Lee cooks!

It's almost like ordering out...I came home to dinner, hot and ready to eat. No, we didn't order pizza or pick up Chinese on the way home...Lee cooked!
He beat me home today, in fact by a few hours, so I sent him some menu suggestions and he took it from here. He baked some cod that I had defrosting in the frig and he coated it with olive oil, coarse sea salt and the gremolata that I had prepared yesterday. The concoction of lemon zest, parsley and garlic was made for fish dishes! We still had enough tartar sauce left over from our last fish night to get us through this meal, so good deal! All I had to do was pour a little goblet of Pilot Grigio and I was set.
I have to say the store-bought cod is nowhere close to as good as the fresh caught fish we have been getting with our SLO Veg box, but maybe we are just becoming snobs. I smelled that fishy smell usually associated with cooking fish as soon as I walked in the front door tonight, while the fresh-caught stuff really doesn't smell fishy at all.
Some of the SLO Veg broccoli and store-bought baby carrots went into the microwave steamer basket along with some slice shallots, and he found the stash of quinoa in my pantry which he cooked on the stovetop. He even seasoned it with dried herbs: basil, oregano and parsley. Not bad for a now spoiled former single dad who claims he has forgotten how to cook.
So this week we have eaten broccoli, kale, brussel sprouts, strawberries, kiwi, oranges, shallots, tangelos, radishes, celery, garbanzo sprouts and romaine lettuce. The only thing we have left are the grapefruits....I kind of forgot about them. I guess I should do something with them tomorrow, because by tomorrow night we will have a new box of produce to play with. Oh happy day!

Gremolata - its Parsley, Lemon and Garlic!

I still have a bunch of parsley to use up, and we are getting more in this week's box, so I'd better get cracking! I had Lee pick some of the last remaining lemons off our scraggly tree out back, so now its time to make Gremolata and use it on something like fish or chicken or pasta. I searched out a few recipe links that sounded good. Lee is trying to avoid wheat right now, so I might make a brown rice pasta version of the pasta and mushroom gremolata dish. It will be light and refreshing!

Here are a couple of links to check out:

http://cookingfortwo.about.com/od/ingredients/r/gremolata.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/health/nutrition/pasta-with-mushrooms-and-gremolata-recipes-for-health.html?_r=0

I got out my tools: my mini chopper, a zester, my big knife, a bowl, spatula, salt and pepper, lemons, garlic and the parsley.

So first I washed and spun out the parsley in the salad spinner, then I plucked off the leaves, discarding the stems into our compost pot. I took three big cloves of garlic and smashed them with the flat of the knife, then minced them up coarsely. I stuffed the parsley leaves into the chopper and added the minced garlic, then grated some fresh lemon peel on top. I added the juice of a half lemon and about 2 tablespoons of olive oil, then blended the ingredients with the chopper. After it was all diced up into small pieces, I added some salt and pepper and Voila! We have Gremolata!