The other week when we picked up our CSA share I was both delighted with the fantastic bounty of fresh produce and overwhelmed at the prospect of finding recipes and altering my menu plan for the week as needed. We’ve been getting fresh veggies from our CSA for about a month now and we’ve loved all the goodies but since the boxes come in on Wednesdays and I plan my week’s menus on the weekend, things just weren’t really working anymore. My menu plan had become more of a hindrance than a helper – and that’s sort of the opposite of useful!

So I decided to start thinking outside the box, abandon my “weekly menu” and just start cooking – with the food we have on hand! Last week I decided to embark on a Week Without Recipes – cooking from the hip you could say, and just using the foods that seemed appropriate each night. It was actually very liberating and, I must say, quite tasty! Here’s what a week (ish) without recipes looked like in our home…

MONDAY

Monday night I decided to throw together some lettuce that had been sitting in our crisper long enough that I knew I was running out of time to use it. I added some fresh cucumber which we seem to never run out of, blueberries (the only fruit that seems to look ripe at the grocery store these days) and a little feta cheese for good measure – another food that’s been lingering in my fridge for awhile. To make the dish more filling I raided the freezer and found some leftover frozen shrimp. After thawing it in the sink for 5 minutes I pan fried it with a little butter and seasonings.

TUESDAY

Tuesdays are almost always spaghetti night at our place and this night was no different. I used up some leftover sauce and being the Penne a la Betsy infatuated momma that I am, I had to add some white wine and heavy cream for good measure.

WEDNESDAY

On Wednesday life got in the way of cooking. After a long day of house inspecting and a meeting with the bank where we signed about 100 pieces of paper (buying a house is fun!!) I was the kids were getting hungry and cranky and we decided that going home to cook was not an option so we headed to Culvers for burgers and a strawberry milkshake. Perfection.

THURSDAY

I normally hide cowering from my slow cooker but when I agreed to show my apartment to some potential subletters Thursday night, I knew that trying to cook dinner at the same time would be tough. So that afternoon while the kids were napping, I chopped potatoes and carrots and prepped some purple beans that were apparently green beans in disguise – threw them in our crock pot and added some vegetable broth and herbs (couldn’t tell you which ones I used as I mostly just opened jars and threw in the ones that smelled good but I think rosemary, parsley and a few others were involved). 4 hours on high later and we had a pretty yummy vegetable stew. I heated up some leftover meatloaf to go with.

FRIDAY

Friday night was Mexican night. I mixed up some diced tomatoes, black beans, corn and salsa – added that and some shredded cheese to tortillas (actually just flat bread because that’s what we had), rolled them up in burrito form and pan fried them with lots of oil in a skillet, giving them that perfect crispy texture. You could do this as quesadillas also but the burrito shape holds in the juices a little better.

Kids’ Variations: Miss BB had cheese quesadillas with some corn and black beans on the side. MM who is at the height of pickiness opted for a peanut butter and jelly “quesadilla”

So, as you can see – nothing earth shattering really happened. We actually ate a few fairly common meals for our family, but I think that’s to be expected. I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel here, you know?

But I was pretty impressed with the quality of the meals that we were able to eat with basically no planning, no measuring, and no recipes. We’re planning to keep up the adventure for the weeks to come so I may follow up on this later with more pictures and commentary.