Veg Box Wrap Up – Week 6

It has been a bit of a better week – just knackered rather than knackered and feeling like shit… which means the food this week is a tad more interesting. Lets not dilly dally…

Sunday – we had stir fry. For some reason I didn’t take a picture – but it was much the same as all the other stir fry’s I’ve posted. From the veg box this used broccoli, chard, red pepper, carrot and some of the mushrooms. I think it was sweet chilli sauce and we had it with chicken and noodles. Stir fry is always a winner in our house 🙂

Monday – Something I have not mentioned before is that M is a bit funny about eating fish. It’s not that he doesn’t like it, more that he really really hates fish bones. So on Monday I decided to cook (boneless fillets!) or salmon with the last of the chard pesto that was still in the freezer. I chucked a load of basil, broccoli, extra chard, some of the mushrooms and the last of the sour cream from when we had taco mix on tortilla chips. There wasn’t too much sour cream!!

This was very lovely and best of all – M liked it too. I grilled the salmon. I was going to do it in foil parcels in the oven but I took the foil out of the draw, held it upside down by mistake and it fell on the floor and tumbled away under the sofa leaving a trail of foil across the room. A sort of foil red carpet… that the cat immediately walked down. So that was the end of the foil.

Tuesday – pancake day!!! M made the batter and then we split it evenly between savoury and sweet. For the savouries we opted for easy and just had cheese and ham – we did get fancy ham from M&S though:

Nom nom nom!! I had two, M had three. They were gooood! But not as good as what I made next:

Banana chocolate with ice cream and squirty cream

and Clementine chocolate with ice cream and squirty cream:

Is it wrong to have two desserts? Not on pancake day surely…

Wednesday – chicken and (sort of) chips. M made a lovely honey mustard marinade for the chicken and we did it all in the air-fryer. The potatoes were not quite done enough to be honest – I think there was too much in there. Next time I’m going to try potato wedges on their own so I can shake them around properly. It was still nice though:

Thursday – I took on the stripetti squash. I did actually go to work on thursday for once as I had a workshop I really didn’t want to miss in the morning. So I sorted the District Nurse to come in the afternoon. The workshop went really well – so I was pretty happy when I got home and being their early gave me plenty of time to cook the squash – it did take two hours!!

I ended up cooking it for 1.5 hours and then adding a stuffing mixture of onion, red pepper,bacon  lardons, feta cheese (and it wasn’t bloody Apetina) and a bacon / tomato pasta sauce from the cupboard. Cooked it for another half an hour and it came out looking like this:

This was great – the squash had a sort of pasta like quality and the saltiness of the cheese and bacon worked perfectly. It took a long time in the oven but it was worth waiting for!

That’s it for last week – we treated ourselves to some M&S food on friday (lasagna) as we were both really tired. We also got some of the best custard ever (M&S vanilla, extra thick – trust me, it is delicious) and a slice of lemon tart each on friday night and a jam sponge pudding on saturday. Norty but lovely… sorry, no pictures.

On the fruit front – we used some of it for the pancakes and to be honest, I just ate the rest as snacks and with my lunch. We ended up with one apple left over I think which isn’t bad. All in all it was a pretty good week of eating.

Veg Box Wrap Up – Week 3

Well aren’t I on top of things this week – posting a wrap up before the next box has arrived!

It’s been a pretty successful week I think. I used all of the chard and all of the celery which was unexpected. In stuff that tasted good too – even more unexpected!

Lets just get on with it…

Saturday: I aimed high by trying to do something with the chard straight away. Bold.

The main element was a lovely M&S salmon fishcake with watercress sauce inside. Obviously I had nothing to do with how this tasted but it was very very nice. With it I roasted some of the potatoes and what was left of the turnips and made a sautéed chard side dish with tomatoes and a kick of lemon juice. It was all rather nice and went well together. Chard success #1 and the end of lasts weeks turnips.

Sunday: Started well with a big bowl of fruit for me and the infamous “double yolker” for M  – then I got all enthusiastic and had a go at apple chips in the air-fryer. I burnt the first lot but tried again and ended up with these:

They were really good – I took some to work as a snack on monday and they definitely hit the spot. I’m going to make some more this weekend as all we have left over from this weeks box is apples really. Then I got really adventurous and decided to attempt to make pesto out of chard. I had to be a bit creative with the ingredients as didn’t have any pine nuts – so my pesto consisted of loads of chard, about 60g of parmesan, one huge clove of garlic, fresh lemon juice , a couple of glugs of olive oil and some sunflower seeds. Whacked it all in the food processor and ended up with this:

… and used it to make pasta with some chicken and fresh tomatoes from the veg box.

So impressed with how this turned out – who knew I could make pesto out of chard and it be quite nice??! I also had another two servings of the pesto left which I bunged in the freezer for another day.

Monday: I had to buy some extra veg for Mondays dinner, a bit of a repeat from last week – noodles but sweet and sour this time and using different veg:

From the veg box we used about half of the broccoli, carrots and a last minute ingredient of celery. I wasn’t sure about the celery but it actually worked really well and M seems to love stir fry with noodles. Its got to be the healthiest thing we eat too. All round win because that means you get to have a bit of a naughty pud:

This was another experimental effort – I’m getting more confident at just chucking stuff together based on what I think will work. This was just some slightly over-ripe bananas in a dish, a liberal sprinkling of cinnamon, drizzled with honey and I bunged on some brown sugar for good measure. Baked for about 12 minutes and a splodge of vanilla ice cream on top. LUSH. Will absolutely be making this again.

Tuesday: Our first dinner completely cooked in the air-fryer. I went for chicken drumsticks with a peri peri marinade and potato cubes with Cajun seasoning. Served it with a salad & lemon dressing as everything else was a bit spicy. In the Air Fryer:

Out of the Air Fryer and with the salad:

The chicken was fab – really juicy and such an easy dinner to make. The salad cooled things down well too. I think it would have been better with a more sticky marinade for the chicken but overall this was lovely. From the veg box this finished this weeks potatoes and a load of carrots / celery / tomatoes for the salad.

Wednesday: Second outing for the chard pesto – this time I did penne with chorizo, pepper, onion, mushrooms – and lots of fresh basil.

This was bloody lovely if I do say so myself. M liked it a lot too. I have to say, it is very satisfying eating something you have pretty much made from scratch. Maybe I’ll try making pasta one day so I really can say I made everything!!

Thursday: Crockpot day! I did a whole chicken today and it was really easy and tasty too. Basically cut up what was left of the veg – carrots, onions and celery – and chucked it in the crockpot with the chicken and a little bit of stock. I seasoned the chicken with thyme and paprika, drizzled on a bit of olive oil and stabbed some holes and shoved bits of garlic in too. This is what it looked like before I turned the crockpot on:

…and served with a small baked potato, rest of the broccoli and the carrots from the crockpot. I took the chicken out and browned it in the oven for about 10 minutes and that was enough for crispy skin:

I tried to make a gravy with some of the liquid – wasn’t entirely successful in consistency but it tasted great!! I think we will be having the leftovers for dinner tomorrow and I’ve kept all of the liquid / bones to make a stock too.

I don’t have pictures and they would not be vey interesting if I did – but I have been very good this week at taking the fruit and some raw veg to work as snacks this week. Really enjoyed the kiwi and oranges, and have been having apple slices and celery sticks with peanut butter which is something I picked up in America.

This week we only have one kiwi, one tomato and about five little apples left – and we had a lot of apples at the beginning of the week. I will take a few to work with me tomorrow too. Overall I think it’s been a good week. My favourite dinner was probably the Penne Pesto … I really do love pasta!!

 

A chard is as good as a rest…

These here veg boxes do seem to be getting more challenging… this weeks somewhat mystery item (to me anyway) is chard. Doesn’t specify if it is swiss or not – I know not whether that makes any difference!

Full box contents:

Blood Oranges
Broccoli
Carrots
Celery
Chard
Fiesta Apples
Kiwi Fruit
Silvana Potatoes
Vine Tomatoes Punnet
White Onions

… and when I went to get the box from the cupboard it had another little freebie this week:

Isn’t that the cutest egg box you ever did see!! These eggs have caused much excitement in our household today as they are not only yummy – but also produced this:

I can’t tell you how many times M has talked about never seeing double yolkers any more so when this happened there was much joy. I think we might be adding eggs to our order from now on. We are also very very impressed with the kiwi fruit – this was my reward for clearing the 10cm of snow off the car this morning:

… and I have to say the kiwi were VASTLY more tasty than any I’ve had before. Zingy and sharp and bloody lovely. This organic lark definitely makes a difference.

Got to be honest though – I am finding this weeks box more of a challenge in terms of inspiration. Celery is probably my biggest issue – I’ve already used some in the casserole and soup I made on friday but we still have about half of it left. I’ve also made a start on the chard with last nights dinner but more about that in the weekly wrap up. So, current inspiration for the rest of the week is:

1. Braised celery as a veggie side dish – apparently it is lovely done in chicken stock. Worth a try! Other than that I will have to resort to stuffing it with peanut butter and eating it as a snack. Can you freeze celery? I suppose I could just bag it up in soup / casserole sized portions ready for when I need it.

2. Chard Pesto – I think I’m going to try this today with chicken and pasta. I don’t really have all the necessary ingredients (pine nuts are definitely going to have to bow out of this one) but I figure chard, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and parmesan could work?

3. sautéed Chard with garlic, tomatoes and lemon juice.

4. Still have not done baked bananas – but I learnt of ‘Baked Banana Foster’ on the intermeweb the other day which sounds easy and yummy and sort of healthy if you control the amount of sweet stuff. Basically it seems to involve baking banana with brown sugar / honey / cinnamon… I’m all over that!!

5. Apple chips in the air fryer – wish me luck!

6. I think I’m going to try a whole chicken in the crockpot on thursday – hopefully this will involve using some of the carrots / onion.

I’ve not really got any ideas for the broccoli other than just eating it – I’d quite like to do something different with the potatoes this week though. We’ve had various types of mash, roast them and put them in pot roast so far – maybe I’ll try a rosti this week.

I’ve got more inspiration than I thought I had!

Veg Box Wrap Up – Week 2

So chemo recovery week has been a bit rough – apologies for the lack of blog posts but I have not been in the best of moods so probably best I didn’t decide to rant on here!!

Any-hoo – I am actually very proud of myself for the amount of cooking – and eating! – I have done this week. Long story short, my oncologist finally gave me the good anti-sickness drug I wanted which meant I didn’t throw up for 12 hours straight this time… hoooraahhh!! Nausea was only bad for a couple of days and I could get back to the eating a bit quicker this time.

So.. how did we do? Not bad – used up the majority of the veg but didn’t do so good with the fruit. I rediscovered a love of blood oranges – the sugar kick and zingyness just about managed to cut through my zombified brain the first couple of days after chemotherapy. We still have three bananas and quite a few apples kicking around from last weeks box though so could definitely have done better.

Onto the creations…

Friday and saturday were lost days for me in terms of eating but by sunday night I needed something (I don’t eat on chemo day at all so even if I feel poo I make myself have a proper dinner on the sunday) – and as per my last post I’d decided that I’d try roasted butternut squash:

Paired it with turkey sausages and made a tomato sauce as I thought it would be a bit dry otherwise. For the butternut I roasted it with garlic and cinnamon and used onion, garlic and feta cheese for the stuffing(Apetina again which I really don’t like – it tastes of nothing). For the sauce I used one of the romano peppers, onion and tinned tomatoes. This dinner got a solid 7/10 – the butternut needed stronger flavours really. I think any other brand of feta would have worked well as it would have been salty to counteract the sweetness of the squash. Apetina is just crap.

Monday – I made crustless quiche again. Boring but easy and meant I could have a little bit and M could have a proper dinner with mash and veg as well:

This quiche had bacon, red pepper, onion, mushrooms and cheddar cheese. It was tasty and we used up the rest for lunches. Winner.

Tuesday – Thai Sweet Chilli Chicken Noodles.. I’ll be honest, the sauce and actual noodles were shop bought but I chopped everything else up myself!

From the veg box this used romano pepper, onion, mushrooms and carrots. This was actually lovely – maybe my favourite of the week. M liked it too and I think it got an 8 or 9 out of ten. We both agreed I should have used more mushrooms though.

Wednesday – Pancetta wrapped Chicken on Pasta with homemade tomato Sauce:

Man I love pasta. I know it’s not very good for you but it’s my comfort food. Maybe I’ll be good and start buying the whole wheat stuff again and then we can eat even more of it! Out of the veg box I used onion, garlic, pepper, rest of the mushrooms and tinned tomatoes for the sauce. This was a bit thrown together as I arrived home after my first day back at work with a very tired, fuzzy head and no idea what to cook. Based the whole thing around the fact we had some pancetta in the fridge so overall I was quite pleased with how it turned out – we gave this one a 7/10.

Thursday – M cooked and again I failed to take a picture of his work. We had breaded chicken (of the M&S variety) with veg box tato mash and some corn. The mash was lovely – we have in the past been guilty of using smash… I’m enjoying real potato much more!!

Friday – I made two things on friday as I had the pleasure of working from home again due to this:

I made the right choice too as M ended up walking home in the snow which takes an hour and a half and probably would have finished me off! I decided to make myself some soup for lunch as we had quite a few carrots left and you will have noticed that I still hadn’t done anything with the turnips. The arctic conditions also made me want to eat all day so I thought a big vat of soup would be healthier than just eating biscuits all day!

It was one of those ‘chuck everything in’ efforts with carrot, turnip, tinned tomato and vegetable stock.. I threw some pasta in too at the last minute:

…and everyone knows that tomato based soup should be served with parmesan cheese on top – so I did:

This was actually spot on and I ate the lot throughout the day. The last time I’d had soup was chemo #1 when I promptly threw up everywhere so I was a bit worried it would remind me and I wouldn’t want it but I did – which is great news as I’ve always loved soup. Another comfort food.

AND FINALLY – the last dish of the week was cooking all day. I’d failed to produce anything on Crockpot Thursday (it was a stressful day due to stupid pointless District Nurses – which is a story for another day) – so I broke out the slow cooker and did another casserole on friday. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture until I was halfway through eating this so the shot is a bit grim. Trust me – it was nicer than it looks!

From the veg box I used turnips, carrots and potatoes… and I cheated a bit by using celery from this weeks box which arrived bright and early on friday morning. In fact I think I put celery in the soup too. It was beef again and I had to wing it a bit as M went for provisions on thursday and got the meat but I didn’t have any casserole mix or posh stock to use. I ended up using one of those stock pot things and chucked some red wine in too. We both got given a bottle of red and white wine by work at christmas – neither of us really drink red wine so I thought I’d try to cook with it instead. The casserole tasted lovely but was far too liquidy – I tried to thicken the sauce up but it didn’t work so well this time. Still, it got a 7/10 and there are two more portions in the freezer for a day when we can’t be bothered to cook!!

I seem to have rambled on forever but I think that is everything. As I said we didn’t so well with the fruit – I’m thinking we will have baked bananas with chocolate at some point this weekend to use those up in a fun fashion and I really need to find something to do with all the apples. I have been eating them but there were loads – and we got more this week! Maybe I could make apple chips / crisps. Need to google that…

Turnip Challenge

Our second veg box arrived on Friday and as promised here are my thoughts for the week ahead…

Before I start though I must just update on last weeks leftovers. Yesterday I experimented with Kale Chips which did not go well. I burnt them – obviously had the oven up too high. I did eat some of them but they were not good. I will try again if / when we next get kale as everyone on t’internet raves about them. I have no pictures of my failure – just imagine charred kale and you get the idea. I blame chemo-brain! Between us we did eat the rest of the pot roast though and I had an apple too. Today I have had a fruit salad for brekky and this wrap for lunch:

That means we now only have one tomato, one apple, one clementine and the rest of the garlic left over from last week. Oh, and a carrot. Yay us!!

Onto this weeks box. We had another nice surprise free item – a pint of semi skimmed milk. We can always use milk so that was a welcome addition. The actual box contents were:

Blood Oranges
Butternut Squash
Carrots
Cox Royal Apples
Fair trade Bananas
Ramiro Peppers
Turnip
Valour Potatoes
White Mushrooms
White Onions

Uh oh – what do you do with turnips??!

I don’t know if it is because of my current lack of mental capacity or this is actually a difficult box – but I’m struggling with ideas a little bit. What doesn’t help is the fact it’s just turned freezing cold and I don’t want to go to the shops at all!!

That being said I have a few sort of half formed ideas trying to use up provisions we already have so I don’t have to go shopping yet:

1. Stuffed butternut squash. Todays dinner is going to involve this. I’ve looked at a few recipes and I think ours is going to involve onions, feta, garlic and maybe cous cous? We have some turkey sausages defrosting to have with this. It’s a bit of a work in progress to be honest – so far I’ve managed to put the oven on!

2. I’m doing quiche again tomorrow – with bacon, cheddar and mushroom this time. Not sure what we will have with it – maybe just some carrots / tato’s.

3. Turnips… so far I’ve seen these possibilities:
Turnip and Potato patties
Roast turnips with balsamic vinegar

Or last resort – chuck em in a soup or casserole – I feel this could be this weeks ‘Crockpot Thursday’ inspiration!

4. Some kind of asian noodle dish with the pepper, carrots, onions and leftover mushrooms from the quiche.

I don’t really have any exciting ideas for the fruit other than to try new smoothie recipes. I did think about doing an old school baked banana with chocolate for dessert tonight. I also saw someones blog saying how they did apple chips in their air fryer which I might also try – but no promises!!

This is evil chemo side effect week so I’m going to congratulate myself if I achieve half of these ideas – and I have no idea if M has anything planned. I might try to talk him into trying the noodle dish.

So there you have it – a bunch of half formed ideas… I’ll report back in a week as to what we actually accomplish!