Dwindling Down the Meat Share; Easy Veggies

From June through November 2009 we participated in a meat share with Chestnut Farms in Hardwick, MA. Every month we would pick up 10lbs of family-farmed meat at the Waltham Community Fields.

Although fabulously delicious, and family farming is something my husband and I both want to support the best we can, it just wasn't a long-term thing for us. There was a lot of red meat and while the occassional word-defying, delictable, bone-in chicken breast like nothing you've ever tasted before found its way into our cooler, many of the cuts of meat, which comprised the majority of the loot each month, were not what we wanted to eat over and over.

Although not my favorite thing to eat (for a variety of reasons), Husband was licking his chops for the frozen lamb chops hanging out in the freezer from our last pick-up. So, after sitting in the fridge defrosting for few days, said lamb chops sensed my procrastination, and implored me to finally do something with them. (Real willpower here: our bi-weekly cleaning crew came on this particular day and while we usually dine out on these nights to have at least 12 hours of a beautifully clean dining room floor, I felt compelled and didn't want to waste food.)

Loaded with roasted vegetables and served with whole wheat couscous, it was a good dinner and a good use of resources in the fridge. Not much other than the meat was local, but it is January.


There was no real recipe for this and I made it up as I went a long, but I can give a nod to my mother-in-law who made a salad of roasted green beans and onions (from the Moosewood Cookbook) to complement (and frankly, outshine) our Christmas Eve Ham for inspiring the idea of roasting green beans.

• We had four small/medium pieces of mostly bone lamb chops from the farm, I'm guessing about 2 lbs with the bones.
• Roasting vegetables. I had the following on hand: 1 orange pepper (Costco and likely from Europe, but we go through a bag of 6 each week), 1 onion, 1 pint of grape tomatoes (US, but not local) and about 3/4 lbs of green beans (from the regular grocery store and no clue where they are from.)
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• Olive oil
• Salt & Pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Get out a roasting pan.

Wash and prepare vegetables. Remove stems from green beans. Chop onion and pepper into large chunks. Rinse grape tomatoes and use whole.

Toss minced garlic, olive oil, and Salt & Pepper with the vegetables in the pan. Put in oven and set timer for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare meat and let it warm up at bit from fridge temperature. Liberally salt and pepper both sides.

After 20 minutes toss vegetables and set timer for another 15 ish minutes.

After that, add the meat and cook for about 10-15 minutes. We then put the meat on a separate pan and then put it under the broiler, but that overcooked it.

Verdict: Great vegetables; okay lamb. The veggies were the star of the meal -- and a super way to serve a rainbow of color in a short period of time with minimal effort for other busy ladies out there. Slow roasting green beans with peppers, onions, garlic and the pop of the grape tomatoes was very good, and would be great with other types of meats or alone with a grain. The lamb had great flavor, but we did overcook it slightly, and again, I'm probably not the best judge as lamb isn't really my thing.

I definitely treated myself with a piece of after dinner chocolate.