CSA Week 6

Two really lanky bulbs of fennel are planned for a fennel and citrus salad. Until recently I'd never had fennel, but I've become quite a fan. It has a very fresh and crisp taste, and is much milder than one would expect from the strong flavor of fennel seeds (which can make anything taste like sausage.)

Oh good, I was worried there wouldn't be any zucchini. These two are slated for a summer vegetable gratin (from Cook's Illustrated) for lunch today. If you can belive it, we actually had to buy zucchini because we had used all the previous shares and only had half as much as we needed for this dish.

Cabbage got slawed, as always. We had planned on making a new slaw with thinly sliced sugar snap peas, but discovered that our sugar snap peas were, in fact, just peas. Instead we made the asian slaw that we usually make, which turned out well.

A tiny little head of lettuce. This was about one salad (for two) worth. The lettuces were much easier to keep up with this year, but that may have been due to the biblical levels of flooding Wisconsin had in the spring.

We have started slicing cucumbers and bringing them to work as snacks. With the garlic scape bean dip, they were delicious and refreshing. If there is any remaining, I may sneak it into the fennel salad, since it has a similar texture and flavor.

Last year, we had no kitchen during the height of potato season. We ended up grilling a lot of potatoes, and feeling a lot of pressure to get through them. These darlings may prove to be our biggest challenge in going to the weekly shares. How many potatoes does one man need?

Chard got made into soup with the potatoes and a lot of rosemary. We had to add in some store bought spinach to reach our needed amount, but it turned out well.

Green onions got sliced into the slaw as well as a few other dishes. We had forgotten we were getting them and bought some from the store, so we're certainly at risk of them going bad.

Black Raspberries

Peas are a vegetable that Mary prefers frozen to fresh. We have no plans for these ones in particular, which could be a problem. With a little luck, we'll be able to find a use for these before the new share arrives.

CSA Week 5

The last of the strawberries. Sad to see you go, little guys. You were excellent.

What we initially thought was lettuce ended up being a huge head of escarole. My memory is a little fuzzy (a problem with waiting so long to blog the share,) but I think we made our roasted garlic and escarole soup with this. If we didn't, we should have -- it's an awesome soup.

Hey look, it's more zucchini. We made a dish with this share that was a sort of cobbler, almost. It took sliced zucchini, onion, and a batter made with Bisquick. It turned out pretty well, and seems like it'd be a good CSA clearing house for odds and ends of future shares.

Turnips are funny looking fellows; They kind of look like oranic baseballs. As we often do with root vegetables, we turned to our old friend, Mashed Potatoes with Root Vegetables (from Cook's Illustrated.) We made a variation with bacon and thyme, and very much enjoyed it.

Radish sprouts have a mild radish flavor and are great in salads.

Sugar Snap Peas were also to prove to be the last of the season.

We are never quite sure what to do with mini onions. We put them in salads, but always worry that they are too mild to sub for real onions but too strong to sub for scallions. We've used them in a few different ways, but desipte them being a rather small amout of onion, still have some kicking around the crisper.

Rhubarb got cryogenically frozen until science develops a cure for absent-mindedness so I can find the really good recipe for crisp.

We roasted these beets and made an amazing salad with carmelized onions and feta cheese. It was delicious, and totally got Mary on board the beet train.

Cucumbers are often a challenge for us, since one can only have so many cucumber and feta salads. We found a salmon recipe that was served over a bed of shaved cukes though, plus it took the last of the dill from week 4. Any dish that takes more than one CSA ingredient gives us an absurd thrill.

Bok Choy was our first casualty this season. We fully intended to grill it tossed with asian seasonings, but by the time we pulled it out of the fridge it had clearly passed the point of no return. I think we should get credit for making it this late into the season before having something rot on us though.

CSA Week 4

As you can tell, I've managed to get quite behind on blogging the CSA. I would like to claim that I was doing a lot of cooking or some other inspirational hobby, but the reality is that I was playing GTA 4 the whole time. And then I bought Oblivion, which seems like it will prove to be a similarly engrossing game. At least I wasn't so busy as to not manage to use the produce from the CSA, so that's something.

Sugar Snap Peas are so very sweet and fresh when we first get them, that we've taken to just eating them raw as a snack before (or with) dinner. These have turned out to be a real treat, and I'll be sad when we stop getting them.

Lettuce

The fresh fruits are one of the highlights of the CSA for us (we almost jumped ship to a different CSA just to get a fruit share) and these Strawberries are a perfect example why. So fresh, so ripe, so delicious. Berries never last past the first day for us.

Garlic Scapes ended up getting subbed for garlic, as usual, and also ended up in a white bean dip that was tasty.

A big, honking cucumber.

We actually have a startling number of recipes that call for dill, and we managed to use it all up, a rare occurance for herbs.

Which brings us to grape leaves. You remember grape leaves? Our pointless nemesis? Well we couldn't bring ourselves to landfill 'em two weeks in a row, so we gave stuffing them a go. We followed a recipe in that came in the CSA newsletter, and while they were entirely inoffensive, they were also pretty underwhelming for the work involved. If we get them in future shares, we may just share box them.

Collards we wilted and cooked with some onion and garlic (scape) and folded into phyllo dough with goat cheese for a spanikopita-like turnover. It was pretty good, though we should have seasoned a little more aggressively.

Last year, we managed to let our kohlrabi go bad before getting to it, desipte having a pretty good sounding recipe that used it (kohlrabi in brown butter and honey.) This year, we made the recipe and despite all of Sheri's loathing of this vegetable, we enjoyed it quite a bit. I passed it on to her; maybe it'll convert her (or at least prevent her share-boxing of it next time around.)

Radishes

Arugula

And here continues the zuchinni onslaught. From here in the future, I can tell you that we have been seeing a fair amount of this lovely vegetable. This share's dose ended up in zuchinni bread. We seem to have a dozen recipes for it, and the one we did this time (from Cooking Light) was pretty good.