CSA Week 11

We seem to have come out the other side of pepper season in one piece, and not having tossed any out. We ended up making a roasted pepper salad with a sun dried tomatoes and caper dressing as a bit of a clearinghouse for them (one green, one red, one cubanelle) and it was very good. The eggplant parm was underwhelming, and we'll probably look for a different recipe next time, or try Sheri's caponata recipe.

We've also officially signed up for our winter share which is one share in each of November, December, and January. We'll be awash is squash and may be hit by the tsunami of potatoes that we apparently only imagined last fall. We're also trying the cheese share (two one pound blocks each share) because how can you participate in a CSA from Wisconsin and not try the cheese share?

This seemed to be the week of variety. We got a summer fruit medley with apples,, tiny little plums, and crabapples. I'm not sure what the heck one does with crabapples when their brother lives hundreds of miles away; I guess I'll have to throw them at someone else.

A single red pepper which made it into our aforementioned roasted pepper salad.

We embraced the end of summer and made a risotto with sausage and arugula. The creaminess helped cut some of the pepperiness of the greens, which worked out well.

Mary had to resist eating these amazing raspberries for a whole day because I was out with work folks on Wednesday, watching the Cubs suck. I'm glad she did, because they were super ripe and delicious.

These tomatoes were almost overripe when we got them. Two were juicy and delicious, but one had suspicious dark grey abcesses when I sliced it so we went the safe route and tossed it. Bet you never thought you'd see the words "delicious" and "abcesses" in the same sentence.

The second chapter in the variety pack of this week was the herb bouquet. This contained sage, chives, and parsley.

Summer squash is going onto grilled pizza and getting steamed as a side.

A smallish watermellon.

A youngish celery that probably has a pretty aggressive taste. Since Mary doesn't care much for celery anyway, I'll probably bring most of it to work for snacks.

More broccoli is going into a mac and cheese casserole that is designed to trick your kids into eating veggies.

Bottle onions are big this time of year. We'd never really heard of this kind of onion before the CSA, but we sure know all about them now.

We have gotten pretty far behind on the garlic. Most of our garlic heavy recipes (Roasted Garlic Soup and Best Beef Ever) are fall/winter things, so we've managed to store up four or five heads from the last few CSAs. Now that we're getting into cooler weather, we'll start making some of those longer cooking things and work through it. Tastiest backlog ever.