Cooking - Once and for all (week)

I decided to try something new. Kent and I have so many projects and really wish to make the most of the days we have together to work on them. After Kent pointed out how much time I was spending in the kitchen I put on my thinking cap to come up with a solution that would yield healthy foods and make more time for our projects. I determined that with the right meals, I could prepare them ahead of time and we could eat all week for one day of my cooking time. I was even able to work in some special treats, like pickles, pate and pesto. The three P's.

Here we have some of the raw materials for the project: Counterclockwise, starting in the top left we have Korean cucumbers, red snapper, two kinds of kale, leeks, eggs (see the green ones!?), fresh basil, fresh mint, chicken livers, fresh dill, and right in the center, baby bok choy.



Kent and I love pate, so I cooked those chicken livers up with lots of fresh cultured butter, added white wine, brandy, cumin, salt, pepper, and paprika and,



Voila!, Hawaiian Pate.



And I pulled the pine nuts out of the freezer and made that basil into a yummy pesto. We like to stir a big glob into our pizza sauce for a really gourmet pizza treat (like the one we had last night with loads of crimini mushrooms, sweet onion, black olives and unprocessed pepperoni).



I filleted the fresh snapper and cooked the fillets in a skillet and put everything else, head and all, into a stock pot with onions, celery, white wine and herbs. Later I flaked up the fillets, opened a can of crab meat, strained my stock and made a spicy Creole fish soup to eat as an appetizer throughout the week. Really tasty!

I also used our grass fed beef to make a Shepherd's Pie and Spanish Rice and while all that was going on, I simmered up some Ham and Bean Soup. I did a fermented dill pickle recipe that turned out very nicely and made some fruit and nut oatmeal bars to take care of any sweet-tooth cravings. (Oh, and Kent made delicious ice cream with the raw milk. Chocolate with almonds and mint with chocolate chips. I'm so spoiled.)

All week all we've had to do was decide what we wanted and warm it up. It's worked out so well that I'm planning to do it again for next week.