Using the Bountiful Baskets Veggies

One of the tricks with Bountiful Baskets is that you need to use whatever is in your basket (or box if you do organic) to get your money’s worth on your purchase. Throwing out food is not good for the budget, and you don’t want to be wasteful. If there are certain veggies/fruits that your family does not enjoy or if your family gets too much of a certain veggie/fruit, you can share it with another family who you know will be able to use it.

This week, we received a bunch of fall veggies such as zucchini, carrots, lettuce, broccoli…. One of the obvious things to make it a big salad. D likes to have some meat on his salads, so grilling up some chicken breasts is a quick, easy, and tasty addition to a simple salad. For the most part, I like to make my own salad dressing which allows me to control ingredients and personalize the flavor profile to the meal. For this salad, I decided to go with a chipotle ranch dressing for something a little different. For a little more crunch, I tossed in some roughly chopped pecans.

After picking up my boxes on Saturday, I stopped into Walmart on the way home and picked up a few extras groceries that I needed for the week. Plus, Daddy needed me to pick up some meds as he’s sick. 🙁 While I was there, I saw some gluten free angel hair pasta from Hodgson Mill that we hadn’t tried before, so I decided to go ahead and grab a box. I figured that I would make some fall veggie pasta with the yummy veggies that were in the box. The carrots, broccoli, and zucchini were just calling my name. I cooked the carrots and broccoli under fork tender. The zucchini was lightly sauteed with butter, garlic, salt, and pepper. I then tossed the carrots and broccoli in with zucchini.

The veggies were spooned over the bed of angel hair pasta with a little of the butter drizzled over top. It only made sense to chop up some of those beautiful fresh herbs to top off the pasta. Because we like cheese, I sprinkled a little shredded parmesan over the whole dish. Munchkin liked this meal so much that she ended up eating 2 plates!

Now I just need to figure out what to make with the 3 bunches of chard that we received in our boxes. Hmmm….