We’re striving to go greener at my house, but our biggest challenge these days is eating healthier as a family. Four family members, two vegetable haters, one fruit hater, four sweet teeth–it all adds up to a big challenge for the head chef. I’d like to increase my family’s overall appreciation of fruits and vegetables through a little bit of excitement about “our farm.”

My children have the amazing luxury of picky eating habits, and I appreciate teachable moments about the miracle of food in abundance whenever I can snatch one. They haven’t the foggiest idea of how food gets to the grocery store. It’s just there. I’m pretty good at making their meals nutritious while catering to their preferences, but we’ve gotten into a bit of a rut that I’d like to dig out of this summer.

Additionally, becoming shareholders means a more convenient opportunity to actually choose how our family’s food is grown. We will be nudged toward thinking more about the quality of care for the earth for future generations. Best of all, being part of a local farm means family time and fun.

Our farm share will cost $650 for 22 weeks, which works out to just less than $30 per week. The looming question is: what will we get and how much of it will be there? My sister in law is skeptical, “What will you do if one week you get three pounds of parsnips?” I hope that won’t happen, but the truth is that I have always planned first and shopped second. The CSA method might work out really well for me–I’ll get my produce first and then plan the meals around it.

Even a seasoned shopper of farmers’ markets and health food stores is likely to encounter challenges when faced with preparing food straight off the farm. The contents of my CSA farm box will be dependent upon the farmer’s field plan, the New England climate, and the effect of specific weather on the crops. But I’ll get by with a little help from my friends: cookbooks and the internet. Cheers to an adventurous and delicious summer!

Recommended reading: Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables/Seasonal Recipes and Stories from a Community Supported Farm by John Peterson and Angelic Organics

Read about Robin Horrigan

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/galant/ / CC BY 2.0

There are times when I tried shopping the European way: buying only what I need and selecting the freshest foods that have traveled the smallest number of miles between their origin and my table. If I could make myself get used to this, I’d run into “the jicama problem” much less frequently. Inevitably, though, I find myself stumped as to what I’m going to do with the beautiful eggplant I brought home. Then I look at recipes only to find that I must go back to the store to make the eggplant dishes that appealed to me most. Now I’ve traded the jicama problem for an eggplant problem. But jicama/eggplant problems aside, it does work much better for my family if I plan first and shop later. Most of the time I am able to find the items I need.

A decade ago “going green” and buying organic or local seemed like more of a fad than anything; now these concepts are in the vernacular. Families are faced with even more product choices than ever, and the responsibilities can overwhelm the average shopper. Knowledge is responsibility, and I occasionally long for the days when I didn’t realize my mid-winter berry purchases had a true and lasting impact on so many aspects of the consumer food chain. Becoming a locavore has a certain amount of appeal, but I approach the idea with great trepidation as a New Englander used to long, cold winters, surviving on produce grown in warmer climates. I’m not really looking to become a pioneer woman.

I count myself among regular folks who are still a ways from making “eco friendly” our number one priority. I don’t know a single family that doesn’t worry about their two most precious commodities: time and money. My husband jokes that Whole Foods should be called “Whole Paycheck,” and although it is a mindset we are working to move past, he’s absolutely right. Stuff is pricey there. But it’s also the best shopping experience around with the highest quality product selection. Whole Foods’ marketing strategies make shopping with the earth and our health in mind very easy for us. I’ll pay a little extra for that inspiration. We’re on the waiting list for a local CSA farm share. I don’t know if I’m up for the challenge of being presented with a crate of produce every week and then figuring out how best to prepare and serve it. But I know I can use that bounty as the basis to plan my weekly shopping and feel good about it. I wonder if I’ll get any jicama…

On a lighter note, If you’re just in the mood to feel a little green this season, here are a few recipes that will inspire you with their verdant hue. A true vegetable hater tested the Spring Greens and Potato Soup, and he went back for a second bowl!  It would make a beautiful first course for a spring dinner party. Chocolate Cannoli Sandwich Cookies are dressed up with a sprinkling of lovely green pistachios. Lastly, when you have to buy a big bunch of cilantro for a single recipe (or are stuck with an exploded herb garden later next season) try Cilantro Pesto as a coating for simple grilled fish or shrimp or a light topping for pasta. If your vegetable drawer is overflowing with leftover arugula or flat-leaf parsley, try that instead for a different flavor.

That was the usual routine in our house.

Under my roof there are two working parents and three active kids (one with food allergies, which made finding recipes often tricky), for a total of five hungry bodies. Preparing for dinner–from thinking about what we wanted to eat to making a shopping list to getting to the grocery store to starting to chop the vegetables–was never easy. The “process” was disorganized and disconnected.

When you love to eat and you want to cook a delicious, healthy meal for your family but you’re short on time, you need a solution. We were in desperate need of a more efficient meal planning, preparation, shopping, and cooking process from start to finish.

That, in short, is how Plummelo was born.

I’m not only the founder, but I’m also a daily user. Not to mock the Hair Club for Men slogan, but Plummelo fixed just about all of our former problems in meal planning.

Here are a few of the major hurdles my wife and I were encountering (pre-Plummelo):

Old problem: My recipes are scattered. Some in a recipe box, some in the pages of an old magazine, some in miscellaneous computer files, some in my head. If I found a recipe online, I had trouble finding it again. New solution: My recipes are all in one place. Not only are they categorized, tagged, and searchable, but I can rate the ones we love and delete the ones we don’t.

Old problem: The hardest part is figuring out what to cook this week. New solution: I can quickly browse my recipes, look at what other people on Plummelo are cooking, and get new ideas.

Old problems: Making a shopping list from my recipes takes too long. New solution: Now I don’t even have to write out the shopping list. I can drag and drop my recipes for the week into My Plans and Plummelo automatically populates a grocery list for me. My wife can hit “Email Shopping List” and it comes to my iPhone and I can pick up the groceries on my way home! (Note: iPhone app to come in 2010!)

There is so much more Plummelo will be doing to help connect more of your cooking world and keep your kitchen life organized.

Give Plummelo a try this week.

My New Year’s Resolution has been to clean out my cluttered kitchen junk drawers. You know you have one. Well, I have three. So in my attempt to clean house (or just the kitchen), I realized I could not bear to toss some of my beloved kitchen gadgets. And there were a few that made me scratch my head and ask, “What is this thing?”

My most loved gadgets in the kitchen are always the ones that can do more than one job. So here is a list of my hall of fame double (and sometimes triple duty) gadget tools.

One. Egg Slicer: I know many of you are shaking your head. But please hear me out! Not only do I reach for it when I make the best Egg Salad, but I also reach for it when I make the coveted Banana Pudding to slice all six bananas perfectly. It’s much better than slicing all those bananas with a knife! I also use it when I make this delicious Avocado Shrimp Salad to slice my avocados into equal slices. I make sure to push the banana or the avocado through with my hand instead of pushing them down onto the bed of the egg slicer. Just make sure whatever you’re slicing is super soft.

Two. Garlic Press: Some prefer other garlic gadgets, but I prefer the old fashioned garlic press. Where’s the double in this apparatus? I found when I was making this Key Lime Pie, that I could actually use the garlic press to press the juice from those tiny key limes! I was jumping up and down at the joy of this discovery. Seriously, up and down.

Three. Cast Iron Pan, Enamel Cast Iron Dutch Oven, anything Cast Iron: Other than being able to brown and slow cook things, a cast iron pan (or dutch oven) can defrost that frozen chicken that you need to cook in 10 minutes (without any heat!). Try it if you don’t believe me. I line the pan with plastic wrap so it’ll be easy clean up and I toss the frozen meat on it (again, no heat). It will defrost much faster than just leaving it out on the counter.  If you like half frozen and half cooked meat, then you can always use the defrost button on your microwave… but we don’t recommend it.

Four. Microplane: Need I say more? This one little tool got rid of my nutmeg grinder and my citrus zester. I love this thing! I not only grate cheese and nutmeg, but I also use it to mince my ginger. One tip about ginger: peel the ginger and keep it in the freezer. It’ll zest even faster on the microplane when it’s frozen.

Five. Immersion Blender: Because of this gadget, I have no need of an ungainly, counterspace-hogging blender. Instead I use this to puree baby food, make protein smoothies for my husband (who is currently obsessed with Power 90X, a totally different post), and make a single serving of pesto. With an immersion blender, you don’t need those informercial bullet-shaped appliances with a hundred parts. And when you are done with it, it’s easy to clean and it fits in a kitchen drawer, neatly tucked away. I promise, they don’t pay me to sell these things…

Six. Salad Spinner: We always need more than one colander, especially when we are throwing a dinner party. One time I reached for the inner part of my salad spinner to use as my second colander, and I keep going back to it. I also use the outside part as a plain salad bowl. Why not? It’s a bowl, it’s big, and it’s not too bad to look at.

These are some kitchen tools with which I can’t part. What are some of yours?

(It took me a week or so to pare down my kitchen gadgets, and I’m happy to report that I’m now down to only two kitchen junk drawers.)

Photos by Melissa Devereaux and Paul Jin

It’s a habit that may be inherited from my time working in public libraries; I hold a special place in my heart for order. But long before I had even heard about the Dewey Decimal System, a much more instinctive way of cataloging was becoming my first standard: ROY G BIV. I organize my closet, my bookshelf, and even my office supplies by color. And this is also how I organize my refrigerator.

My friends tease me about this habit every time they come over. But there is a method to my madness: by categorizing according to content, I can balance my diet, whip up a great meal on a whim, and be sure that nothing ever goes to waste.

It’s an oft repeated maxim that the fully balanced plate should have representatives from as many color families as possible. That’s because different colored foods tend to hold different nutrients. Red, for example (rhubarb, beets, tomatoes, red chard–did you know that was a type of beet?) offers essential vitamins that promote blood function and healthier hearts. Yellow and orange fruits and vegetables such as carrots, sweet potatoes, and squash give us vitamin C and, unsurprisingly, beta carotene.

Dark or leafy greens such as kale and broccoli are chock full of vitamins A and C, which have been linked to vision and strong, healthy bones. And by grouping all my protein together (tofu, eggs, cheese, and occasionally fresh fish), it becomes easier to be sure that I’m getting enough fuel to my muscles to keep them sharp and active throughout the day.

My cooking habits vary widely, depending on how late a day has ended. Sometimes (ah, weekends!), I can spend an hour or two preparing a complex dish I’ve looked forward to preparing. Most of the time, though, I come home and have to prepare something quickly with what I have on hand. Organization by color allows me to spot the brussels sprouts nearing the end of their usefulness, or the tofu I bought two weeks ago and forgot about. That momentary spark gleaned from my cursory, hungry glance into the fridge will often decide what I’m going to make effortlessly, and from there an easy, tasty meal is usually less than half an hour away.

When I’m cooking this way, I love meals that combine many tastes and textures without an overwhelming amount of effort. Single skillet meals are the perfect answer: you know everything that went into them is balanced, so there are no sides or extras to worry about. When they’re done your only task is to sit back and enjoy. Halibut with Spicy Squash and Tomatoes is perfect for that. I will usually throw in two handfuls of a dark leafy vegetable along with the other veggies. That way you have protein and the colors red, orange, and green–not to mention a few items from last week’s grocery list that have been put to good use. You can check out the full recipe, along with some other colorful one-pot wonders, at my Plummelo profile. Enjoy!

Photos by Adwoa Gyimah-Brempong

This year, I’m resolving to take it one day at a time, not to beat myself up about it, but to be just a little more organized. I don’t mean the hanging folder, alphabetized, checklist sort of organized. I just mean I want to be more efficient in order to save time and energy.

Do you have this same resolution?

We at Plummelo want to help you be more organized about your recipes and your meal planning. Here are two ways to get started:

1. Organize your paper recipes (those you don’t have online):

I have a corner–yes a corner, not just a shelf–of my kitchen dedicated to cookbooks and paper recipes, with everything from 1990s Martha Stewart Living issues to Chez Panisse first editions. Of course the cookbooks will always be a well loved and inspiring part of my kitchen, but sometimes I want ditch the piles of paper. Even in this high-tech life, I haven’t totally done away with the scraps of paper. But I’ve taken a tip from my sister over the past few months and I’ve started organizing the paper recipes into a binder with plastic sleeves (I bought a pack of 100 sleeves at Staples). Where there used to be full issues of Martha, Real Simple, Cooking Light, and Everyday Food in that corner, now I’ve torn out only the recipes I use and I’ve put them in the sleeves and organized them in the binder by recipe type (main course, chicken, etc.). However, most of these recipes are online, so now I don’t even need many of my tear-outs (but I have kept many just for the pictures). I’ve saved hand-written recipes and those from other sources that aren’t easily found online.

2. Organize your online recipes (on Plummelo, of course):

I get into a surprising number of conversations about recipes. And I can’t tell you how many people have mentioned to me (somewhat like a bartender hears all manner of personal tidbits from thirsty customers) that they don’t remember where they found a certain recipe online. That same sister was recently telling me she wanted to make side dish with green beans and shallots, but she couldn’t recall where she had found it when she made it the first time. Online somewhere. (Great, that helps.) Well, she eventually went back to do a Google search and found it, but the hassle could have been saved if she had saved it to Plummelo in the first place (now, smartly, she has).

It’s as easy as installing the browser button on Plummelo and saving a recipe when you see one online that you have used or you think you might use. Then it’s always at your fingertips on Plummelo. And you can share it with your friends just as easily. (Or you can delete it later if you don’t end up using it.) Now I have that green bean recipe and you do, too! Less clutter and more recipes.

Wishing you all the best with your resolutions. Share them with us!