Kitchen Sink Rice

This was one of those weeks when I didn't actually do a good job of planning my meals a week in advance. I was lucky to hit a day or two. So when I made the rice with the bok choy, I made a 1.5x batch (1.5 cups rice, 3 cups water) to use the rest in a later dish.

That later dish was Wednesday.

Why "kitchen sink" rice? Well, here's the problem with Wednesday. It's farmer's market day. Which would be great, right? Buy some fresh veggies for dinner. But it's also the day-before-CSA day. And I'd hate to buy something, not knowing if we'll get it the next day. I could switch my CSA day to Tuesday. But we've been Thursday since the beginning of time (10 years), and I'm sure that would confuse me.

So what I've been doing instead is winging it. I plan my veggie use when I get them, approximately. And if it looks like I'll get low during the week, I'll supplement with frozen, or pick something up at Sunday's farmer's market. One advantage of working Sundays - I'm really close to the Sunday market. Our favorite apple lady stopped coming to Weds, but she's there on Sunday.

Now that you have my life story of how-to-balance-my-veggie-purchases-without-having-to-shop-every-day...

Wednesday, I had some cooked rice. Two potatoes. An onion. 4 leaves of collard greens. And some frozen edamame. As I opened the drawer to pull out the collards I then discovered a bunch of beets that I'd forgotten about (the perils of not planning ahead). But beets last forever.

I love beets. My favorite way to eat them is roasted with onions and garlic. But I've also made them into latkes. When I'm really busy, which I've been for months now...I go for easy (this blog is Frugal Healthy SIMPLE, right?).

So, into a steamer they went. Just cut off the stems at about an inch, scrub them clean, and steam. For however long, depending on their size. These were medium-sized. And dark red (my favorites, though I will get the candy cane ones too). So they took about 20-25 mins. Then just turn them off, let them sit. Then put them in a bowl to cool. Then peel, toss with salt, pepper, olive oil. And if you like, blue cheese. Or vinegar. And that's it. The easy thing here is that they don't take a lot of attention, so you can play Candyland with your kid while they cook away. The problem with roasted beets is the time it takes to peel and chop makes my kid cranky sometimes.

Onto the rice...

Kitchen Sink Rice
1 Tbsp canola oil: 0.03
1 medium onion, diced: 0.33
2 small potatoes: 0.80
4 leaves collards, tough ribs removed, chopped: 0.30
1 clove garlic, pressed: 0.05
1 cup edamame unshelled, defrosted and shelled: 0.60
2 cups cooked brown rice: 0.28
salt, pepper
1 Tbsp soy sauce: 0.08

Total: $2.47 for about 5 cups, enough for dinner and lunch the next day, about $0.49 per cup.

No picture today. The camera battery died.