What’s In Your Box

When Michael and I returned from China, we wanted to try to improve our diet by eating more fresh vegetables and fruits.  The problem that we had was two fold….firstly, it is not very easy to get good fresh vegetables here and secondly, we didn’t grow up eating lots of fresh vegetables and simply didn’t know how to cook them.

Enter Michael’s colleague Daniel!!!   He is part of a local produce co-op where you get a box of miscellaneous fresh “stuff” each Tuesday.  And, as fate would have it, he was going to be gone on the day that it was to be picked up, so he offered it to us. 

We were SO excited to see all of the goodies for the week…..

Doesn’t this look wonderful.  We had a Cantaloupe, blueberries, potatoes, garlic, lettuce, Baby Bok Choy, sweet pepper, mixed green beans, heirloom tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes and cherry tomatoes!!!!

Now what should we cook!!!

For our first meal we decided to use the potatoes and green beans in a stir fry, starting first with a bit of chopped red pepper in the vegetable oil.  We decided to julienne the potatoes and then add the beans…..

It had a light, slightly spicy flavor and was the perfect accompanying to a grilled chicken breast.

I also made a Blueberry Crumble (with double the amount of crumble)…..

Now for the second day we wanted to use a couple of pork chops that we had, along with the  Baby Bok Choy.   We started out by stir-frying the pork chop slivers.  Next we  added the chopped Bok Choy….starting with the thicker portions and then added the shredded leaves.

The final touch was to add a splash of Teriyaki sauce.  It was excellent….

The salad was made using the fresh lettuce and the heirloom tomatoes.  Don’t these two look great….

A splash of olive oil and Balsamic Vinegar finished the side dish…..

We enjoyed these vegetables so much that we have now bought into the co-op and will start receiving our new box each Tuesday……CANT WAIT!!!!!