My family participates in a CSA farm share program. Beautiful fresh vegetables come every week. Lately there have been an abundance of sweet potatoes so it was my goal this time to use as many of them as I could. Sweet Potato Black Bean Casserole worked great. Not only was in delicious it used up a lot of those sweet potatoes!
The celery salad had medjool dates in it. I’ve never done that before. It was this week’s experiment. I don’t know much about medjool dates, have hardly ever used them. It also had chopped toasted almonds. I buy the salted toasted almonds at Trader Joes because they are my favorite.
The casserole called for taco seasoning so I decided the Chicken Taco Bites would be a good accompaniment. I did make one substitution to the recipe; I used Harissa powder instead of Chile powder. Wow, turned out great. My daughter gave me a compliment, she said that all the flavors and textures worked so well together. Score!
I do truly believe that my daughter and son-in-law appreciate the evenings I do the cooking. It gives them a chance to rest a bit, work in the garden, or finish up some last-minute work details.
Both kids have swim team practice on Thursday evenings which means that dinner needs to be on the table no later than 5:45. I usually start preparing and cooking early in the afternoon to have everything ready on time.
Believe me, this is only since I retired. All the years I was working fulltime and raising my daughter I was the master of the 30 minute meal. That is get home from work, throw something in a pan and have a hot meal on the table for my daughter and I to share as fast as I could. Which meant that I did a lot of stir fries, used frozen vegetables already chopped, and cooked rice in the rice cooker.