Ok, here comes my rant that I've been working on for two days. Produce. I was mentally keeping track of my produce as I weighed and put my labels on my produce. Two red peppers=$4.51. Four or five small sweet onions=$6.37. My produce consisted of: cabbage, potatoes, romaine lettuce (not pre-cut and bagged), red peppers, organic lemons, avocados, asparagus, organic tomatoes, onions, organic carrots, a red onion, and organic apples. Cost for said produce: $58.40. Granted, I did get a couple of organic things. The apples were only twenty cents a pound more for the organic. The bag of organic carrots was only 2.39. What killed me were the avocados and the asparagus. Come on, asparagus is in season now. Shouldn't that be cheaper? I can't wait until our farmer's market is up and running again. It will take some getting used to with making menus and shopping lists out earlier, but I am hoping things will be cheaper. I'm also planning on buying extra in season items so that I can freeze or can them to enjoy in the off season.
Tonight's menu was supposed to be grilled tuna steaks on top of beans and zucchini but again, the cost issue made me mad. The ahi tuna was $20.99 a pound. I needed four tuna steaks and they looked to be good sized steaks and I figured it was going to cost me close to 80 dollars for tuna steaks. Uh, no thank you. I left the seafood counter disgusted. I'm thinking we aren't going to be eating a lot of fish. I didn't pick anything else up to replace the tuna and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. Tim suggested that we get one of the many steaks out of our freezer and grill that up. That is what we did.
Steak with beans and zucchini
The recipe was a Jamie Oliver one and super duper simple. The cannelloni beans were just cooked with a little bit of olive oil and a clove of garlic. The zucchini was grilled and then tossed with a tiny bit of olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper. It was delicious. Aidan liked the steak, but said the beans were too "beany" and he took one bite of the zucchini and gagged. Connor, on the other hand loved it all and ate most of the zucchini. Tim and I both liked it all. I can't really remember what the rest of this week holds as to menus. I'm hoping they are mostly vegetarian because I'm kind of getting sick of meat. Tonight was supposed to be tuna, but we made the best out of it. Thanks to the grill master Tim for the grilling duties again and a huge thanks to Dad B and Laurie for the most impressive grill. We are using it a lot. Happy cooking!
I hear ya about the produce. I bought a small bag of apples from a local orchard...over $6! Maybe that's average, but it seems it should be cheaper to me. I just planted some lettuce because for some reason I HATE buying it at the store. I hope it grows well because I really like salad in the summer. Love the picture...that dinner looks yummy!
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