Sunday #23 - Vegetables for Everyone!

You know, it occurs to me that if I was taking this blog thing seriously, I'd be formatting them the same way each time.

And I'd also update within a week of the meal rather than a month later.


Hahaha.

Okay, that's never going to happen.

So, remember how I signed up to get that box of roughage every other week from Full Circle?

That was going pretty well for the first couple months. Sadly, like with everything, the honeymoon ended.

Also, Spring came. Well, not to the Pacific Northwest or anything, but in other parts of the world and stuff.

So that meant fresher, leafier stuff. Which translates into stuff that goes slimy and/or moldy a lot faster than apples or root vegetables. That, added to us being a little less "box time, yay!" equalled a big box of half-wasted produce.

Sad, sad, sad.

So! As we sailed into Sunday #23 that first week of June I was extra devoted to cramming in any and all available produce to that evening's meal.

Max, as you can imagines, was delighted.

Yes... he feels just like this guy.

I started with some Italian sausage - an obvious place for any ALL The Vegetables dish to begin.

This was some Heritage Meats sausage. I've told you about them before. It's pretty fantastic stuff. Worth 7 bucks a lb? That's one of those personal choice things you'd have to make. Go ahead, try it!

I believe in voting with my dollars when I can. Heritage Meats is local, organic, and sustainable. These are all things I'd like to see more of. We had a good 6-8 individual meals out of this and the sausage is delicious. I certainly couldn't maintain your average American's  diet (Table 2-1, you're welcome) on their products and pay my mortgage too, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. 


Seven bucks worth of meat for a meal that would have fed eight is a fair price to me. Sure, the sausage lumps were not in every single bite, but again that's okay. It made each bite more of a treat, and that's the way it should be with animal products. Even that fancy new USDA plate says so.

Behold America!
Now you won't be fat anymore!

Also, it suggests using a fork.
So that's helpful.

So yes. Sausage

Look at all that animal fat!

Let's put green beans in it!

And onions! Some of those as well.

I believe there is also garlic in there. Then I got real inspired and threw in a pinch of red pepper flakes.

The green beans were fresh and took a good long time to get less crunchy-stuck-in-your-teethy. Knowing that's how they'd be I got some water boiling for pasta. I decided to use corkscrew pasta (be fancy and figure out what those are actually called on your own time) because I thought it'd hold up pretty well. Long noodles would have been annoying and the little tube pasta would have smooshed everywhere.

When the noodles were done I threw in a cup of jarred sauce which was just enough to coat a pound of noodles. Then I threw in a handful of freshly grated parmesan. You could get away with the shakey stuff or the pre-shredded stuff. I just happened to have nearly a one pound block left over from the previous Sunday's festivities so I used that.

Tah-Dah!

Once the pasta was ready I drained the beans so as not to add the 1/2 cup of sausage grease that was still in the pan to the rest of the dish.

And then I added some quartered roma tomatoes.

Tomato!

I sliced some cantaloupe to go with it...

and called the kids to the table.

That's how Max felt about a bowl with just noodles and a sausage hunk.
And that's Simon getting pretty damn bored with his wiener brother's unwillingness to be positive about any Sunday dinner ever. I'm with ya there, buddy.


So that was it! Another Sunday dinner checked off the list.

Okay, so I realize there were only four produce items of substance in that meal (I'm not counting garlic and the spaghetti sauce) and that doesn't quite qualify it as an ALL The Vegetables! sort of meal. I'm pretty sure there was something else I wanted to include at the time that ended up being moldy or something when I got to it. I just can't remember what it was.

This was really good. Like - REALLY GOOD. The simple things usually are. I ended up making it again just last week, and this time I added red bell pepper slices and zucchini. It was much improved and very filling. Prettier too. Hooray for veggies!

Of course Max had even less interest in that version.

Ya know, someday I'm going to fashion a surrogate mother out of broccoli and lock him in a room with it. We'll see how he feels about vegetables when nothing else will show him love.

I'm certain only good, wholesome normal things will come of it. Things like romantic attachments and interpersonal relationships. Everything will work out fine.

I'm very much looking forward to the grandchildren.