July 01, 2009

Good Food Eatin...

My office decided to participate in the Good Food Collective and I thought this would be a good way to cook with more vegetables and support the local farms. Since the shares are supposed to be enough to feed a family of four, I split one with a coworker, and delivery on our fresh local produce started a few weeks ago. Sacked with non-stop back-to-back trials after a week-long intensive training seminar, my first two weeks of veggies sadly went mostly to rot (with the exception of the strawberries that barely made it to the fridge since I inhaled them so quickly). This week though, I was determined to use my veggies.

So far I have been doing well and thought I'd share the tasty meals I have been enjoying.

I found this insanely simple recipe for sauteed spinach with peanuts. Lacking vegetable oil, I used peanut oil instead and eyeballed measurements of the remaining ingredients for a single serving. Despite adding a tad too much soy sauce, the extra liquid made an excellent sauce to pour over the tilapia I chose to accompany Popeye's favorite green. I added extra crushed red pepper and savored the extra kick it gave my meal. Having read the comments ahead of time, I skipped adding any extra salt. The tilapia was brushed with a dry rub (flour, cayenne, paprika mixed together) and then sauteed - about 4 minutes each side. Quite possibly the quickest meal I've made in a long time. Delish.

This week's share also included fresh peas that I knew would go bad if I didn't use them up soon. It came upon me that the peas would go great with ravioli. And, how convenient that The Ravioli Shop was on my way home from my errands! Now, if you live here in Rochester and have not yet indulged in their homemade pasta you are missing out. After conferring with the proprietors, I settled on a box of the sausage ravioli (and stocked up on a box of roasted pepper w/mozzarella). I shelled peas for the first time ever and had quite a bit of fun -- it's rather delightful popping open that pod to see the little buggers waiting to be raked out. On the flip side, it's also very deflating to pry open a pod to see wee little things that aren't worth scraping out. Still, I had enough and steamed them during the last minute of the pasta cooking. For a sauce, I left about a tablespoon of pasta water, added juice from half a lemon and let that simmer with a heaping full of oregano. I then added a couple tablespoons of unsalted butter and heated the mixture until the butter just melted. Pour over pasta, add the peas and yum, yum, yum.

Next time I'm taking pictures!

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