Lunches This Week (#11) - Kitchen Sink Stir-Fry

Saturday was all about gallivanting about town, so Sunday was a chillax day at the Chez. Spouse did a butt load of laundry (seriously, I am one.spoiled.lady), and I spent a good deal of it in the kitchen, cooking and cleaning. It was pretty awesome. 

I had gotten my veggie bin on Tuesday, and had customized it so there'd be tasty stuff for a stir-fry. My favorite kind of stir-fry is what I affectionately call, Kitchen Sink Stir-fry, because I basically throw in whatever veg I have in the house, plus chicken (or shrimp) and a tasty sauce. 

Lunch today, at my desk. 

Recipe Hack: Jen's Lunches This Week (#5)

Quick post because I have event in six days (for work), and need to get back to tweaking a PowerPoint, confirming registrations, etc. Or being awesome, however you wish to phrase it. 

Lunches This Week features a recipe hack to my fave casserole: the Spinach and Feta Casserole with Quinoa and Wild Rice. The hack was essentially a happy accident, as I had received some baby spinach and lacinato kale in my Green B.E.A.N. Delivery veggie bin, which I had wilted together - but realized that it wasn't quite enough for the recipe. 

So....in the interest of ingenuity, and the fact that I had also received a lovely bunch of fine looking asparagus, I supplemented in order to get to the required 2 cups of veggies for the casserole. 

Turned out to be a pretty good hack as it was a great addition, both in texture and in flavor - if I do say so myself. And amuses me greatly that it was a hack of a hack. 

I followed the recipe from November to the letter except for the veggies:
- chopped the spinach and lacinato kale into decent sized pieces, threw it into a pan with a few inches of water, popped on a lid and let is steam until completely wilted through. Drained it, let it cool, then squeezed all of the liquid out. 
- chopped the stalks of asparagus into bite-sized pieces, created a foil packet with about 1/2 cup of water, sealed the packet, placed it on a tray and put it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. I drained the water and tried a piece, which was perfectly steamed. 

The spinach and kale mounted to about 1.5 cups, so I supplemented the remaining 1/2 cup needed with the asparagus pieces. 

Baked the casserole in a 9" x 9" pan, and it made 7 servings, of which, I threw 1 in the frig and the rest in the freezer. 

Oh I do lie a little - I added a nice healthy squirt of sriracha, because everything is better with sriracha!

Since I didn't use all of the asparagus, I plan to make another casserole (since it is incredibly freezer friendly), and use 1/2 spinach or kale and 1/2 asparagus this weekend. I'm curious how it will effect the density and hold-together factor of the casserole. 

Jen's Lunches This Week #5

Monday: I had one container of the Marcella Hazan's best pasta sauce ever + polenta, so had that with 1 cup of my homemade Greek yogurt and 1 cup of sliced organic strawberries. 

Tuesday: 1 serving of the spinach-kale-asparagus-quinoa-wild rice-feta casserole, 1 cup of homemade Greek yogurt with 1/8 c. of Love Grown Simply Oats Gluten-Free Granola. (We were totally out of fresh fruit, but veggie bin arrived Tuesday afternoon!)

Wednesday: 1 serving of the spinach-kale-asparagus-quinoa-wild rice-feta casserole, 1 cup of homemade Greek yogurt with 1 cup of sliced organic strawberries.

Thursday and Friday: planning same meal as Wednesday, although Friday may be 1 cup of diced organic pear.  

I gotta jam and get back to being Event Planner Extraordinaire. Have a fabulous week, peeps!

I.Love.Autumn.

I adore autumn. Between it and Spring is nano-points. Between it and winter is 10 points. Between it and summer is 50 points, unless the summer turns out to *not* be hazy, hot and hellish, then we'll say, just 20 points. 

Autumn features my favorite color palette: burnished reds, deep oranges, blazing golds, flashes of bright green (generally when and where you least expect it) and all fading into rusted reds, deep browns and golds that make you want to drown in them. 

Autumn is also the season when I married Spouse, first moved to The 'Shire, and have met many of my oldest and dearest friends. 

Autumn is also my favorite FOOD season. Being that apples seem to come to the height of crispness, gourds of all varieties are everywhere (PUMPKIN, WHAT?), and soups are in vogue yet again (I've never mastered being able to eat soup in summer. It's just not right.). 

It seems odd to me, since I've been writing so infrequently of late, to skip the latter portion of summer [one more beer fest, garden updates, etc.] but today I made butternut squash soup. It rained. Football dominated my television viewing. It was just really autumn......

Oh and Spouse & I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary yesterday but y'know, minor details. [It was awesome].

A weekend at home means cooking. WOOT!

For the past two weekends, we've been gallivanting about - drinking micro-brews, visiting with old friends, meeting new friends, and jamming out to some seriously awesome music. Posts to come on all the fun we've had. 

Needless to say, zilcho has gotten accomplished on the home front - although Spouse was Master Launderer on one of his vacation days, so at least we have clean knickers, eh?

We have a local farmer, who stops by my workplace, once a week in August to sell his homegrown beefsteak tomatoes and melons. It's a total bargain for homegrown 'maters: 3 for $1 American dollar. I picked up 6 nice looking ones today. No melons because I'm the only one that will eat them and I'm expecting good stuff in my CSA bag tomorrow. 

Farmer Dave 'maters - yummmmmeeeeeee

On the to-cook list this weekend:

• Roasted tomatoes from the cherry ones I'll get in my CSA bag tomorrow
• Tomato sauce from the 6 Farmer Dave tomatoes I just bought (+ herbs from my garden)
• For lunch next week: wild rice, quinoa & spinach casserole (recipe coming soon)
• Yogurt - my Green Bean Delivery every two weeks includes 2 half gallons of Hartzler's Dairy Milk
• Tzatziki because my CSA bag will have cukes in it
• If I'm feeling super cuckoo, maybe homemade pita (from Frugal By Choice, Cheap by Necessity)

We'll see how far I actually get as this is a fairly ambitious list and we do have social engagements and all. I also need to spend some time with my baby garden. It hasn't rained much this week and I'm sure all my plants are thirsty. Reason #2 why I'm really a horrible gardener. Owel.

Are you thinking about your plans for the weekend? 

Any cooking or baking in store?