Saturday, November 3, 2012

Bountiful Baskets: November 3

Bountiful Baskets time again.

Here is a photo of one of my two baskets.  It was hard to decide what to put in the picture though, as we got totally different extras this time in the two baskets.  It was fun.


So in my TWO baskets, what I received was:
  • 2 bags organic romaine hearts
  • 3 bunches of broccoli
  • 3 heads of cauliflower
  • 3 big acorn squash
  • 4 English cucumbers
  • about 3 1/4 pounds of Brussels sprouts
  • 9 Bosc pears
  • 18 lemons
  • 9 Fuji apples
  • 2 boxes of blackberries
Doesn't that look amazing?
  • I'm thrilled to have Brussels sprouts again.  We'll be doing that with lunch probably every day this week.
  • The romaine will be salads.  The kids love eating salad.
  • The cucumbers are going to be turned into refrigerator pickles
  • I'm making lemonade concentrate out of almost all the lemons.  
  • Apples and Pears will just be eaten.
  • The blackberries, well... William and I were talking about making some jelly, actually.  I'm a bit concerned about that.  It will probably actually be turned into blackberry syrup.
  • I'll be making Chicken Alfredo for Thomas on his birthday, and I always stretch Alfredo sauce by making a cauliflower sauce.  My "recipe" is below.
  • Some of the broccoli will be snacks (with ranch dresssing)
  • William is supposed to make Cream of Broccoli soup for a class this week.  How perfect is it that we got some?  
  • Along with some other veggies I have around, I'm going to be freezing some "stir fry mix" veggies, and Dale is suggesting I try doing some mixed pickled veggies too.  We'll see how THAT turns out.  Veggies include the cauliflower and broccoli, plus various peppers, carrots, onion, celery, hmmm, I think that covers it.
  • Squash -- I'm thinking I need to get creative, as we've had a lot of squash lately.  I'm still thinking on this one.


Chicken Alfredo --  almost every time I make any sort of Alfredo, I stretch it with cauliflower.  Since I was asked how I do it, basically, it runs something like this --

I start a pan of water boiling -- enough to cover the cauliflower.  I chop up a head of cauliflower into fairly small pieces, put it in the pan, and cook for 5-10 minutes.  At that point, I try to guess as to how much liquid I need, and I pour off some of the cooking water (though I usually save it, either to be able to add to the sauce, or to use it in soup or something. I can't help thinking I've boiled off some of the nutritional value, and I hate to dump that out).

I add powdered milk (1/4 cup or so) to the pot, but you could drain all the water and use regular milk.  I also add a couple chicken bouillon cubes, or something equivalent.  And I get that stirred up so the bouillon and milk is combined.

Then I grab an immersion blender, and start blending the whole thing up.  I add more water if I need to so I end up with a sauce-y consistency.  (Don't you just love my exact directions?)

Then I taste it, and may add more powdered milk, and I add 1/4-1/2 cup of parmesan cheese.  At this point, I turn the burner back on.  And after I've stirred everything in, I add a jar of Alfredo sauce.  Yeah, I probably could make my own but I don't.  Once it gets hot, I turn the heat down and let it simmer a bit for however long it takes for whatever else we're having with it to get done.

I do this up with a couple pounds of pasta of some sort.  For Thomas, I'll be adding a cup or two or three of chopped cooked chicken.  Sometimes I cook up broccoli to add as well, but Dale doesn't like broccoli, so I don't do that often.


1 comment:

Cristi said...

What do you do with the brussel sprouts? I roasted our last week, but I wondered if there were other good ways to fix them.