Lufa Farms – April 15, 2019

Hello, boys and girls and children of other persuasions! It’s Monday, which means it must be time for another exploration of “this week in Julie’s kitchen”! Here’s what I got from Lufa Farms this week:

• “Not Pretty But Tasty” bundle (1500 g, $4.50) — consisting of 3 vine tomatoes, some unidentified sprouts, 3 apples, 2 beets, 1 grapefruit, and 1 banana
• English cucumber (270 g, $1.75)
• Multicoloured new potatoes (908 g, $2.25)
• Grape tomatoes (315 g, $4.00)
• “Not so pretty” Nantes carrots (908 g, $2.75)
• Thai basil (30 g, $3.25)
• Gala apples (908 g, $3.50)
• Ambrosia apples (908 g, $4.00)
• Valencia oranges (908 g, $1.75)
• Merguez lamb sausages, frozen (350 g, $7.75)
• Ground chicken, frozen (450 g, $6.75)
• White free run eggs, large (1 doz, $4.75)
• Upcycled beet and carrot pulp cookies ($1.75)
• Chococrunch bites, dark chocolate and coconut (95 g, $4.00)
• Organic chocolate stick (free sample)

= $52.75

Before we get into all that, though, let’s time a moment to speak about last week’s food:

• Yep, I’m super-happy this particular grape tomatoes supplier is back. They’re still crunch and firm even after a week. Expensive, yes. But extraordinarily tasty.
• I had the maple square on Tuesday. Honestly, I probably could have cut it in two and had it for two separate snacks — it was very rich and sugary. Tasty, for sure, but I probably won’t order it again. It’s definitely a “once a year to celebrate maple season” sorta treat.
• The lemon chicken with white beans turned out very nice. Smelled more lemony than it tasted, though it still tasted decently lemony. Would make again.
• The shrimp with peas and couscous was a nice treat. I ate it cold (because I am not a monster who microwaves shrimp at work), and it was really tasty. The couscous were still nice and firm, the shrimp was plentiful… very nice. It’s not something I can really afford to make unless shrimp is on sale — I can’t bring myself to spend $13.50/lb for supermarket frozen shrimp — but I was glad I got to have it this week.
• As anticipated, the shrimp and couscous lasted for four meals, i.e. until Friday. So to make up for the extra meals on the additional days, I cooked up the sweet potato gnocchi I got from Lufa a few weeks ago and tossed it with a whole box (227 g / half-pound) of sautéed baby spinach, shallots, butter, and sage. It was very tasty, but in the end only lasted me two meals. Baby spinach cooks down to *nothing*. Would I order the sweet potato gnocchi again? Maybe if I wanted a treat. It’s pretty expensive for only two meals.
• It was a weird week for quantities. I wound up freezing a full container of the lemon chicken, but I had to cook the gnocchi because I needed a few extra meals. And also I had one “scavenging” meal of bits and bobs I had floating around in my fridge that needed to get eaten up. *Can* I do an extra cooking day on the weekend? Yes. Do I *like* doing it? No.

Okay, enough of that. Onward to this week!

• Once more, the “not pretty but tasty” bundle was for a friend. However, the grapefruit had a pretty big bruise on it and I juiced it for tomorrow morning. The banana is also over-ripe, so I’m gonna mash it up with some granola for dessert after supper tonight. The rest is all out of my hands.
• This week marks the beginning of Passover on Friday night, so I decided to do my meal prep with that in mind. The chococrunch bites are for work, because I can eat them as a snack on passover. Everything else is either gonna be served with rice or with roast potatoes. (As previously mentioned, I eat kitniyot on Passover.) Everything, that is, except the upcycled cookies, which I ate tonight, because they’re delicious and I always look forward to seeing them on sale in the Lufa marketplace.
• The oranges were super-huge again this week. I’m gonna have to cut them in half for breakfasts. I really wish they’d be more consistent with their sizing.
• I was a little disappointed with the Ambrosia apples this week — some of them are pretty bruised. That said, I’ve established in the pst that they stay pretty firm even with bruising, so I’m still hopeful.
• I don’t usually have *two* meals with meat in them — usually I go for one meat Instant Pot dish and maybe the Gusta sausages on the stovetop — but since the sausages are all made with wheat, I needed something else that was quick-cooking on the stovetop and not too expensive, so I decided to go with ground chicken. Ah, well. A little pricy, but not *too* bad.
• The French (du puy) lentils and sausage was made in the instant pot. I converted a slow cooker recipe, and I have to say it came out pretty good! Supermarket frozen chopped vegetables was my saviour on this one — I *really* didn’t feel like chopping all those veggies. Yay for convenience foods! The final dish came out really tasty, too. Very creamy and comfort-food-y. I’m looking forward to it, even if I suspect I’m gonna wind up freezing a container of it because I made a bit too much.
• The other meal was something that called to me as I was browsing recipes this week: Thai chicken bowls. It’s got a bunch of components: the peanut chicken with bell peppers, brown rice, chopped Thai basil, green onions, chopped peanuts, broccoli slaw veggies (not shown, bought from the grocery store), and peanut sauce. Which makes it a little fiddly for lunch and I’ll probably have it for suppers instead. I cut way back on the spice, so it should be pretty good for spice-averse Julies. I also used a lot more peppers than the recipe called for, because the 3-pack of peppers was on sale at the grocery store this week, and more veggies are always a good thing.
• I’m glad I got some little squeeze bottles for the sauce. Picked up a pair from Canadian Tire a few weeks ago and I suspect they’ll come in very useful.
• Chopping basil in the mini-food processor was… maybe a mistake? It came out fairly clumpy. But I didn’t want to bother with chopping basil every night. Fingers crossed that it’ll be okay.
• I’ve got a fair amount of meals out of the house this week: it’s our monthly “midday meal” at work, two seders, and a weekend brunch are already on the docket, so I suspect I’m gonna have too much food. Ah, well. That’s what freezers are for.

And I think that’s it! I was able to start cooking about an hour earlier than normal today because I left work a bit early, and it’s amazing what a difference that extra hour makes in terms of feeling like I have time in the evening to do… well, pretty much anything else. Like watching Game of Thrones, for instance. Onward!

Tagged: chicken, lamb, lufa farms, thai food, vegetables