Area 151

During the last few weeks, we have tried all kinda new recipes prompted by the selections in our weekly farm share.

Among the highlights:

• Thai Cucumber Salad
• Squash and Kale Risotto
• Carolina Kale
• Squash Casserole au Gratin
• Chili with Tequila and Pepper Puree
• Chicken with Parsley Sauce
• Roasted Beets
• Corn on the Cob grilled-in-husk

(Okay, that last one isn’t a new recipe per se, though up till this wekend, I had always grilled corn after husking it and wrapping it in foil. Call it a new technique or something.)

We also made that coleslaw again, only this time we thought of questing for buttermilk at Trader Joe’s rather than at the big-box supermarket.  Score!!
It’s been very fun to have an excuse to cook more, to cook different things, to be wandering through our cookbooks in search of interesting new recipes to try. This weekend, we put some CDs in the boombox while we chopped and sauteed and grilled, rather than having our customary TV background noise.

It was really really nice.

And we are ridiculously well-stocked for the coming week. That money I’d been spending each week to have 5 Lean Cuisines to tote to work for lunch? Now I have all these little tupperwares full of homemade leftovers, instead.

It’ll be hard to tell how the economics would actually work out, if we tallied compare the money we’re saving on supermarket produce and lunches and such and compared that sum with the amount we spent on the farmshare and how much we spend in the grocery store each week on ingredients for all these recipes we weren’t cooking before. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be a break-even proposition, just in a dollars-and-cents kind of way.

But when you factor in the quality of life gains?

Worth every penny.