The Big Kitchen Thing - Some good news: I'm now down 7.8 lbs (that's what the scale said yesterday AND this morning). I've been steadily dropping one pound or a fraction of a pound most days. On Sunday, I managed to get to the Farmer's Market where I scored fresh nectarines, tomatoes, lettuce, mushrooms, potatoes, onions, shallots, three different squash varieties, a cucumber, apple 2nds, and home-made pitas. Someone asked me on Facebook what does "apple seconds" mean. The merchant prices his nice apples at $2/lb. "Seconds," as he calls them, sell at $1/lb. They have ugly marks, places where a worm started to eat but isn't there any more, and/or bruises. My plan was to chop them up into a salad, similar to charoset at Passover.

Usually I try to discipline myself that if I buy fresh produce on Sunday, it has to be cooked and/or chopped and assembled on Monday. But Sunday night was a swim party at Alan and Theresa's and Monday was a swim party at my sister's. I haven't owned a swimsuit in nearly 9-10 years, and would you believe there are NONE in the stores right now? *melodramatic sigh* How silly, in CA we have swim weather year round. I went to five different stores, and half a dozen times people suggested "Oh I just buy swimsuits online." Um, sorry, party tonight and party tomorrow, I need a suit now. So, I ended up with a pair of shorts and a top from the clearance rack in one store, made pretty much from swim suit or beach clothing materials. Testing the outfit at Alan and Theresa's, it worked out wonderfully. So I actually got to swim at my sister's the next day, I think for the first time ever. I had a blast with my cousin's two boys, one of whom is too young to be left unattended or unwatched, even with water wings. So while the eldest learned to imitate the other boys jumping off the diving board, I helped watch the youngest. Very fun.

Rice Salad - Before going to Alan and Theresa's, I stopped at a local grocery store for drinks and some food for the potluck. I picked up some cherry tomatoes and mozzarella cheese in vinaigrette. I took the leftovers home with me, and for my sister's I cooked up 6-cups of basmati rice (with about 1/2 cup of mixed grains from Trader Joe's), tossed some white balsamic vinegar and olive oil in with the rice, poured the leftover vinaigrette over the rice, and layered the tomatoes and cheese (and a few black olives) over the top. The rice salad went over well at my sisters BBQ, and I went home with 3 medium boxes worth of leftovers.

Back to the kitchen. It didn't matter that I got home around 11 pm last night, I *had* to cook and/or chop and assemble all that fresh produce, before I forgot about it and let it go bad. So, here's the results of my hard work last night and finishing touches this morning.

Chopped Apple Salad - About a quart-sized bowl of small apple seconds. Cut away all the bruises, worm holes, and cores. Chop the apples finely, mix in a bowl with the juice of a lime (fresh picked from the front porch) -- the citrus helps keep the apples from turning brown. Chop a handful of pinenuts and a handful of sliced almonds. Mix in with several good splashes of red wine, a couple tablespooons of honey, and a dash each of ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, and ground cloves. Mix in two small boxes of raisins and the last of some dried cranberries. Yield: filled two 24-oz jars and a 12 or 16 oz jar. In the morning, I spooned a small portion of the fruit/nut salad into a tiny plastic box.

Edit: I forgot to mention, about a 1/2 tsp of horseradish sauce added to my little box for lunch. I blended it in to the fruit, and got a nice little zing from the whole salad. Yippee!

Green Salad and Toppings - One head of green lettuce, wash, tear into small pieces, spin dry in the salad spinner. Filled 6 medium snap-top boxes. Open up a can of black beans, red beans, and garbanzo beans [I'm doing some cupboard food busting]. Drain and rinse the beans, spin, mix, filled 2 medium boxes. Open up a can of mandarin oranges, drain, filled half of a medium box. Open up a can of tuna, drain, filled 1 tiny small plastic box. About 8-10 small roma tomatoes, dice, filled the bottom of 1 medium box, add several dashes of balsamic vinegar. Chop one medium cucumber, add to the tomatoes and vinegar, toss, which topped off the medium box (that's my salad dressing). In the morning, I just put one lettuce box in my lunch cooler, then took one medium box and put some of the bean mix in the bottom, some mandarin oranges in one corner, some tuna in another corner, and spooned some tomatoes, cucumbers, and balsamic over it all.

Stir-fried Squash - Dice one onion and half a shallot, sauté in a pan with vegetable oil/spread (smart balance, which is vegan), and about a tsp of chopped garlic. Dice about 2 cups of oyster mushrooms, sauté with the onions and garlic. Chop 2 small patty pan yellow squash, 1 small yellow crookneck, 1 small light green zucchini, 2 small round dark green squash (probably yielded 1 or 1.5 quarts of squash or so). Stir-fry with onions and mushrooms. Filled two large "dinner sized" boxes from one of our local chinese carry-outs spots.

Curried Lentils and Beans - More cupboard busting: Filled my crockpot with a bunch of green lentils, red lentils, dried red beans, a can of coconut milk, about a cup of coconut, a veggie bouillon cube, a dash of dried Maldive fish (often used in Sri Lankan veggie curries, and in place of things like shrimp paste or fish sauce), and a huge dose of mild yellow curry spices (possibly 2-3 Tbsp). Cover with plenty of water, set on high. I think I let it cook on high for about 5 hours, then when I woke up I turned it down to low, some mixed grains (israeli couscous, lentils, etc.) from Trader Joe's (which specifically said "cook for ten minutes") to soak up the extra liquid. Shower, dress for work, turn off crock pot, spoon the curried beans and grains into all the containers left in the cupboard, 2 large glass jars, 3 medium glass jars, and half of one more dinner plastic flat from the Chinese place.

Is it any wonder I was up past 2 am chopping and assembling, and then still doing more assembly this morning?

I had some of the leftover rice salad for lunch yesterday, and some again for breakfast this morning. I actually like it better reheated--the cheese melts and the tomatoes like to pop, and I mix it all together. In my lunch cooler today there's a salad and a box of toppings and dressing, a small box of apple and nut salad, one small nectarine, and a medium box with some stir-fried squash, some curried lentils and grains, and a couple bites of the rice salad [because I had to steal a rice box to make up a lunch box, and transfer the rest of the rice salad into the squash container].

I've completely maxed out my storage space in the fridge AND used up every glass jar and plastic box in my cupboards (still leaving some for my roomie to use). But there you go. That's my fresh-produce kitchen for the week.

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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: My local Farmer's Market