Tags
Abel & Cole, bag of potatoes, broccoli, carrots, celeriac, Cherry Tomatoes, Christmas preparations, Community Supported Agriculture, cucumber, custard apples, eggplant, food waste, purple carrots, white mushrooms
Is it just me or does Christmas seem to be coming faster and faster each year?
This year it seems as if December if just flying by! Why is it that all the other months seem to drag by in comparison to December?
Well, anyways I have been busy putting up the tree, wrapping & sending gifts, making lists for all the things that we need to do to prepare for various holiday parties and other celebrations, bits that still need to be bought, menu planning, etc. It’s just busy, busy, busy!
Mei’s boyfriend Louie has a birthday coming up this week and we are baking his birthday cupcakes! So in a day or two we will be busy baking for that and I still have treats I want to bake to make up some nice treat plates to give out before the week is out! We just have a lot to do!
However, I did come across something fun this morning after I put away our new CSA box that was delivered, its called the Urban Farm Handbook Challenge! Each week, when I get the CSA box, it gets me more and more excited for the different things we are planning for our garden next year and the more I am reading up on different veg, soils and keeping chickens the more urban homesteading is becoming a real possibility. I’m not sure that I want to go full-blown homesteading, but I do like taking some baby steps and slowly working on the things that are really interesting me. I think first up is getting my gardening skills up a bit – I want to work on getting my harvests to be a bit more bountiful so that I can pick enough veg for dinner each night. But this challenge has certainly got me thinking I might participate!
The best part is that you can see what the challenges, that are spread out over twelve months (so that’s one per month), so you can do them as you like. If you blog about it and take some photos you can even win something in the giveaway they will be doing at the end of each month as each challenge comes to a close. Some of the challenges will be fairly easy for me, while some are a bit daunting and others are just plain no-go’s right now. But you never know, I have some time before the first of the no-go’s come around, so I might reconsider and push my boundaries a bit!
Hmmmm….. will you participate? In the meantime, let’s get to the Abel & Cole box this week! We got the medium veg box as usual.
It came with:
- white mushrooms
- cherry tomatoes
- cucumber
- eggplant
- broccoli
- carrots
- bag of spuds
- celeriac
What We Made:
As per the usual, Mei called dibs on the tomatoes & cucumbers and ate them little by little with each of her lunches & dinners throughout the week.
The rest of it pretty much sat in the fridge. We made a lot of freezer meals this past week since a friend of mine went into labor with her two twin girls and her older girls stayed for a couple days with us so that would be well-cared for while mom had the twins. That pretty much meant pizza and PB&Js for a couple days. We also decided to make a couple soups and other things that really didnt require the veggies we received so they are going to good use this week! There are a few roasts and slow cooker meals on the schedule since I need to make as much time as possible to get my baking projects out of the way!
The celeriac we received was perfect timing! There is a French Fridays with Dorie assignment coming up at the end of the week that requires it so I plan to make it this week ahead of schedule. It’s another one of those veg that most people have never actually cooked with or even seen in person and I love that Abel & Cole sent along a little pamphlet with suggestions on what to do with it!
Last week, we received purple carrots and I chopped them and some celery up to go into a chicken noodle soup (the purple from the carrots actually dyed the broth purple) and I got some good shots of Emily – who insists on being my right hand these days, staring them down. I couldn’t resist sharing them!
I also got a couple custard apples in the box as a little surprise and they are peculiarly scaley-looking fruit. They are soft and kind of fuzzy like peaches and when you cut them open they are incredibly soft and they have the slightest taste of custard behind a distinct apple flavor. They are weird and delicious and I think I’m going to experiment making a panna cotta with them the next time they show up in our box.
What do you have left to do before Christmas?
Fun Food Fact of the Day: Every year, 3 million tons of food is wasted by the food industry and another 5 million tons of perfectly safe food, worth more than £12 billion, is thrown away by UK consumers.
