chicken sausage, pork chops), Cook down bok choy with cubed pancetta and sherry.
Sunday: beef arepas with pickled onion, avocado, and radishes. This was a Blue Apron meal that I ended up modifying for our taste – didn’t make the arepas, but added green beans to the beef, cut the onions, and pickled the radishes instead.
Monday: roast chicken and potatoes with green beans. This ended up being a bit of a dud, because somehow I managed to overcook the potatoes and the green beans because I wasn’t paying attention to them. Whomp!
Tuesday: chicken Italian sausage from Walden and a green salad with a green herb tahini green goddess dressing. I started getting some great chicken Italian sausages in my meat share, and requesting them every month. I chopped up them up and tossed them in some sauce. The salad had fresh lettuce from the farm!
Wednesday: Turkish stuffed peppers with rice and currants – my mom actually made these, but when I make them myself, I usually use a riff on this recipe. Yes, that’s a bit of a blast from the past. I was trying! http://www.thesecondlunch.com/2009/04/summer-stuffed-peppers/
Thursday: wild cod and potatoes with fresh herb aioli over salad – keeping dinner light, but I’ve been loving some fresh herb sauces with a little bit of home made mayo or even just an olive oil slurry. Simple and summery!
Friday: out. Alternately, I have some defrosted pork chops that need eating! We’ll either do takeout from one of our favorite places or I’ll finally get some propane for the grill!
Saturday: Ottolenghi’s chicken and cardamom rice. I’ve been craving this one for weeks!
Sunday: shakshuka (eggs in tomato sauce) – it’s been far too long since we’ve had eggs braised in tomato sauce, and I have some extra sauce left in the kitchen from this week’s sausages. I also have a surplus of eggs that need cooking – I get three dozen a month from Walden as an add on to my share.
What’s cooking on your table this week?
by Sam Tackeff | Jun 15, 2016 | Uncategorized
Yes, it’s Wednesday afternoon. Yes, I try to make a meal plan over the weekend. Yes, I try to batch cook over the weekend. Sometimes… even with best intentions, my planning fails me. Sometimes, life happens, and you just can’t stomach sticking to what you’ve planned. Here’s what I remind myself every time my systems fail me and I feel a tinge of frustration – fail to plan, plan to fail. My personal goal is always to focus on creating sustainable systems and habits.
Sometimes those plans fail me, but the reality is that they fail far less often than when I don’t stick to any system at all.
This week I wrote my meals out on a scrap of paper, forgot to transfer them to my Evernote, and I’ve already opted for Trader Joe’s convenience food and a burrito. Last week at least I deviated from plan by doing a lot of spiralizing (like that zucchini with peas and pesto you see up top). So now it’s back to the grind to feed myself well.
We ended up having quite a long week with the pup under the weather, but he’s nearly 100% back to his own self after a nasty bout with Giardia. Yup, that’s the parasite that you filter and treat your water for when hiking. He’s feeling a lot better now and begging for treats again like a normal batpig. I on the other hand, am suffering from a bit of a summer cold. Wish me better!
One thing that I’m doing different for the second half of the week (to course correct) is spending an hour batch cooking on Wednesday evening to make our meals for the next few nights. Our CSA share starts on Friday, and so space in the fridge is at a premium, and I have a backlog of Blue Apron meals to cook.
:: The Weekly Meal Plan: Week of June 6th, 2016 ::
This week’s prep: cook chicken sausage, hardboil eggs, and defrost and cook another piece of meat from my meat CSA. We didn’t do any grilling this week because we were on nursing duty with the pup, but now that he’s feeling a lot better we’ll spend more time outside. I still need to head out and refill the propane tank for the grill.
Wednesday: steakhouse salmon with potatoes, green beans, and mushrooms. Every other Wednesday I have one of my business mastermind groups meet, so I try to make the meal healthy and efficient, and eat some sort of brain food to celebrate women getting things done. Salmon always fits the bill.
Thursday: seared pork chops and fig compote with sautéed kale and farro salad. I’m always a fan of a pork chop. Which reminds me that I’d like to re-season my cast iron this week.
Friday: miso-glazed chicken wings with purple rice and zucchini salad. I’m not the biggest fan of wings, but these came in the Blue Apron box and I do love miso on chicken. (Also, they are mini drumsticks which makes life better.)
Saturday: lobster rolls. I have a race on Saturday, and I’m going to want to reward myself. Given that I’m a New Englander, that means lobster rolls.
Sunday: beef arepas with pickled onion, avocado, and radishes.
