I will be meeting with a new culinary student this coming Saturday and Sunday in the Monterey area. He’s a single 62-yr old male, who wants to learn healthy ways of cooking and eating.
He’s been receiving the CSA box from High Ground Organics for 4 years now and wants to learn new ways to use the food that is in his box every Thursday.
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His goals are:
- have more food prepared ahead of time for lunches (to have home-cooked lunches at work)
- be more comfortable in the kitchen
- wants tips to use veggies
- needs to eat more veggies and proteins
- and avoid diabetes (it runs in his family)
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Foods that are in his box this week:
- Apples
- Fennel
- Red Ace Beets
- Green or Red butter or Red Oak lettuce
- Red Gold or Desiree Potatoes
- Corno di Toro, Hungarian Wax, and/or Green and Red Bell Peppers
- Dry Farmed Early Girl Tomatoes
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My menu suggestions:
Below are a few ideas for him to choose from, or he’ll let me know if he has a dish — a meal — in mind. Once he makes his choices I’ll send the shopping list.
He will select a main dish, and two side dishes for each meal — Saturday’s dinner and Sunday’s lunch:
- Main dish: Dover Sole, roasted and served with a coconut milk herb sauce, very easy, very fast cooking, using roasting method that you can use for all types of fish.
- Main dish: Chicken Picatta, would you like to try this chicken dish? I’ll understand if not, being chicken is not a fav of yours. This dish is one of my star players, it’s an easy-to-make dish, yet tastes like it’s a sophisticated recipe. Plus, it has a white wine reduction sauce that is good to use on fish, too. Actually, if you’d like, we can make a Dover, or Cod Picatta dish, or Shrimp and Scallop Picatta. YUM!
- Main dish: Squash Cassoulet, same dish I’ll demo at High Grounds, it’s a stove-top casserole, with sliced sausage links, potatoes, fennel, cabbage, tomatoes and carrots. Seasoned with tamari, coconut oil and seaweed (I can bring the seaweed if need be).
- Main dish: Meat balls (ground beef and leeks) with homemade Marinara Sauce over roasted fennel and potatoes
- Main dish: Salmon steamed in parchment paper with Thai flavors and veggies, served with a Pad Thai Sauce and zucchini noodles.
- Side: Relaxed Kale, Apple and Fennel salad, and homemade vinaigrette. This is similar to my demo at High Grounds (fennel can be dropped if you choose the Meat ball dish above).
- Side: Chopped salad with steamed beets, potatoes with bell peppers and tomatoes and homemade sweet and sour creamy dressing.
- Side: Sauteed onion, fennel, potatoes and tomatoes with dried herbs (we can choose any dried herbs that you already have).
- Side: Red Oak Lettuce wraps with lentils, chopped veggies and homemade creamy dressing.
- Side: Stacked raw tomatoes, cooked bell pepper and potatoes, with shaved fennel and apple, with herbed dipping sauce.
yummmmmmmmmmmmm.
I’ll share what choices he picked, and will post the photos.