Eat your greens

Sometimes salad is boring. Especially when you have to make it yourself. Does anyone else love it when someone else makes the salad, but find it somehow never tastes as good when you make it yourself? Or is that just me being weird?

Anyway. We all know it’s important to eat green veggies (and all the other colors too!), but sometimes figuring out what to do with lettuce, spinach, zucchini, kale and chard is, well, hard. This week I had an abundance of greens to use because my cousin gave me her CSA.

Check this out!

Try not to be jealous of the awesomeness that is my kitchen. At least it’s clean!

That’s a lot of veggies to find a creative use for. Not to mention, I spent the last couple hours (seriously!) washing, peeling, cutting and storing everything.

Let’s just say this guy did not speed things up.

Here’s what I’ve got planned for meals:

1. zucchini rice casserole: this is a new one from Eating Well. I’m not a HUGE fan of zucchini, and I debated just making these muffins and calling it a day, but then I saw this recipe and it sounded pretty good. In addition to zucchini, it uses the yellow squash, green pepper and some fresh corn from the CSA haul.
2. stuffed shells: I’ve tried this recipe from my “friend” (she has no idea who I am) at Eat, Live, Run and it was a huge hit with the boys. I love spinach when it’s given an Italian treatment of some kind.
3. spinach and cheese quinoa casserole: another recipe from Eat, Live, Run, but I’ve never tried this one. Everything I make from that website has been a success, however, so I’m pretty confident this will be great. She does go a little crazy with the cheese sometimes so I tend to cut back on that a little, but otherwise, this recipe is packed with healthy goodness. And I’ve got a LOT of spinach to use.

That’s about as far ahead as I can plan, though I did get smart and cut all that fresh corn off the cob and freeze it. I’m already dreaming of fall and the first batch of chili (with lots of corn).

Now that my dinners are planned and prepped for the next few days, I’ve got so much extra time on my hands. Ha! I do have enough time to get my butt to the gym, though.

Before I go, just wondering, do you like to get lots of fresh veggies and prep them yourself? Or would you rather buy the pre-cut, bagged stuff at the grocery store? I do a little of both. For instance, I hope to never eat baby carrots again. Once you’ve tried the real deal (preferably with the green tops still on), you’ll never go back to baby. They are a sad shadow of real carrots. Lettuce, however, is a huge pain in my back side, and I’m much more likely to eat a salad if the lettuce is already washed and chopped. And if someone else makes it for me.