Three Weeks until Amsterdam

I came back from a great holiday in San Francisco and Portland – full of dear family, wonderful friends and fantastic food – on Tuesday morning. I learned that Portland and Oregon is a healthy breadbasket for the PNW, which is why it's such a foodie town. My friend, Gerald, drove me around the farms of the Oregon High Desert and we drove past lavender farms and saw hazelnut trees is the distance. For tokens of the trip, I brought back chocolate-covered hazelnuts for my co-workers and LaDiDa Lavender Cheddar for me.

I red-eyed into JFK and, while en route, I picked up two sausage, egg and cheese English muffins from Tom Horton’s in New York’s Penn Station since they were two for four dollars; had one on the train and saved the next one for breakfast the following day. It's all about taking advantage of my behavior but being better.

I had cleared out the refrigerator of all the perishable items before I set off on my eleven-day trek, so I came home to limited items of food in my freezer.

Yet I had some leftover Lentil Chickpea Curry, a vegan recipe that Leigh Ann introduced me to, and some leftover baby new Yukon gold potatoes that I had made for a Salade niçoise I had brought to Bookclub. I had put them together in the same container for moments like this, when I was too tired to shop and cook.

In being forward thinking, I found a stash of my chili and another stash of my butter chicken. I put them in the fridge to thaw. On Wednesday night, I boiled up some lentils in broth and split the chili between two meals – dinner on Wednesday and lunch on Thursday. I’ll repeat for Thursday night and Friday day with the butter chicken and more lentils.

Now my freezer is getting bare, but I noticed a stash of kale and collard green stems that I was saving. I read up on how to utilize these veggies and the idea of pesto came up.

The ideas are endless for me: pasta and pesto, pesto in a frittata, pesto as a meat marinade, a compound butter with pesto for beef, chicken salad with pesto, pesto as a sandwich condiment and so on.

So, now is the time to critically and strategically plan healthy meals. I will be heading up to Newark in three-week times for my trip to Amsterdam (and London, Berlin and Paris). I need to buy groceries but I don’t want to over-purchase, especially since I want to visit the Thursday-night farmers market that’s been open since March (but haven’t visited except the second Thursday it was open.) I’m looking at the 21 cycles of meals until I leave and I’m planning ahead to spend money wisely and to stop food waste.

Also, I want to make an asparagus and grilled cheese sandwich with the lovely LaDiDa Lavender Cheddar – of course I sampled a slice on Tuesday when I got home. It was good and I thought it would be excellent melted on top of some grilled asparagus on a crusty bread.

Now I have two ideas for meals – pesto and its permutations as well as vegetables + Lavender Cheddar grilled cheese.

While I’ll have butter chicken and lentils for dinner, I’m going to make the Winter Greens Pesto from the kitchn with my embellishments tonight.


Kale and Collards Pesto

Ingredients:

• ½ cp chopped almonds
• Around 4 cps kale and collards greens stems, trimmed, rinsed and chopped
• 1 cp shredded Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese or any other similar hard, granular cheese
• ½ cp extra-virgin olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 t lemon juice
• 1 t salt
• 1/2 t pepper

Directions:

1. If the almonds are not already roasted, preheat the oven to 350°F. Spread the nuts in a single layer on a baking sheet and roast them in the oven until they are brown and fragrant, check after 5 minutes.
2. Blanche the greens: Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Prepare a large bowl of cold water ready. When boiling, drop the greens into the water. Allow the water to return to a boil, and after 90 seconds, check every 30 seconds until the greens are just starting to go limp. Drain the greens and plunge them into the cold water. Drain again and then dry the greens to remove as much moisture as possible.
3. Place the almonds, greens, Parmigiano, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a blender and puree until uniformly smooth, adding more olive oil to reach desired consistency.

I can't wait to see what the Farmer's Market has today!