New Organic Delivery - What's For Dinner?

The new surprise box of organics had arrived! Time to check out what we can do with the contents of this weeks delivery. The fresh fruit is great for breakfast and snacking on, the kale is something I have not cooked with so I look forward to trying new recipes with that and the rest of the basket will provide some basic vegetables for our new week of meals.

In the last basket there was a lovely chunk of ginger which has provided daily cups of ginger lemon tea. There were a few things left to use up quickly before starting the new produce so this dinner is a combination of what was left and some beet tops from the new box.

What I want to use this time: carrots, onion, garlic, potatoes, yams, apples, beets and beet tops, pork tenderloin. There was not a lot of time in this busy day so everything needed to be prepared and ready within 1 hour.

Roasted Vegetables - ready in 40 minutes
Roasted vegetables are always tasty and easy. Some chopped carrots, onion and yams, along with a couple of new little red skin potatoes are sprinkled with a little oil, some salt and pepper to taste along with some oregano. Whole garlic cloves in their skins are nice to add to these veggies and when they are ready the soft garlic comes out of the skin very easily and has a caramelized taste to it. In the oven at 425F they can roast and be ready in 40 minutes.

Steamed Beet Tops - ready in 15 minutes
Beet tops are often thrown away and only the beet root used. The green leafy tops are even more rich in iron than spinach, as well as being loaded with vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, C and vitamin K. The beet root can wait but just taking the beet tops and steaming them for about 15 minutes they are a tasty rich green vegetable. A touch of butter and some seasoning makes them a very easy addition to dinner. The only caution on these is that beet tops are one of the things that anyone on blood thinners should eat very little of (Vitamin K rich greens react with medications such as Coumadin)

We had purchased a package of pork tenderloins a few weeks ago and they were frozen individually. My husband makes some beautiful dishes with pork tenderloin. But these recipes all involve various kinds of marinade that requires more time than we had today. So it had to be a dish that would be prepared, cooked and ready to serve within the 60 minutes we had available.

Herb Crusted Pork Tenderloin - ready in 45 minutes
After trimming of the skin and fat and cutting the tenderloin in half, it was seasoned with salt and pepper and then seared it to a light brown colour in the waiting hot fry pan with a little oil and butter. Take any of the oil from the pan after it is seared and keep it aside for the herb crust. Put the tenderloin, in the fry pan, into the oven for 20 minutes.

It is a bit early in the season for my herbs in the garden to be really luscious but there is still enough out there to use once in a while. I gathered some fresh thyme, rosemary, a couple of sage leaves and some chives and chopped them finely. Pounding them together with the mortar and pestle it is nice to also add a little fresh lemon zest before adding the oil removed from the fry pan. A little bit of bread crumbs were added to bind it all together. After the pork had cooked for 20 minutes, it was brushed with Dijon mustard and then the herb mixture packed on top of the tenderloin. Slice up an apple into nice thin slices and put them around the pork. Throw the pork and apples back into the oven for about another 10 minutes.

Dinner prepared from our organic delivery with some meat added, herbs from the garden, and nice glass of Malbec wine was tasty and it felt good to sit down at the table and take time to enjoy this meal before heading off to evening appointments.