I’m documenting a little slice of our life during the pandemic with a Pandemic Photo Journal and a Pandemic Pantry Potluck. We are having most of our groceries delivered and joined a Community Supported Agriculture farm. I’ll be sharing a few recipes, how the CSA is working out, or possibly musing on the state of toilet paper or grocery delivery service – whatever appeals to me on a given day. We are so lucky to have a well-stocked pantry at a time when so many have lost jobs and find themselves waiting in very long lines at overwhelmed food pantries. Now is a good time for sharing as we are able.

Easter was certainly different this year. None like it ever before. Easter egg hunts confined to homes and back yards. Virtual church services. Eating alone, or with whomever you share a home, and not the usual extended family. Some families were creative and shared meals over ZOOM, making sure at least someone made the traditional dishes. We were not so creative.

At our house, it was just my husband and me. And honestly, what we would eat on Easter was left to happenstance. We didn’t plan ahead to order the usual ham and other traditional items when we put in our order for our grocery delivery and we were too late once we thought of it. We found a pork loin in the freezer and a couple of potatoes from our veggie box, so we figured we could make do.

After “church” we ate leftovers, deciding to cook a meal for supper. I used the recipe I usually use for pork loin, one I got from a Southern Living cookbook.

Roasted Pork Loin

1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons molasses
1 tablespoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons dry mustard
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 (4-5 pound) rolled boneless pork loin roast

Combine first six ingredients in a bowl, stirring with a whisk until blended. Trim excess fat from pork. Place pork in a shallow dish or heavy duty zip-top plastic bag; pour soy mixture over pork, turning to coat. Cover and chill at least eight hours.
Remove pork loin from marinade. Bring marinade to a boil and set aside. Place pork loin halves together and secure with string. Place in a greased roasting pan. Bake at 325 degrees for two hours, or until meat thermometer inserted in thickest portion registers 160 degrees, brushing with marinade during first hour of cooking. 10-12 servings.

Note: I never tie the two halves together like you are supposed to. I just snuggle them fairly close together and shorten the cooking time. Check after an hour and see how it looks. If I’m in a hurry, I set the oven at 350.

See the potatoes we got in our box?

They look like white potatoes, but they are a little pointy on the ends. Hmmm. I had decided to roast the potatoes and when I cut into them, I realized that they were sweet potatoes. I had never seen white sweet potatoes before, but they are a thing. They were good too, with a milder flavor than regular sweet potatoes.

The Easter Bunny didn’t come and bring Cadbury eggs or a chocolate bunny and I would be  sharing the book Thunder Cake with my ESL students the following day, so I decided to bake a cake. The book has a recipe for Thunder Cake – a chocolate cake with a secret ingredient. If you read the recipe, it seems obvious that tomato puree is the secret ingredient. But if you read the book, you realize that the secret ingredient is … thunder. I have made the cake twice and it always comes out crumbly and a bit dry. The students pointed out that I was missing the secret ingredient. I does taste good though.

I drained and puréed canned tomatoes with my nifty immersion blender. Since I am trying not to waste food, I saved the juice and leftover purée for something-I-would-be-happy-to-have-this-for-later. Alas, they remain in the refrigerator unused. I have not yet perfected the no-waste lifestyle.

All in all, it was a pleasant Easter, if not the Easter I would have preferred.

And I got my chocolate fix.

My husband and I each had at least one piece of cake in the evening. When the ESL book club met on ZOOM, I told the students that I had baked them a cake and held it up for them to see. Then I turned it around to show that I didn’t wait for them.

I hope you feel nourished by whatever your pantry provides today.

I’m documenting a little slice of our life during the pandemic with a Pandemic Photo Journal and a Pandemic Pantry Potluck. We are having most of our groceries delivered and joined a Community Supported Agriculture farm. I’ll be sharing a few recipes, how the CSA is working out, or possibly musing on the state of toilet paper or grocery delivery service – whatever appeals to me on a given day. We are so lucky to have a well-stocked pantry at a time when so many have lost jobs and find themselves waiting in very long lines at overwhelmed food pantries. Now is a good time for sharing as we are able.

We got our first veggie box from a different service than the CSA we now belong to. This is what we received in that first box.

Our second meal from this box used two of the oranges and the daikon radishes. We had two tuna steaks in the freezer and some leftover Parmesan Spinach Cakes (made with chard instead of spinach) to complete our meal.

I was going to share the recipe I used for the daikon radishes, but I can’t find it! I know it was printed from the internet several years ago and that I had it in the kitchen with me when I made this. But I have somehow misplaced it. Oh well. It was not a complicated recipe, so here is the gist of it.

Scrub or peel (I peeled) the radishes. Cut into sticks like french fries. Coat with olive (or other oil) and season with salt and pepper. I think I used a seasoned salt like Adobo. Bake until done. I used a fairly high heat and turned them over during baking. I could have seasoned them a bit more and I think a dipping sauce would be great. I keep wondering about barbeque sauce or something with Asian flavors. The radishes mellow with cooking.

The friend that I got the idea for this veggie service from complained about the oranges she got having such a tough skin and being old. If they were the same as these oranges, I can see why she thought so negatively about them.

They weren’t very pretty and the skin was tough, so I sliced them instead of trying to peel. They were delicious! So sweet. I think they might be an orange more suited to juicing, but what do I know about citrus? They were messy to eat and had a tough membrane like grapefruit sections. But they were worth the effort. I hope we get more next time. I’ll gladly lick my fingers again.

I’ve been thinking about how the pandemic is playing out in our kitchen.Things are not as they were before:
My husband is working at home, so he is here for lunch every day.
We are trying to stay away from stores, so we are using grocery delivery services.
The stores have shortages of some items, so we can’t always get what we want.
We have become much more conscientious about not wasting food.
We have take out delivered about once a week to support some of our favorite restaurants.

I started a Pandemic Photo Journal a couple of weeks ago. Now I think I’ll start a kitchen-themed pandemic journal to chronicle what’s happening in our pantry and kitchen – recipes or just musing on the state of toilet paper and flour. Whatever.

I have belonged to a Community Supported Agriculture farm off and on for several years. Off when I’ve been sick and my husband has taken over responsibility for feeding us. On when I was up for dealing with all those veggies. With trying to stay away from grocery stores and wanting some healthy food around, I thought I should rejoin the CSA. Procrastinator that I am, I waited, and my usual CSA had a waiting list. I saw a  Facebook friend had subscribed to another service, not a CSA, but a service that delivers organic produce acquired from several farms in the area. They only deliver on Sundays, so we got our first delivery at the beginning of this week. Interestingly, it looked like most, if not all, of the produce came from the farm that I was on the waiting list for.

I spent quite a bit of time Sunday triple washing and spinning chard, beet greens, mint, and oregano and figuring out how to store everything.

Wednesday I decided to tackle the chard. I knew what I wanted to make, but had to wait for Tuesday’s grocery delivery for ricotta cheese. Somehow, we got two cartons instead of one. Oh well, we’ll need to incorporate more ricotta into upcoming meals.

The recipe is from EatingWell.com. I have made it several times before when I had an abundance of greens. I substituted chard for the spinach. Since I had fresh oregano from the produce delivery, I added a little of that too. I just spread it all into a 9×9 inch Pyrex baking dish instead of using a muffin tin and baked it a few minutes longer. Something smaller would work as well – maybe better.

Parmesan Spinach Cakes

12 ounces fresh spinach
1/2 cup part-skim ricotta cheese or low-fat cottage cheese
1/2 cup finely shredded Parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish
2 large eggs, beaten
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
Pulse spinach in three batches in a food processor until finely chopped. Transfer to a medium bowl. Add ricotta, Parmesan, eggs, garlic, salt, and pepper; stir to combine.
Coat 8 cups of the muffin pan with cooking spray. Divide the spinach mixture among the 8 cups (they will be very full.
Bake until set, about 20 minutes. Let stand in the pan for 5 minutes. Loosen the edges with a knife and turn out onto a clean cutting board or large plate. Serve warm with more Parmesan, if desired.

I had a craving for my mom’s salmon patties before we were sheltering in place and my husband bought some at Sam’s for me, so I already had a package of five 7-ounce cans in my pantry. Even though I had a craving that one day, I didn’t make any until this week. I don’t have a recipe and it had been so long since I made them, that I forgot how. I know mom just threw them together without a recipe and they were very simple, so I didn’t go googling for a recipe. Here is what I did:

Salmon Patties

2 7-ounce cans of salmon
1 large egg, slightly beaten (maybe one egg per can would be better)
a few saltine crackers, crumbled
salt and pepper to taste
Since I had fresh oregano on hand, I added a little.

Mix together and form into patties. Pan fry with vegetable oil until browned on both sides.

They were okay, but could use some fine tuning. If you make salmon patties and have suggestions, please leave a comment!

I got a call from the CSA farm saying that I was one of the first 100 on the waiting list and they were now opening up more slots. I cancelled the subscription to the service that we got these veggies from and subscribed to Johnson’s Backyard Garden once again. I probably should have waited a week to get my new box, but we picked it up this morning. Lots of greens!! More on that later.

What’s cooking at your house?