I love fresh fruit.  That said, pre produce box I bought more veggies and less fruit so I’m loving indulging in lots of seasonal, local, organic fruit straight out of the box.  It’s just so good.  As soon as I collected my box I picked out one of these juicy peaches and munched as I drove home.  Yum.

This week the temperatures here have soared and made me crave more cold smoothies and ice creams and light, fruit dishes so we’ve done more of those this week and we’ve loved it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For breakfast we have mainly been eating smoothie bowls with strawberries and all the gorgeous stone fruit, sometimes with granola too.  The pink one on the right was more like ice cream, I’ve been freezing all the fruit we don’t eat fresh and using it in smoothies, this one was all frozen plums, peaches and bananas blended with lavender coconut milk… oh my goodness it was good!! It was thick like soft serve ice cream and sweet but a little tart from the plums, yep, one to make again.

I had to take a few unexpected trips down to San Francisco this week which meant I ate at home less (but did get to eat at the one and only Cafe Gratitude which I adore!) so some of the things in my fridge sat for a while.  The collard greens and eggplant stared at me every time I opened the fridge and so I finally turned them into wraps.  I diced and grilled with eggplant then added it into a pan with lentils, onion, garlic and tomato then used it to fill collard wraps with a tamari dipping sauce.  That was a fun meal.

 

We also ate lots of big simple salads with all the veggies, the heat asks for those and it’s nice and easy.  We did asian style salads with chicken and sunflower seeds baked in raw honey, garlic and tamari on lettuce, shredded carrot and beet and avocado.  I used to live on carrots but with the veg variety in the box I’ve been buying less, I was happy to have them back in the box this week 🙂

The week’s challenging item for me was the lavender.  As kids we’d sew little lavender bags with left over fabric scraps
but that’s all I know to do with it! In the end I decided on lavender lemon bars, and lavender coconut milk.  Both were amazing! The lavender just comes though in a little hint, it’s amazing.  We had sunday lunch at a friend’s house, he has a beautiful espresso machine and is always so kind in making rounds and rounds of coffee after lunch so I took the lavender milk and he make me a latte.  It was heaven!! The lavender came through as just a subtle hint and was glorious in a creamy latte.  I’m now craving them all day but instead I’m just downing the milk cold straight out the fridge.  Still heavenly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The paleo lemon bars took a few tries to get right and the recipe will be up soon but I loved the lemon and lavender combo.  We’re already onto batch number two 🙂 I didn’t know I was such a fan of lavender!

 

With a little less time to be inspired this week, I turned to staples for most of our meals and the produce box veggies went in frittatas and stir fries, but we love those so it’s ok! Eggplant, collard greens and carrots went in this stir fry with honey chicken and we served it on egg fried brown rice.