Hello! Welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–I’m glad you’ve joined me today!
Mr. Stone Soup and I were traveling last week and I had only 10 minutes to shop at the farmer’s market on Saturday when we got home. I decided to make this week’s posts a farmer’s market haul challenge and see what I could make out of this haul, plus a minimal run to the grocery store to get proteins and a few staples. I ended up spending about $210.00 total on the food.
Here’s what I got at the farmer’s market for about $60.00:
3 bunches of very fresh sweet basil
6 large, ripe tomatoes
2 zucchinis and 1 yellow squash
3 bell peppers of assorted colors
1 small eggplant
1 basket of cherry tomatoes
1 bag of salad greens
4 pears
2 baskets of blackberries and 1 basket of raspberries
1 small watermelon
4 large Yukon gold potatoes
At home, I had onions (yellow and red), garlic, a small red cabbage,3 peaches, a few grapes and a kabocha squash sitting on the counter.
At the grocery store, I bought a very small chicken, about 1.5 pounds of fresh salmon, some deli-meat for sandwiches, burrata cheese and some shrimp, along with some staples like milk, butter, eggs and yogurt.
First thing I did was to make a big batch of pesto, most of which I froze for use later, but some of which I used for pasta to go along with the salmon and some seared zucchini for dinner on Sunday evening:
On Monday, breakfast was yogurt, fruit and granola. Lunch was a sandwich. And dinner, was this beauty:
For this pie, I used up one of the big tomatoes, a bell pepper, one zucchini, one yellow squash, an onion, the eggplant, garlic, more of the ever-dwindling sweet basil and three of the Yukon gold potatoes. I served it with a nice green salad, which used up about half the red bell pepper, some of the cherry tomatoes and some of the bag of greens.
I made a nice vinaigrette, in which I used up some more of the sweet basil, which at this point is more stems than leaves. I’ll keep what’s left in case I decide I have enough cheese left from the burrata to make a little capresse salad, but overall, I think I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of the sweet basil at this point.
I used my new Smithey 11″ deep skillet to make the shepherd’s pie this time. I have had it for a couple of months now and it’s got a nice layer of seasoning on it, making it safe to cook acidic food like the ratatouille filling for the shepherd’s pie:
The pan behaved beautifully–no sticking and no issues with the seasoning. And–bonus! I did the whole thing in the 11″ deep instead of transferring it to a casserole dish, making for fewer dishes to clean up!
Tune in tomorrow for more of my farmer’s market haul challenge–until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
