I have four hospital admissions recently: two in December, and two in January. All for different reasons! So it was with great joy when I came home from our own hens just starting to produce eggs in brown, a pale brownish-green colour, and bluish-green to a greater production of eggs. (We have some silkies and a few other varieties, like a Rhode Island Red, which is why we have such variation in our egg colours.)
Now look at these beauties! I really need to step up my egg-eating game! We have so many eggs now that we can't keep up with our layers! Actually, we don't even have enough room in our fridge (Rob insists on washing them after they are laid, so we have to refrigerate them rather than keep them on the countertop as I'd prefer) anymore for all these eggs. The other day, Chloë went around our cul-de-sac offering our neighbors our own organic eggs. Most were delighted and took several! (The rest weren't home yet.)
Each time I have been admitted into the hospital, I am on some sort of special diet. I am always restricted from eggs or any egg-containing food, because I am technically allergic to eggs. However, there is some difference between regular, ordinary store-bought eggs and our own pasture-raised, organically-fed chickens' eggs. I can eat those with zero reaction. So it's always with great joy that I come home and Rob makes me a delicious omelet with cheese and sautéed onions. (He's such a great Hubs; no complaints there!)
So when I've been home, I like to cook. I'm not always up to it, but I do love to make a nice meal with a pretty presentation for my family - especially the Husbeast. The kids don't always appreciate the gourmet meals I prefer to cook, so Rob usually does the more day-to-day, mac-and-cheese sort of stuff, while I like to really go wild. It's for that reason that I'm fond of the various meal subscription services that have come into play in recent years. I've tried Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, and one or two others; now I'm into Sun Basket.
I like the meal delivery services because it's a chance to expand my cooking knowledge, expand my food awareness, and also because I can be picky about what foods come in my meal selections. This meal, above, is Turkish Lamb Köfte with Tahini Sauce and Smashed Cucumber Salad and was obviously chosen only for my carnivorous (well, omnivorous, really). He seemed to enjoy it quite well, and I liked preparing it. I got a little heavy handed with the black pepper, though. Oops! Sorry, Rob.
Here are some of the ingredients for the next recipe I created. You can click to embiggerate the pictures, if you're impatient to read the book and don't want to scroll down to see what it was!
This delicious beauty was Tuscan Vegetable Soup with Ciabatta Croutons. So much yum in this dish. Everyone in the house tried it, which is a rare thing for one of these meal delivery service recipes. The kids usually turn up their noses at it. I think everyone pretty much enjoyed it, but Rob and I loved it. Unfortunately, I can't really eat a lot of soup (thanks to my gastric bypass surgery), so in the end, Rob ended up with four bowls of soup to down. Honestly, though, it was delicious!
The day after I cooked the Tuscan Soup, I was back at it with the third and final Sun Basket meal in that week's delivery. (I usually only get it one week per month, because it's spendy.) Here's some minced garlic and chopped onions.
Beautiful, rinsed red lentils
Sliced limes - yummy!
Something's simmering!
The finished product: Red Lentil and Chickpea Dal with Butternut Squash and Pita. It was scrumptious! I ate every bite of mine. Rob thought it was "all right," but he's not much for showing enthusiasm. (Trust me; for 17 years, I've urged him to show more emotion, give me more "oomph" about something I felt he should feel strongly about, but he just... doesn't. It's so frustrating for an over-emoter like me! Haha!) I especially liked the added touch of Coconut Milk poured over the whole thing, once it was in the bowl. Mmm... delish.
One thing I really like about Sun Basket is that, unlike the other services we've tried, they include a full recipe book of all the recipes they've shipped out, to us and everyone else, whether we chose those meals or not. So if I was torn between adding two dishes to our shipment, I could still make both if I wanted to. I think this is a fantastic way to let us try way more than just those for which they've sent us the ingredients.
Wait 'til you see what we're getting this Wednesday! Everything looks so scrummy!
Thanks for stopping by, y'all!
Fin.
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