Greek Mason Jar Salad

So I’ve seen a lot of pins for mason jar salads and finally decided to try it. The principle is that all of the ingredients are layered in the jar to keep everything as fresh as possible.

Source: backonpointe.tumblr.com via Samantha on Pinterest

Source: foodiggity.com via Samantha on Pinterest

When I would make lunch salads before, they were pretty boring (lettuce, cheese and dressing) and I would assemble them each morning. Mason jar salads let me make them all on Sunday and just grab a jar each morning.

Last week I started out basic- (layered from the bottom up) ranch, cucumbers, avocado (in lemon juice to stay fresh), onion, a cut up tomato/basil/mozzarella cheese stick, lettuce and sprouts.

This week I got a little more advanced and made up a Greek mason jar salad.

Layered from the bottom up:

Homemade tzaziki

Chickpeas

Cherry tomatoes

Onions

Olives

Lettuce

Feta

Store in fridge in jars, grab in morning, dump onto plate at lunch.

I’ve pinned some other ideas for Mason jar salads and can’t wait to try them out (might try a cob next week). Tried them? Have a good one I haven’t thought of or seen??

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CSA: Week 2

This week we got:
6 ears of corn
1 head cabbage
10 apples
2 pounds red potatoes
1 squash
2 pounds tomatoes
2 pounds green beans
dozen eggs
1 loaf of Great Harvest 5 grain fiber bread

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CSA - Week 1

Yay! We finally were able to join a CSA. We actually are doing halves with my brother and sister in law. I had been eyeballing this CSA for a couple of years, but the food is meant for a family of 4 and just way to expensive to justify having to (probably) throw out some food every week.

My sister in law emailed me asking if we wanted to go in with them because she was thinking the same thing! We are each picking up every other week. When we signed up there was 16 weeks left in the season (Liz went last week, we went this week so 14 now)- that is a good junk of time to try out the CSA! We split the cost that ends up being $39 every other week a week/the weeks that we pick up and HOLY COW- SO MUCH FOOD!

Seriously.. look:

6 ears of corn
1 pound of kale
1 squash
1 bulb garlic
1 lb tomatoes
2 lbs sweet potatoes
10 apples
2 lbs green beans
dozen eggs
1 loaf of whole grain bread from the local Great Harvest

The CSA we joined is in western Howard County in MD- they have pickups around Howard county and on their farm- Breezy Willow Farm.

..Now I need to go menu plan for the next couple of weeks!

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The Milkman

As I have mentioned many times before, I have gotten really uncomfortable with grocery store food in the last few years. Produce that travels a gajillion miles and then sits on the shelf for 18 months before we buy it, pumped full of who knows what to make it stay "fresh" for that long, meat that is from animals treated terribly, fed stuff they shouldn't be fed (and that we shouldn't be eating!), baked goods and treats made with white flours, full of preservatives and lots of chemicals, etc.

I've been slowly replacing our typical foods with homemade ones, using local/fresh ingredients where possible. I am not so much concerned about "organic" as animals treated well, no chemicals, whole grains, no preservatives.

For a couple of months now we have been getting dairy delivered to our house by a local farm. Milk and cheese (fresh mozzarella to die for!) fresh from grass fed, free range cows, eggs from free range hens. The awesome thing is, this farm teams up with other local farmers to delivery pretty much anything else you could need- turkey, chicken, beef, pork (all kinds of cuts of all the meat!), breads, coffee!, popcorn, cookie dough, etc. The whole order is placed online and then it shows up at your house on your scheduled delivery day!

This is an example of what we got this week:

3 half gallons of skim milk, 1 lb American cheese, 2 lbs bulk sausage, 2 lbs ground turkey

We try to place the order every other week so that we can spread out the delivery fee (only $3.75) between two weeks, especially since the milk dates are pretty far out. I had wanted to get a pound of mozzarella this week and a pound of boneless turkey breast this week too, but they were out of stock.

When we need it I also get butter from them- 1 lb salted in a tub. This summer I also bought a TWENTY POUND block of butter (call me Paula Dean) that I cut into sticks for baking. The butter was about $1/pound cheaper this way and since it freezes, it will be good forever.

 

If you are at all interested and in the Frederick, MD/DC area, for sure check out South Mountain Creamery. They have really been awesome and are a great family-owned company.

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Lunch Time

John has had the same lunch everyday for as long as he can remember.. honestly.. like all the way back to elementary school. When we were in college he was getting migraines and relatively quickly I connected it to the food he was eating- tons of processed, fake stuff. As I've mentioned before, I've been trying to eliminate processed stuff from our diets and I have noticed a HUGE difference in his headaches.. SO much less frequent and less hurty.

SO... John's lunches used to look like this- for YEARS on end:

A sandwich on white bread with deli ham and turkey and American cheese, a nutrigrain bar, an apple, a handful of Chips Ahoy cookies or Oreos and a fruit cup in sugar/high fructose syrup.

With a few changes and planning ahead, I was able to modify his lunches to look more like the image below:

A sandwich on local whole wheat bread with deli ham and turkey (Oscar Mayer now makes a line of deli meat & hot dogs that are preservative & nitrate free- for a decent price), American cheese, a homemade cereal and fruit bar (made with homemade jelly from local strawberries and added in flax seed and whole wheat flour), an apple (local when the season permits), 3 or 4 homemade cookies, using at least half whole wheat flour and half unbleached all purpose flour, a homemade and canned fruit cup made from real sugar and local, in season fruit (apples and peaches).

He still has all of the basic items the same, but more homemade and fresh, less processed fake stuff. It honestly does not take a ton of extra time. Once every 2-3 months I will spend a Sunday afternoon in the kitchen making 2 batches of cereal bars and 3 or 4 batches of a variety of cookies.

 I cut up the bars and put them in baggies in the freezer. He just grabs a bar in the morning and by lunch it is thawed. The cookies go in freezer bags as well, about 30 cookies per bag (approximately a week's worth). A bag of cookies at a time is dumped in the cookie jar and he will portion them out when making lunch in the morning before work.We still use plastic baggies, but I am in the process of making re-useable fabric ones for sandwiches, cookies and nutrigrains so we can eliminate that habit. In the meantime John will bring the baggies home from work and we reuse them until it isn't possible anymore.

For the fruit cups and jelly to go in the cereal bars, I follow the fruit seasons, go to the local farm and pick and buy the fruits. Again, it is really only an afternoon of canning at a time- 2 or 3 days a summer. Last year I canned 108 4 oz jars of apple pie filling fruit cups and 108 jars of peaches in simple syrup and cinnamon. We will eat fresh fruit in our lunches until it is out of season locally and then John switches to fruit cups. Canning 216 days worth of fresh and local fruit only took 2 afternoons. THAT'S IT. The jelly was another afternoon and we have JARS and JARS (and jars) of it. I use it in the cereal bars and John has lunch with it at least once a weekend.

Sometimes it is a pain to spend a Sunday in the kitchen, but I usually enjoy it and I just make several batches (usually while making other food for the week too) and know that I won't need to do it again for a couple of months and then I will have a migraine free husband, and hopefully be extending his long-term health by eliminating junk. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

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