Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–I’m glad you’re here!
I had so much fun last week with the market haul challenge that I decided to do another one this week.
Last week, I decided to do the challenge because I had limited time to shop at the farmer’s market, having only gotten back into town 10 minutes before the market closed. This week, I took a little more curated approach to the shopping, buying more according to a plan than to what I could find. I bought some things that are a little more luxurious, but also stuck to some tried and true recipes.
Between the grocery store and the farmer’s market, I spent $280.00 on food this week. This included staples, such as butter, milk, cheese and flour.
Here’s what I bought at the farmer’s market:
Beets, tomatoes (san marzano, globe varieties and cherry), 3 bunches of sweet basil, a bag of salad greens, 3 melons, six baskets of assorted berries, a big bag of spinach, 4 Yukon gold potatoes, 2 zucchinis, onions (red and yellow), garlic, bell peppers (orange, red and yellow), 1 bunch carrots, celery, sage, ginger and cucubers.
At the grocery store, I bought the following:
Butter, cheese, milk, cream, pine nuts, pasta, deli meat, 1.5 pounds ground veal, 1.5 pounds ground pork, 2 pounds ground chuck, halibut, and a very small chicken. I bought enough meat to make not only a meatloaf, but also ragu sauce to freeze and serve along with the tomato sauce I made last week. In the freezer, I still have a pork tenderloin and the shrimp I bought last week.
On Saturday, I roasted the beets and made a big load of pesto.
For dinner, I steamed the halibut in parchment.
On Sunday, I made my famous meatloaf, plus roasted potatoes and sautéed spinach.
Also on Sunday, I made a load of ragu sauce, most of which I portioned out to store in the freezer for use later.
On Tuesday, I roasted up the little chicken (and I mean little–it was only about 2.5 pounds!) and served it with mashed potatoes and this lovely husk cherry, roasted beet, red onion and greens salad.
On Wednesday, we had leftover pasta and a big salad. Thursday, we had leftover meatloaf, some pesto pasta and sweet and sour red cabbage, which was delicious.
So–if you’re keeping score, by the end of Thursday, I had used up all the ground meat, most of the sweet basil, most of the greens, one of the zucchinis, one of the bell peppers, all of the spinach, about 1/4 of the husk cherries and all of the potatoes. So I am basically down to some leftover chicken meat plus the chicken carcass, one zucchini, 2 bell peppers, one carton of berries, 1/2 a melon and I still have some tomatoes.
For Mr. Stone Soup’s lunch today, I used most of the leftover chicken and a large tomato to make this luscious chicken salad:
Plus, I also have some pesto pasta leftover from Thursday evening’s dinner.
I decided to make chicken stock with the chicken carcass today. I put it on to simmer at about 8:00 a.m. and let it simmer all day:
And for dinner, I added the zucchini, the leftover pesto pasta, a couple of tomatoes, whatever chicken was left over, plus a little more drizzle of the pesto I made earlier in the week. I also made a loaf of fresh yeast bread and–viola! minestrone!
Minestrone is a great “clean out the fridge” recipe. The only things I usually add are chicken (or vegetable) stock, some kind of legumes, tomatoes (canned or fresh are both fine) , pasta, vegetables and pesto. For this recipe, I had pesto pasta left over from dinner the night before. I added a couple of tablespoons from the fresh pesto I had made earlier in the week, but it’s all a matter of taste. If you have leftover chicken, add that too. As you can see, anything goes 😉
Tune in next week when I will be featuring foods for Oktoberfest!
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
