Dinner Time!

Right now, it's Friday morning and we have no cooler full of produce.  June is supposed to investigate why we didn't get our delivery last evening.  I'm very sad/confused -- did I do something wrong?  The newsletter e-mail we got was full of yummy good news. Hopefully, we'll get it today??

I wanted to post about 2 yummy and delicious dinners we've made with our CSA produce.  This is a longer post... so stay with me!

Meatless Monday:

I don't know if I've ever mentioned Meatless Monday to you?  It's one of our favorite and fun evenings of the week.  The concept is not new, from what I have read, it started during WWII when due to rationing folks gave up meat on Mondays.  We now do it for two reasons: it's healthy to control the amount of meat you are eating (i.e., not eat meat with every meal, every day) and it's better for our environment because the meat production industry creates so much waste.  I try to be earth friendly and want to do my part little by little.  Right now, I'm too much of a meat lover to go vegetarian but I do see the benefits of reducing my intake and increasing the quality of meat we get (i.e., grass fed beef which is more expensive than regular beef).

Now, back to the dinner.  Timmy made a delicious Black Bean & Wheat Berry Chili.  It is a high-protein dish and the wheat berries take on the spicy flavor of the chili which was delicious.  As a newly diagnosed Type 1 diabetic, the fiber is great for me.  I did add some fritos (not so great) to my chili but hey, it's fun to live a little on the edge.  The chili was so good even Warren ate it! (He is notoriously anti-Meatless Monday as he worries what meals can be eaten without meat???! He's a big carnivore-loving guy.)  We used wheat berries & green garlic from our CSA to add with some organic stuff I picked up at Trader Joe's -- one of my favorite grocery stores.

Recipe: 

Ingredients:
2 tablesppons olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 large yellow bell pepper, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 15-ounce cans black beans, rinsed
2 14-ounce cans no-salt-added diced tomatoes, undrained
1-2 canned chipolte peppers in adobo sauce minced (We used only 1 and it was spicy!)
2 cups vegetable broth
2 teaspoons light brown sugar
2 cups cooked wheat berries
Juice of 1 lime
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Directions:
1. Heat oil in dutch oven over medium-high heat.  Add onion, bell pepper, garlic, chili powder, cumin, oregano, salt, & pepper and cook; stirring occasionally until tender, about 5 minutes.  Add beans, tomatoes, chipotle to taste, broth, & brown sugar.  Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat, cover, & simmer for 25 minutes.
2. Stir in cooked wheat berries and heat through, about 5 minutes more.  (If using frozen wheat berries, cook until thoroughly heated.)  Remove from the heat.  Stir in lime juice.  Garnish each bowl with avocado and cilantro. 
Tip: Canned chipotle peppers (smoked jalapenos) in adobo sauce add heat and a smoky flavor.  Look for the small cans with other Mexican foods in large supermarkets.  Once opened, store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks in refrigerator or 6 months in freezer.

Dinner on Thursday!!! 

Another lovely evening filled with fresh veggies and delicious food. Timmy and I raided the fridge and made an assortment of yummy stuff from our CSA. We have had quite a few items accumulate from the last two weeks.  I got spoiled and ate out too much last week.

Timmy took the organic grass fed beef that I picked up at Trader Joe's and made it into sliders with some bread crumbs.  We took the extremely delicious parisian herb farmer's cheese (a type of goat cheese) that I got from Dry Dock Farms and topped our sliders with it.  Great flavor combination.  We polished it off with Companion's Beaucaure Rolls. Yum yum.

I used my new crappy mandolin to slice up zucchini & carrots (tasting so much better than store bought -- bursting with flavor), which we sauteed with teriakyi sauce and some high-fiber wheat berries.  I also used the mandolin to shred our fresh radishes and add them to a salad.  I got the romaine lettuce from work, but it was a tasty Caesar salad with Asiago cheese & pomegranate seeds.

Timmy took the green beans (also amazingly better than what you get at the store) and cooked them, drained them, and added my favorite -- a little butter, some Parmesan cheese, & bread crumbs.

For our taters (yummy little red ones from the farm), we cut them up and roasted them with some green onions (also extra flavorful from the farm) with some pepper, salt, red pepper, "Italian seasoning", and olive oil.  It was hard to control the portion sizing here -- now that I'm diabetic I really need to be careful about how many carbs I'm inhaling.  I have also put on 8.5 pounds since discovering I was diabetic in May.  This is too much and my clothes are not fitting so well.  As a friend of mine joked ~ "well, now we know you're secret!" (To the rapid and easy weight loss, how I was able to consume anything I wanted to eat last year and not put on a pound.  That was sort of nice but I should have known that there was something more serious wrong.)