Two Easy, Yummy Breakfasts

Hello! I'm back! It was not an empty promise, as it turns out. It's Monday morning. I'm tired. You're tired. Here are two yummy things for you to eat. They both involve jam. I'd make a pun, but I respect you too much for that.

1. Rolled oats with jam. (Real, regular, non-instant oatmeal cooks in 10-20 minutes and is surprisingly creamy made with water instead of milk, as compared to the processed version.)

2. Organic whole milk yogurt with milled flaxseed and nuts, fruit, and jam. It's pretty self-explanatory, no?

Go eat something. We'll talk later.

Pluot Sorbet

Two things. First, a pluot is a plum-apricot hybrid. Second, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but Game of Thrones is gone until NEXT YEAR. HOW WILL WE LIVE? Here's a recipe for something wonderful. The drawback is that you need access to both a juicer and an ice-cream maker.

Pluot Sorbet
10 pluots
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 cup sugar
1 cup cold water

1) Halve and pit pluots. Run them through juicer, skin on.
2) Combine sugar and water in saucepan and heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Cool completely.
3) Stir pluot juice and lemon juice into pan.
4) Pour mixture into ice cream maker and freeze (or mix or spin) per instructions. Below is the ice cream maker I have. I let it do its spinny thing for 30 minutes.

4) Ripen in freezer two hours.

Lemons!

Our new place has a lemon tree! Jonathan and I are in heaven with all of our new picking and yard work responsibilities. I've always loved to rake, and now I can do it whenever I want! I'm sure I'll be boring you to death with everything I love about our new abode for months to come, but for now I'll just say that the obsessive purging has paid off in a more amazing way than we could have possibly imagined. We ended up with less indoor space than we had in our last place (a massive unit in a Spanish fourplex), but gained a big, lovely yard. It wouldn't have been possible if we hadn't spent so much time paring down our belongings. In the last two weeks before the move, we took three carloads to Goodwill in addition to the Out of the Closet stuff that I told you about last week. I'll show you a list soon. You will be impressed. I will be self-effacing in a way that seems disingenuous because really, how could someone get rid of this much stuff and not be a little bit egotistical about it?

Oh, by the way, look at that crazily-shapen lemon! From underneath, I could see that it was almost draping over two branches, so I assumed it was rotten. I didn't realize until I'd picked it that it had just grown massive to the point that the two branches it dangled between had become embedded in its sides. The skin was completely intact, though, so we added it to the pile of lemons we're using to make lemonade for our neighbors' party on Saturday. We're bringing homemade lemonade to a neighborhood party! Look how domestic!

I hope everybody's week is off to a great start! Passover starts Friday and Easter is on Sunday. (Ours is a household in which these reminders are necessary.) TTFN!

Out of the Box: Custom Box and Other Tales

Here it is, at last! Our first build-a-box from Out of the Box! We got to start from the ground up for this one and pick just the categories we wanted. Each category is individually priced. The produce box is just one category and contains a similar assortment to previous weeks. We chose the produce box, plus the California Cheese, OJ, Eggs, Fair Trade, and Local Specialty categories, along with an order of those tasty Fat Uncle Farms blistered almonds from a couple weeks ago and a frozen pizza by Full of Life. The box was phenomenal this week! Let's take a look!

The Produce:

3 bananas

1 crate strawberries

2 lemons

6 kiwis

6 oranges

1 bunch mint

1 bunch flat leaf parsley

1 green garlic

1 bunch kale

1 bunch rainbow chard

1 bunch green onions

1 bunch of salad greens

1 bag snap peas

1 head cauliflower

1 large yellow onion

16 radishes (I think they're French breakfast radishes)

2 big potatoes

14 carrots of varying sizes, mostly like this large one

The Other Stuff:

Margherita Pizza by Full of Life (we added this)

Blistered Almonds by Fat Uncle Farms (we added this)

Orange Juice by Friends' Ranch

Eggs by Dare 2 Dream

Pearl Quinoa by Alter Eco (Fair Trade)

Raspberry Spun Honey by San Marcos Farms (Local Specialty)

San Joaquin Gold (California Cheese)

Let me tell you how much we're in love with Out of the Box. When we went looking for a new place this past weekend, we consulted the Out of the Box delivery map. That's not to say that if we found the best place ever and it was outside of the delivery zone, we'd necessarily turn it down, but it would influence our decision. Luckily... Surprise announcement!! Confetti redux!! YAY!!! We're moving in just over two weeks!!! We found basically the best place ever AND it's still in Out of the Box territory. We all win!

This will be the last Out of the Box review for a while, unless and until we try out any new services from them. I wanted to take some of the mystery out of the organic food delivery company selection process, and luckily, this time around, I found a really great thing and I'm sticking to it. In case you haven't guessed, Out of the Box gets my highest recommendation: three golden wookies! Haha, no, I'm just kidding. This blog isn't THAT dorky. Let's decide what to call my highest recommendation...  Five smelly hipsters? Two creepy fennel thumbs up? For now, let's call it my highest recommendation.

Out of the Box #5

The Produce:

1 stalk green garlic
1 red onion
3 sweet potatoes
14 fingerling potatoes
6 carrots
1 head red cabbage
1 head radicchio traviso
1 bag sprouted garbanzo beans
1 head red oak lettuce
1 bunch arugula
1 grapefruit
1 carton strawberries
1 carton blueberries
8 tangerines
2 blood oranges
1 bunch cilantro

The Other Stuff:
hummus and felafel by Baba Foods (Local Specialty)
orange juice by Friends Ranch
burrata by DiStefano (California Cheese)
savory pie crust by Simply Pies (Grain/Pulse)
smoked sun-dried-tomato-stuffed olives by Fuscano (dried fruit/nut)
Moroccan mint tea by Choice (Fair Trade)

First, let me start by saying that although today's box was an insanely awesome return to form, I am even more excited about next week's box, which will be the first box Jonathan and I receive using Out of the Box's brand-new Build Your Own Box feature! You can choose to add or delete any categories, as well as add groceries from Out of the Box's online store, such as milk, bread, fresh pasta, sugar, frozen pizzas, etc... Delivery is free for orders over $100 and $15 for other orders, but there's no minimum. Couples' produce is $45, which is not bad when you consider the quantity, quality, and degree of difficulty to find some of the items. I have no doubt that even if I could find all of these organic items at the grocery store nearest me, I would end up spending at least that much for less-fresh produce. Then there's the added disadvantage of having to get in my car and go to the grocery store, as well as make a plan for what I'm going to buy. And let's be honest. I'm not quite well-food-behaved enough yet to cram this many fresh fruits and vegetables into my diet if left to my own devices.

Did you see that there was thyme in that savory pie crust?

Let's look again!

YUM!!!

Out of the Box #3

Happy Friday, everyone!! Here's what came in the box this week.

Produce:

1 bag brussels sprouts

1 butternut squash

1 sprig rosemary

1 bunch marjoram

3 cucumbers

15 small potatoes

7 carrots (purple, yellow, orange)

4 beets

1 green garlic (not sure if it's called a head or a stalk in this form)

5 purple spring onions

1 head red lettuce

1 head cauliflower

4 blood oranges

6 kiwi

1 grapefruit

8 tangerines

The Other Stuff:

1 dozen eggs from Dare to Dream Farms

about 1/2 sandwich bag farro from Grass Valley Grains (grain/pulse)

2 oz fennel seed from The Spicy Gourmet (fair trade)

1 oz applewood smoked sea salt from Tour de Salt (local specialty)

8oz Bona Dea Meyer Lemon Marmalade (local specialty)

5 oz blistered almonds from Fat Uncle Farms (nut/dried fruit)

1 wedge of Wagon Wheel from Cowgirl Creamery (California cheese)

Here's the best pork roast ever, made with ingredients from the box:

That crazy-good rub was made with garlic, rosemary, fennel seed, smoked salt, and pepper, per instructions in this week's meal plan.

A lot of the things that came this week are new to me, so I'm excited to see how everything works out. If you can believe it, I've never cooked a beet, green garlic, butternut squash, or four of the seven items in the grocery box. I'll let you know if I discover anything cool!

MegaPost! Creepy Fennel, Box Contents, Vegetarian OmNoms

This looks so much like a human hand that I'm kind of afraid to go near it. There's probably some creepy camp story about how some guy's hand got turned into this bulb of fennel and now he's coming to kill me because it's in my kitchen.

Another week, another produce/grocery box! Yeah, it was technically last week, but maybe I'll have a smaller and smaller lag between getting the box and showing it to you as time wears on. Or maybe not. Time will tell! This week, we got the Family Vegetarian Box just to try it out. It's only $10 more than the Couple Box and includes the addition of more produce (thyme, cilantro, and bok choy this week) and butter or eggs (whichever of the two the Couple Box isn't already getting that week). We ran out of eggs, so we thought we may as well give it a try and save ourselves the trip to the store. We're going back to the Couple Box for our next shipment.

A ton more food-related words and pictures after the jump!

Two! Two Tasty Vegetarian Meals! Bah ah ah!

This week's meal plan from Out of the Box Collective was inspired by recipes sourced through Gojee.com. If you haven't checked Gojee out yet, you should! It's a very pretty site that collects recipes from around the internet and allows you to search by which ingredients you have sitting around.

So here you have our attempt at Stuffed Kabocha Squash with Quinoa and Chickpeas:

This was very tasty and very filling. Jonathan and I shared one stuffed squash-half for a meal. It takes a little more than an hour total and is very easy to make. The recipe is from What Would Cathy Eat?

Aaaand this is our attempt at Gordon Ramsay's recipe for Watercress Soup:

Not the best food photo ever, but so, so tasty! We made it without the butter, which probably made it a bit more bland, but a bit healthier. I still thought it was crazy, crazy good. Here is a video of Ramsay himself making the soup, and here is a link to a guy who both wrote out the recipe and added bacon! How's that for initiative?

I'm so excited that our first Out of the Box delivery is already expanding what and how we cook. We're not vegetarians, but we are looking to cook and eat healthier, and this seems like a step in the right direction.

CSA-ish: Out of the Box Collective

After a bad experience with a CSA almost two years ago, Jonathan and I were a little reluctant to jump back in with another company. That is, we were reluctant until we discovered Out of the Box Collective! It's not a CSA, strictly speaking, but it does deliver a big box of local organic-or-better produce, along with a ton of other stuff to homes in these zip codes in SoCal.

It was the non-produce items that really sold us on Out of the Box. (You can read about everything that goes into the various-sized boxes on their website, so I won't bog you down with that here.) Along with all of the food comes a meal plan with recipes for five dinners featuring ingredients that come in the box! With Jonathan on hiatus at last, we knew we'd have a lot more time to spend cooking together, so we signed up to receive our first delivery on his first day off!