Cabbage

We mostly stuck with the meal plans from the last post, though there were a few changes.  I think last time I forgot to mention that I was going to steam the broccoli to go with several of the meals.  We did that once, but the second half went bad before we could get to it.  The avocados also went bad before we were able to use them.  So a few casualties, but overall we have been able to use almost everything from the box.  I did freeze some of the cilantro and both the green bell peppers because I was afraid we wouldn't use them quickly enough.  I'm glad I did!

Updates on the meals:

I did make the Kale Salad but instead of massaging the leaves, I lightly steamed them.  Then I discovered the dressing recipe didn't have measurements for all the ingredients.  I ended up with about 3 oz of lemon juice from the lemons so I added an equal amount of olive oil.  It did specify a TB of shallot and sugar and I used a pinch of salt and pepper and sliced the rest of the shallot to put on the salad.  I just guessed at how many almonds were needed and probably ended up using about half a cup.  That was way too many!

The sauce for the Cilantro Chicken was tasty but was essentially cilantro pesto.  We didn't really like the boneless skinless thighs, they had a weird rubbery texture.  It's probably because we've grown so used to eating whole chickens that are minimally processed.  The dish tasted fine if you could get past the texture.  We had a lot of leftovers and ate it for two meals, but I was not looking forward to finishing it off.

I came up with the idea of grinding up the Cilantro Chicken to make some kind of lettuce wrap.  We had left over cabbage (but no lettuce) so I found a recipe for Asian-Style Cabbage Rolls.  This worked really well!  It tasted great and grinding it up solved the texture problem.  The cilantro pesto and sweet chili sauce that was already on the chicken blended well with the rest of the flavors.  I think I steamed the cabbage leaves for too long though, they ended up pretty water logged.  Instead of rolling the filling up in the leaves to make wraps, we just piled the filling on the leaves on plates and had the leftover rice on the side.

I did attempt to make the Crunchy Bok Choy Slaw but discovered that I didn't really have enough Bok Choy for the recipe.  I cut the dressing in half and accidentally chopped up the bok choy too much, so we ended up with a soggy mess.  It did taste good so I will have to try this one again when I have more bok choy.

We made coleslaw with the head of cabbage to go with this fantastic Pulled Pork recipe.  We'll definitely make pulled pork again!  Finally we used most of the rest of the items in Slow Cooker Beef Stew.  We ended up with only 4 small potatoes and 1 turnip left over (I figured out that what I thought were rutabagas were actually turnips.)