CSA 2010 - Week 3

The pictures here are not going to align properly, since I am posting them long after the original post went up.

CSA Week three and we are still without internet. In fact, here I sit having transferred pictures from the camera from week five and I still don't have internet. Some of this delay is due to equipment (dead DSL modem, bad info on DSL modems, cable signal too bad to use cable modem) and some is due to the joy of customer service. I am writing this up now, though, in hopes that Monday will see internet returned to our household. Let me tell you, not having the internet to lookup recipes during CSA season is downright barbaric. On to the share!

Mangos are not a fruit we usually get, so we were flying a bit blind here. I ultimately went with mango sorbet, which was pretty good. I think these were actually a little under ripe, but it tossed in a little extra sugar and we were good to go. This week's fruit share came to us a little abused, and one place this was quite evident was in our peaches. They don't show it here, but they were quite badly bruised. Still, we managed to enjoy them just fine. Pineapple is not normally something that we would seek out (and in fact, we often avoid it) so we were a bit leery of this fellow. This one turned out to be much less fibrous than the canned stuff, and ended up tasting great. Some went into a winter fruit salad (which was awesome,) some went into a salsa to go with pork tacos, and some I actually ate raw. Madness! I must admit that I am looking forward to our next pineapple, and I could even see myself, gasp, buying one! The nectarines were not as bruised as the peaches, but were still a wee bit beat up. We made a great tart tatin-style dessert with them and it was very good.

These cherries were used in a preserved cherry recipe that we have been dying to try. The whole cherries (stems, pits, and all) are soaked in a mix of bourbon and brown sugar for a week in the fridge. They ended up being good, but wow are they boozy. We had some over vanilla ice cream and some blended with it into shakes. The shakes were a better way to tame the booziness, and were excellent. Blueberries were mixed with the peaches as a quick fruit salad. Grapes are great snacks with lunch, and also went in the winter fruit salad.

It's hard to tell from this photo, but this cucumber was so large that we carved it out and used it as a canoe. Actually, we used it in salads with this lettuce, in a salmon dish, and tossed with feta for a quick side. I honestly don't recall what happened to this squash. It may have just ended up steamed as a side, or we may have done something more exotic. This kohlrabi went into our old standby dish, which includes matchsticked kohlrabi and carrots in a sauce with a bit of chicken stock, honey, and lemon. Nice and easy, nice and tasty. We always say that curly leaf parsley is too big for its britches. I mean, it thinks it's all fancy, but really, it's just parsley. I am not sure what all this went in other than the kohlrabi dish which calls for a bunch, but it tends to get spread around.

Beets went into our old standby beet salad (roasted with caramelized onions, feta, and a vinaigrette) and the beet greens and chard went into a soup together. We tried a new recipe with this cauliflower which was only so-so. It had a lot of great Italian ingredients (herbs, anchovies which we love, tomatoes) and yet in the end it didn't really wow us. These grapefruit snuck in from the fruit share. One went into the winter fruit salad, the other got eaten as is. I have no recollection of what happened to this broccoli or these green onions. I blame the lack of internet, rather than my horrible memory.