Day Seventy--Zucchini Corn skillet

I fear I'm going to be a day behind each day this week. The kids are attending a Peace Camp this week and they are having soooo much fun. I'm volunteering to help out where I can and take pictures and keep my eye on Connor's blood sugars. This means that I'm gone all day and I am behind in blogging. Sorry.

Enough of the excuses...on to last night's dinner. If I'm still awake enough, I might actually try to do tonight's post too. Last night's dinner was delicious. I was skeptical when we were putting it together and it made me question my sanity when I was making up menus.

Zucchini Corn skillet

Thankfully, Tim helped whip this together. We used the zucchini that we got at the farmer's market. We sliced the zukes up and sautéed them in some olive oil and some chopped onion. This cooked for a few minutes and then we dumped in a small bag of frozen organic corn and a can of organic diced tomatoes. For seasoning, just salt, pepper, and garlic powder. That's it. It all cooked together for about ten minutes until the zukes were soft. Then it was time to shred fresh cheese. It was a mixture of Monterey jack and cheddar. The recipe called for a half pound of each cheese and I just thought it was too much cheese so I halved that. When it was all done, we served it up on the burger buns I had made the night before.

Three of the four of us enjoyed this. Can you guess who didn't like it? Yup, it was Aidan. He was not having it. He did eat a few bites of it and then we put him out of his misery. It was really good and easy to do. Like I said, I'm glad Tim helped me out because I came home from Peace Camp with a crazy headache. 53 children. Loud children. Children having fun. It made for a crazy headache. So that sums up our meatless Monday. It was a good day.

Day Twenty--Steak with beans and zucchini

Wow. Twenty days. That's pretty cool. I know that for the most part we are all feeling better and I'm happy because we aren't throwing our money at crappy fast food places any more. How many days left? 345. Hmmm, I don't have a problem with cooking for all of those days. I'm kind of enjoying the cooking process now. What is killing me is trying to come up with menus. Also, the cost.

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!