Ground meat is easy to find at the farmer's market. We normally stick to chicken but last weekend we bought 2lbs of ground sirloin from 6J Ranch and a couple of days ago I took it out of the freezer so that I could cook it today. I wanted something easy and found a recipe for Sloppy Joes from Cooking Light. It was hard to get my daughter to eat it because she does not have fond memories from the Sloppy Joes that they serve at school. I assured her this recipe would be different and she agreed to try it. She ended up having 3 servings! Other delicious recipes we made this week are:

Roasted Beet Pizza (Cooking Light - we used regular and golden beets from Hairston Creek Farm)

Easy Pickled Beets (Cooking Light - regular and golden beets from Hairston Creek Farm)

Creamy Broccoli Soup (Real Simple - we used the romanesco cauliflower from Johnson's Backyard in place of the broccoli - see picture).

I could not find the link to this recipe but have included it here:

Ingredients

1 tbs olive oil

1 med onion chopped

1/8 tsp crushed red pepper

2 cups low-sodium vegetable broth (we used chicken stock we made last week)

1 bunch broccoli, florets roughly chopped, stems peeled and sliced (we used cauliflower)

1 large russed potato (we used potatoes from Johnson's Backyard)

Kosher salt and black pepper

2 oz sharp white cheddar, grated

Preparation

• Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and red pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, untsil the onion is soft.
• Add the broth, broccoli, potato, 2 cups water, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1/4 tsp black pepper to the saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, until the vegetables are very tender, 18 to 20 minutes.
• Puree soup until smooth.

Mid-week is hard if you don't calculate correctly how much produce you will need for the week. If we buy too much, we will waste food (and we sometimes do) because produce is perishable. Lately, we have been trying harder to get less so as to avoid waste. However, when we don't buy enough, then we run out of choices for dinner in the middle of the week unless we are willing to run to the store to get more food, which we are trying to avoid. Yesterday, I had a chicken that I could roast for dinner but not much else to go with it since we had run out of vegetables (except for a few carrots and some celery). I needed to make the dinner substantial since my kids had soccer practice and would be very hungry when they got home. After ransacking the pantry and with the help of some dry staples, we ended up having a delicious healthy dinner and had to share the menu (All Cooking Light recipes - follow the links for the recipes):

Lemon-Rosemary Chicken (We made it without the potatoes as we did not have any)

Fresh Lemon Rice

Drop Biscuits (Very, very easy recipe; biscuits are made in a muffin pan)

The Chicken was from the Cedar Park farmer's market and the rosemary from my garden; the milk was from Whole Foods but was from Texas cows :-). I saved a couple of cups of shredded chicken from the roast so that I could make something for dinner tonight. I made Chicken Noodle Soup with the help of the few carrots and celery I had and some stock that I had made with the bones from a couple of chickens we had eaten a few weeks ago. Of course, I froze the bones from this week's chicken so that I can make stock this weekend when I have more time.