Consume a Co-op Box
Hello and Warm Greetings, Members!
We hope you all have been well and staying healthy especially with the help of all those great and tasty organic veggies and fruits we have been bringing you. This week, we are going to respond, in a timely way, to the concerns of some of our members that they have not been able to fully use all the food we include in our weekly boxes.
We are going to run a series of our suggested ways to fully use the weekly boxes and thereby get the most of your money’s and nutrition’s worth. To those of you who do not have this problem – great! Maybe you can help us to educate others by sharing your tips with the community and posting them here! Thanks to everyone – for all you do, and for supporting this important service.
This week we have the following foods in our box:
Spinach, broccoli, bok choy, kale, onions, salad mix, yams, beets, green onions, apples raisins and tangelos.
Let start with the fruit: You will get between 4-7 apples depending on size, 4 tangelos, and some raisins. If one cores and stuff the apples with about half of the raisins and bakes them with a little cinnamon on top, you have a great easy dessert for two people for two days. Also you can have a tangelo at breakfast and apples for snack during the day. That would be four days of breakfast fruit and 4- 7 days of mid-morning snack and a couple of days of raisins for mid afternoon snack. That would be all for one person.
Other suggestions:
Spinach is a great addition to eggs, add spinach to eggs two to three days and the spinach bunch is done. Spinach is also a great side dish or also a salad base. If you do not like spinach in eggs, put the eggs on top of the steamed or stir-fried spinach. Spinach can be a stir fry ingredient, also.
Broccoli is a great stir fry food. Add the bok choy and the green onions and maybe some carrots and celery from last week’s box. Two stir- frys during the week should make a good meal for one or two people and also some leftover for lunch the next day. Add a protein, if you wish, of your choosing. Broccoli make a great side dish, a little butter or coconut oil and salt added to steamed broccoli is a great way to use this healthy vegetable. So two stir- frys should use up the broccoli, bok choy, green onions and left over celery and carrots from last week’s boxes. Pair with some brown rice and protein and you have two dinners and two lunches.
Kale is a great side dish or can be used as a salad. Make kale into chips and it becomes a great healthy chip – so easy to make in a 200 degree oven. Add some salt, spice and oil and you are in business. Better than potato chips! Steamed kale is great on a “Portland bowl” – brown rice or quinoa topped with grated carrots, steamed kale and tahini sauce, and toasted hazelnuts. YUM! Kale is two side dishes, or an ingredient for two days.
Yams can be eaten boiled, baked or in soups. If you eat them twice a week for two weeks as your starch component to the dinner or lunch meal… that takes care of the yams. Many of the veggies we give you will carry over. In fact, we give you these items, like onions, potatoes, celery, carrots and yams, etc., so that you can have them for stir-fries and soup ingredients for more than one week.
That leaves the salad mix and the beets.
Beets are a great salad by themselves. Boil them, slip the skins off and grate. Then add raw sliced onion, oil and a little sugar if desired… plus some apple cider vinegar. Let them sit still in the fridge overnight for an awesome Russian salad. We sell this same salad during the summer at the markets we attend.. Alternatively, add sliced cooked beets or even raw beets to a salad.
Salad mix? Salad of course… or add to sandwiches.
Eat a salad for lunch a couple of days a week and you have used that up too.
Please let us know if you have any questions about these recommendations or need some clarification. We are very happy to help you get the most from your food boxes and get super healthy from all of the good nutrition that these foods provide. Thanks for your kind attention and well appreciated support.
Enjoy your food in health!
Gee Creek Farm 