Before I get to talking about this week’s school-stress-induced junk-fest, I feel the need to take you through round 2 of healthy things I made and ate. The green-power continued with this week’s spin on CSA salad enhanced, once again, by my CSA bok choy blossom centerpiece:

(The flowers are edible, but I thought they looked prettier on the table than in my tummy.)

The salad had a base of CSA mesclun and CSA spinach, and the topping of the week consisted of a sauteed mix of spinach stems, kale, bok choy, and garlic scapes (all CSA); mom’s herb-infused olive oil; dried cranberries; CSA snap peas; red wine vinegar; cooking sherry; coarse sea salt; freshly ground black pepper; and freshly grated homemade parmesan:

In the center, I added a teeny bite of the lasagna I rescued during work-fridge cleanout last week and some leaves of homegrown basil courtesy of my fire escape garden:

Plus a few carefully selected arugula leaves from the fire escape garden:

Sigh, such a satisfying salad, the product of sweat and tears that were not my own 😛 …

My other feat of scrumptiousness (there are so many that it’s hard to keep track) looked like this:

Who loves farm-fresh CSA strawberries? I do, I do!

The yogurt part was actually a peanut butter-yogurt-chia mix. Tara left behind about 1/4 jar of Jif peanut butter when she moved. I don’t go for the Jif on its own so much, but it was tasty tasty mixed with yogurt! I added chia seeds for their thickening powers, and the concoction lasted me a good three days.

This time, I added dried apricots to the berries:

(Do you see my strategic positioning of the bowl in the center of the tablecloth design?)

If you are topping-identification-challenged, those white bits are unsweetened shredded coconut:

There was a night that I mixed the pb-yogurt-chia with cocoa powder and a smidge of honey and froyo-ed it (freeze for 20-stir-freeze for 20-stir), topped it with a spoonful of real vanilla ice cream, and sprinkled chocolate chips, dried cranberries, and cinnamon:

Just as I can stare at avocado all day, I can stare at chocolate all day:

Here are those circles-of-decreasing size again. Such a recurring theme around here!

Oh, another thing. (I know … this is way too much for one post. But I have so much to say still!) I’ve also been enjoying my iced white peony tea all week, thanks to this excellent straining spoon that I found on the street a couple months ago. (It also comes in handy for extracting poached eggs from boiling water.) Step 1 = Pour:

Step 2 = Remove spoon:

Speaking of things I found on the street, these joined the collection the other day:

And the last thing (I promise?)! When the pb-chia-yogurt ran out, I had to think fast. I blended a sweet potato with yogurt, spices, and vanilla; froyo-ed it, and topped it with a square of Newman’s Own espresso dark chocolate (I also followed it with like 4 more squares of the chocolate with the reasoning that the espresso would help me stay awake to finish my paper, and then I went right to bed.) and a packet of Fitnutz Pro:

I am lucky there are so many reasons to say YUM in my life.

Classily arranged on my cinder block, errrrrrrr, table …

The rain brigade says bye byeeeeeeeeee …

Did you make anything this week? I made the tent‘s cinder blocks serve as a photography table …