CSA 2010 - Week 17

Typically of me, I get caught up on the blog and then immediately fall behind again. We are in the middle of the Chicago International Film Fest, which while fun has a tendency to suck up spare time. Add to that some recruiting trips for work and condo business, and we barely have time to cook the share, not to mention writing about it.

These apples are slated for a skillet apple crumble from Cooks Illustrated that sounds absolutely delicious. It also uses seven or eight apples, so score! A small container of kiwi berries. These are a variety of kiwi that are very small (larger than a grape but still bite-sized) with edible, furless skin. They pretty much taste like slightly tarter kiwis, and I liked them quite a bit. Mary is not a huge kiwi fan, so I (and some coworkers) ended up snacking on the bulk of them. This pineapple is going into our favorite fruit salad, which has mint, basil, and crystallized ginger as well. Tasty!

More pluots for snacking. These were very sweet and juicy when we got them and disappeared quickly. Black seedless grapes added to the streak of varieties they have sent us. These were larger than most grapes and had a very firm texture. I liked them quite a bit. Anjou pears went into a pear and cranberry pie as well as onto a pizza. We have a few left that we plan on using in a chicken dish with sage and pears. Bartlet pears were primarily used for snacking. These came to us very ripe, and we had some trouble keeping ahead of spoilage on them.

On the vegetable side of things, this felt like a final blowout before the first frost. We got two sprigs of sage, which will go into the aforementioned chicken dish; a small head of lettuce, which was about a salad-and-a-half's worth; and a tiny head (stalk? bunch? bulb?) of fennel that looks to really only be good for the fronds. These leeks are destined for risotto. We have an 'almost no-stir' recipe that we are going to try out as a side, so we'll see how that goes. These green bell peppers were actually a bit larger than the ones we have been getting. They'll get used here and there. More hot peppers that we will put in a bag and forget.

I didn't consciously divide the pictures into end of summer/beginning of fall categories, but I might as well have. Late season produce is going full tilt, and this was the first share that really blew us away with that fact. Butternut squash is one of our favorites. It stores well, tastes great, and is pretty easy to prep. I always end up with an orange second skin when I do so, but it's a small price to pay. Potatoes Spinach Arugula was supposed to go on our pizza with pear, but we discovered that we did not have prosciutto, so we used it on sandwiches with goat cheese and thyme instead. They ended up being quite tasty, so it was a nice surprise. Plus we got to make the pizza the following week, so it was win/win. This cauliflower got roasted and dressed with brown butter and a little salt and pepper. Dumpling squash is the shorter, squatter cousin to delicata squash. It's pretty odd to see them side-by-side, just because we've gotten used to the coloration of the delicata, but to see it on such a different shape is strange. These are a bit harder to prep than butternut given the unevenness of the skin, and they tend to yield less flesh for that work. Way to stink, delicata squash.

CSA 2010 - Week 16

Broccoli will be roasted and tossed with a raisin vinnagrette. Green and purple Kohlrabi will likely go into a slaw with carrots, which has a lemon and honey dressing. More spinach. This got put into a calzone along with the spinach from last week, some feta, and some onions. These pumpkins will get roasted and pureed, then used for pumpkin bread and whatnot. It freezes well.

Lettuce Butternut squash Swiss and rainbow chard went into our standard scramble with some basil and sage. Red bell pepper Heirloom tomato These hot peppers were supposed to go into the chard scramble, but of course we forgot to add them. Potatoes

CSA 2010 - Week 15

Even yet still more avacadoes. Five of these went to a good home with a friend from work who claims to eat many a week. Since we are always struggling to find a use, it seemed like a good way to get rid of them. Granny smith apples don't cook very well (they get mushy) but these gala apples do. We made apple cake as well as double apple pork with them. Grapes

Lovely, delicious pears. We enjoyed the cardamom ginger pear butter that we made in the past, so we made another batch with these. So delicious. Plums Valencia oranges again. Some more.

Three gigantic beets with greens. We plan on making a gratin with these, and used the greens in a pasta. Green tomatoes for frying, along with a small heirloom one for normal consumption. Lettuce. Delicata squash is getting roasted for a pasta dish we love, which also has roasted red pepper and goat cheese. We always think of things to do with hot peppers and then totally forget what we had planned once we are making the dishes. We forget to sub it in for hot sauce, for flaked red pepper, along with cayenne pepper, etc. We're really becoming quite the specialists at forgetting our hot peppers exist.

This arugula went into a delicious risotto with sausage. Spinach Boc Choi is something we get rarely, but enjoy enough. We make a stir fry with it along with soy sauce, ginger, and garlic. This cabbage got stuffed following a Barefoot Countessa recipe. It ended up being oddly sweet, but not a bad dish all around. Carrots A green bell pepper

CSA 2010 - Week 14

We like celeriac, though Mary is not a huge fan of celery itself. We tossed out the tops of these, and shredded the bulbs along with potatoes for a rosti. Broccoli Potatoes The recipe that we used this delicata squash in said that it could go in un-peeled. We didn't really trust that, though, so we peeled it anyway as we do with all other winter squashes. More acorn squash for stuffing. We have been banking a lot of these for later use, since they store so well, though we have started using some of it up in order to keep our pantry from getting overfull.

Tomatoes This kale went into a gnocchi dish with some of the delicata squash. It was Ok, but not our best gnocchi recipe (or our best squash recipe, or our best kale recipe.) We keep forgetting that these radishes exist, since they are tucked away in a crisper drawer. Lettuce We put this sage into a pasta dish that we love, which also has sausage and a ton of garlic.

CSA 2010 - Week 13

Between busy weekends and early days at work, I have managed to get quite behind on the blog. I am going to go for complete, but quickish posts to get caught up.

Apples These mangoes were very firm, but not at all fibrous. We used them in ginger mango floats and subbed them in for pineapple in a fruit salad. A small bag of small grapefruit.

Nectarines We love, love, love fresh figs, and were very excited to get them from the CSA. We have a ton of recipes, but in the end we couldn't resist just eating them as-is, some wrapped in prosciutto. It's amazing how many different kinds of grapes there are. Pears It wasn't on the newletter, but we did get one avacado.

Spinach Kale Lettuce just never seems to end. A mix of heirloom tomatoes. Remember when I said those were ending soon? I guess I was wrong. Two sweet peppers. An onion.

Parsley We are big fans of acorn squash, which we stuff with various fillings. Carrots This farm was originally planned as a beet farm, and they have some huge beets. These came with the beet greens attached. Arugula was used in a risotto. Cilantro.

CSA 2010 - Week 12

While we are really enjoying this new CSA, we do feel that that the Saturday pick-up is a mistake. The veggies and fruit are excellent, but we feel like prisoners in our own house. We traveled this weekend to visit my folks, but had to leave very late on Saturday and return late Tuesday in order to have time to pick up and prep the share. It was a great visit, but having to work around the pickup was inconvenient for all involved.

We've never gotten red kuri squash before, but we use lots of butternut, so we will likely swap this in for that. Winter squashes keep forever, so we'll eat the more delicate stuff this week and keep this banked. One more onion. A small muskmelon and a small watermelon will just get eaten as is. We have a container in the fridge that has been getting refilled with melon every time we empty it, and I imagine that these will continue with the refilling. Red pepper Sage More dill

This kale is going into our winter green pizza. Tomatoes and heirloom tomatoes are finishing up for the year. These may be the last, or we may see a few more. Carrots While we have a lot of recipes that call for leeks we don't have any specific plans for this fellow. The current plan is to sub it in for part of the onions in the pizza.

CSA 2010 - Week 11

Last week's share went well overall. The lemon balm syrup ended up tasting as mild as it smelled, but at least it served to sweeten the tea. Mostly everything else went into recipes that we have made in the past, so not much to report there.

More oranges are going to be a challenge to use up. We'll probably just supreme the lot of them. Half of the avocados will get guacamoled and the other half will likely get given away. We really need to start searching for other avocado recipes, since it seems likely that these are not the last we will see. These white fleshed nectarines are sweet and delicious. These pluots are very odd looking. They are the size of large plum tomatoes, and firm fleshed and green. We've been working our way through the other fruit, so we haven't tried them yet to report on taste.

Two kinds of apples this week. Some will go into apple cake, some into a roasted pork dish, and some will just get eaten as is. Red flame grapes. We have a great recipe for pork with roasted grapes, but since we are doing the apple one, we'll likely just eat these as-is. Muskmelons Plums

We have gotten a surprisingly small amount of kale this year, which is a shame. We actually like it quite a bit, and have a bunch of great recipes for it. This bunch will go into a pasta dish with tubetti (we are actually using ditalinni, since we have it for a soup recipe), red pepper, and various other things. These beets are getting steamed and glazed with orange juice (one orange down!) It's a recipe that works will all forms of root veggies, but we like it best with beets. The onions this season have been a bit iffy. It's very common for them to have one or two layers that are already browned and mushy when we get them, which is an unpleasant surprise. This cilantro will go into the guac as well as into tacos. This is a much more reasonable number of tomatoes than we have been getting. These will be easy to use and go into all sorts of dishes.

Zucchini Cucumber Lettuce This eggplant has triggered the CSA paradox. We need a little more than we have to make the caponata recipe that we have, so we had to buy a second small one. In the end it was worth it, plus it used up a tomato and some of the celery from last week. A threefer! In this week's newsletter, we learned that green peppers are likely to be the only color we get. Apparently the longer they ripen (and color), the more likely they are to rot or get disease. For that reason, this slightly red-ish one may be the darkest we see. The freezing of last week's oregano seemed to go well, so I am going to try the same with this thyme. We have some storebought thyme kicking around too, which will likely get frozen with it. We will be roasting this fennel with apples for the pork dish. These hot peppers will be used here and there. This hard-neck garlic contains a small number of very large cloves within a head. We do love garlic, but having enormous cloves can make it hard to use in normal dishes. We do have a garlic based rub for grilled chicken that uses a ton, so we'll likely do that with a large portion of it.

CSA 2010 - Week 10

Last week's share went well. The watermelon margaritas were delicious, and I can definitely see myself making them again in the future. We used our standard recipe for two drinks as a base (three shots tequila, two shots fresh lime juice, one shot triple sec) and swapped the ice for four cups of frozen watermelon. The pulp from the melon added a nice smoothness to the frozen drink, and lent it a mild melon flavor.

The corn pie was also fantastic, and I would totally make it again. The pie crust was made with a lot of olive oil with some black pepper. It was great, and I can see using it for other savory pies.

Two heads of lettuce. Muskmelon and watermelon are getting cubed and eaten as is. This watermelon is a normal red one. Both are sweet and delicious. Green peppers will go in salads and some other dishes. Hot peppers are going in various dishes (chilaquiles, the dressing for a taco salad.) An onion. Lemon balm is something that my mother used to grow as a ground cover, but we never used it culinarily. I am making a simple syrup with the balm steeped in it for flavoring ice tea. It smells pretty mild, but hopefully it isn't overwhelmed by the tea.

I am attempting a technique for freezing this oregano. We don't use a ton of it, so if the freezing works then we can have it available when we do need it. Cucumber We only got one pattypan squash in our share, but we swapped a second cucumber for a small second one and a small regular summer squash. We have a recipe for pattypan that we've been wanting to make, so it seemed like a fair trade. We are going to put these carrots into a gratin. We've made it in the past with beets and carrots, and will likely pick up another small root veggie up from the grocery store to go into it. Mary doesn't much care for celery, but I like it. I'll probably end up eating it as snacks, but it may also find its way into soup or something. Tomatoes. Tomatoes sliced with salt, tomatoes chopped into salads, tomatoes roasted with lemon and rosemary, tomatoes sliced on our burgers, tomatoes in our chilaquiles, steaks with tomato jam.

CSA 2010 - Week 9

Last time we got Avocados we tried Alton Brown's recipe for guacamole, and it was delicious. Three of these are going into that, and two got passed to one of Mary's coworkers. The last will probably get sliced onto burgers. These 'dinosaur egg' pluots are fun and speckled and juicy and delicious. The flesh is golden-red-ish and the pits are quite stubborn. These are just slated to be eaten as snacks. This watermelon turned out to be golden. Some of this is partaking in an experiment and some will just be eaten as is. For the experiment, I am adapting a stirred margarita recipe that calls for the juice of four cups of watermelon. Instead, I am freezing four cups of cubed melon with the intent of making a blended one with that in place of ice. These bartlet pears are slated for a pear crisp with golden raisins and a delicious crumbly topping.

We are repeating a recipe we made last time we got peaches and making chicken with peaches and basil. It's amazingly good, for a combo you might not otherwise consider. Champagne grapes are fated for pizza. Wow we make a lot of pizza. Limes are going in the margaritas and guacamole. More cherries, more cherry pies. Billy suggested making maraschinos in a comment, but we love pie too much to spare the cherries. Mmmmm...pie.

Oh thank goodness, I was worried that lettuce season may be over. Basil for the chicken and peach dish, as well as pesto for the grape pizza. What is it about basil that makes folks want to do such strange stuff with it? Cucumbers. I overcorrected on my last attempt to make my sorbet, and it ended up tasting like lime and nothing else. It was also a little icier than I would have liked. With a bit of luck, I can get the next batch where I want it. A single small green pepper. The ones from last week had very thin shells, but these ones are more 'normal'. We had also gotten a small red pepper, but it was too little to have much use. We swap boxed it for more basil.

Apparently when I lauded the tomatoes last week, the universe heard. Of these fourteen tomatoes, a few are going in the guac, a few are going in a quiche-like corn and tomato pie, and a few will get eaten sliced with salt. That may still leave a dozen tomatoes, and if that happens then we may try making a roasted tomato sauce. We consumed the remainder of the zucchini bread from the freezer, so we're due to make a few more loaves. Onions Two ears of corn are going into the pie and two are getting grilled with burgers.

CSA 2010 - Week 8

This week we got a lot of variety, but not too much volume of any one thing. We're down to just some oranges left from the last share, and we're slowly working through those.

We were supposed to get mizuna or arugula this week. We were hoping for the later (we have a great pizza that uses it) but sadly got the former. I think that we'll press forward with the pizza anyway, even though the mizuna is much milder in flavor. Lettuce Six glorious ears of corn. We are using this with the leeks in the next picture for one of our favorite sides. It's basically creamed corn, but with fresh corn and leeks cooked in the rendered fat of bacon (which is sprinkled over the final dish) it's hard to go wrong. We got two novel herbs this week: summer savory and anise hyssop. The first looks and smells like it is in the thyme family (and is getting subbed for it in a few recipes) and the latter has a peppery anise flavor. A teeny, tiny little jalapeno pepper will make its way into a quick weeknight pork chili verde. The other peppers in the bag are hot banana peppers. I don't usually think of banana peppers as being very hot, but the newsletter said that these packed some heat. They are likely to end up in the chili as well.

This small eggplant and these squash are heading for a layered gratin-like dish. Still not out of squash recipes. A small bunch of chard will end up in our scramble with whatever herbs remain. Cucumber, I have the same advice for you that I had for the zucchini a few weeks ago: Less is more. We actually got two in the share, but I swapped out out for an extra leek since the two we had were small. I like that this CSA actually seeds the share box, since with the old it seemed like nobody wanted to start one. These green bell peppers are fairly small, but we did get four of them. No specific plans, but I am sure we'll muddle through. Oh joyous tomato season, how we love thee. These are not a mix of varieties, but a range of ripenesses. The CSA intentionally sends some that are not all the way ripe so that they will last a bit longer. These will end up in various dishes (the pizza with the mizuna, the gratin) as well as just sliced and enjoyed with a little salt. Nothing like a ripe tomato with a little salt on it to make it feel like summer.

CSA 2010 - Week 7

The internet has returned to us! Last weekend we were traveling, so I had one of my co-workers pick up (and consume) the share. It was nice to have a break from the CSA, and we were re-energized to get back into it with week 7. Not so re-energized that I got the post up in a timely way, but that's a whole 'nother ballgame. Onward!

We have found that cutting up fruit and calling it fruit salad is pretty boring, but adding some form of dressing really perks it up. This pineapple and mango both ended up dressed with a honey-lime dressing and getting tossed with mint and basil(!). I really liked the addition of the savory elements (there was also some red bell pepper in there) and we enjoyed this dish as much as the winter fruit salad we had made earlier in the season. We got a zillion more valencia oranges this week. These are very juicy, so we will probably mostly use them for that. We did make our citrus salad dessert at least once, but it took four of these suckers to make two small servings, which was a lot of work sectioning for not that much payoff.

These cherries just got pitted and frozen. There were quite a few of them, so they will likely end up in a pie a bit later in the season. Peaches were enjoyed pretty much as-is, though some were cut up and mixed with these blueberries. These apricots were also just enjoyed as snacks and with lunches. Wow, we were really boring with this fruit share. We'll have to flambe something next time or something.

Parsley is sitting in our fridge ignored, but will likely get used soon. These red and golden beets (without the greens this time) made their way into a root vegetable gratin, along with some of these carrots. We really liked this dish, and it's one that can pretty much be made with any root veggies. The beets and carrots made it sweet and colorful, but I can imagine it being good with all different mixes. In a testament to how prepared we were for the zucchinni onslaught, we have still not run out of preparations. These two went into a pasta dish along with this globe and japanese eggplant. Sweet onions Garlic

More corn is always welcome. We love it grilled with a little butter and salt. One thing that we have been impressed by with this new CSA is that when we get herbs, we tend to get very managable amounts. Not so much with this huge bundle of dill. It ended up getting split between the old and the new. The old is our favorite topping for bagels: Dill and Garlic Cream Cheese. The new was an ill-fated first attempt at poaching salmon. The recipe seemed so promising and the paoching liquid smelled so great, but we discovered at the last minute (quite literarlly, the poaching liquid was already at temperature) that the salmon fillets were still frozen. Curses! We muddled through, and it was good enough even with the blunder that we'll likely try it again. I am close to perfecting my cuccumber mojito sorbet. The batch made with these had good flavor, but was a bit too icey. I have since spun up (but not yet tasted) a second batch, and if that goes well I will post the recipe. Lettuce Salad mix with mizuna and baby chard. Mizuna is a great starter green for folks that don't tend to like the sharper flavor of a lot of non-lettuce salad greens. It adds a bit of interest, but is not overly bitter or sharp.

CSA 2010 - Week 5

As with our previous citrus, these grapefruit had the flesh cut away from them, the excess juice consumed in a glass (tasty), were tossed with a shot of brandy, sprinkled with a few tablespoons of brown sugar, and broiled. It's a great, simple way to dress up citrus, and a healthy dessert to boot. These nectarines are, as I type this, being converted into a butter. The process is basically to make a puree and then simmer the heck out of it to reduce the moisture content. It smells like it is going to taste amazing, and it keeps for a year in the freezer. Sold! Wow. Look at all these avocados. This is not an ingredient that we seek out, though it has grown on us over time. We have a great taco salad that will consume one, then we will probably make a whole mess of guacamole. I love guacamole, and hopefully Mary comes around enough on it to help me with the consumption, or I am going to get real sick of it. These rainier cherries are slated for a pie as are...

...these plums. The recipe we are following (from Cook's Illustrated) uses a mix of sweet cherries and plums to simulate the flavor of sour cherries. It seems like a great idea, and we are excited to try it. Plus, it's a twofer. Some of these white peaches found their way into the nectarine butter, and some will get eaten with lunches. More grapes, more lunch snacks.

While we love sage, most of the dishes we use it in are more suited to the winter. This is also going into the turkey meatloaf mentioned in the previous post, and if we have some left we may make a pasta dish we love (which also has tons of garlic.) The first corn of the season has arrived! We love corn, though since our deck is still being worked on, we can't grill it. We will probably cut this off the cob and hold on to it for later, probably for use in our creamed corn with bacon and leeks. Mmm..... Oh zucchini, you need to stop being so eager to please and learn to play hard-to-get. If you'd just be a little less available, maybe folks would like you more. So yeah, more zucchini. Some will get steamed, some will probably get en-breaded, some will sit in the crisper, begging us to love it. This kale and the beet greens from last week will be used in soup along with...

...this cabbage. That's right cabbage, we were ready for you this time! It is even a small enough head that we can use it all in one dish. We actually have a startling number of cabbage plans this year, from a Barefoot Contessa stuffed cabbage recipe, to me using a few leaves to kickstart a sourdough starter (apparently it's full of wild yeasts, who knew?) These small heads of lettuce seem likely to be the last we see for a while. They're getting turned into taco salads with the avacado. The first carrots of the season will likely get used here and there, but primarily as snacks. We have reached the point in the season where I have nothing new to say about onions. Three, count 'em, three cucumbers. These are quite large, though not as big as the first one we got this summer. I plan to make another attempt at Cucumber Mojito sorbet this year. The first time I made it I was shocked at how aggressive the cucumber flavor was, so I'll be adjusting up the mint and lime this time. We'll see how it goes.

CSA 2010 - Week 4

We've started getting full sized sweet onions this week, which are easier for us to use than the green onions (see next picture.) We generally will swap the greens in for chives and use them when they are called for, but these bigger fellas we can just use in place of yellow onion. As it turns out, almost everything we make calls for some form of onion, so that's convenient. There is nothing exotic in the future for this cucumber. It'll see salads and feta salad. Yellow and Green Zucchini (which I totally spelled right on my first try) are destined for another batch of quick bread (this time without the chocolate chips but with walnuts, a major breakthrough for Mary) as well as our quick quiche-y bisquick pie. That's particularly good with a bunch of basil thrown in, which is convenient. The basil will also make its way into an herb cream cheese for bagel topping. This thyme has been used here and there, and will be finished in some mushroom and turkey meatloaf (better than it sounds on paper) and a delicious maple and mustard glaze/sauce for pork chops.

We really didn't get the deluge of lettuce that we have in past years, which I think relates to the growing season being shifted so early. I think with the warm spring, lettuces were actually peaking before the CSA even began, so we missed out on the salad-every-day days. I can't say this is a complaint. Broccoli side shoots (which I did not spell right on my first try) are presumably the smaller heads of the plant that form near the main head. We used it in a shrimp stir-fry, and having the smaller, leggy heads actually made cutting it into small florets for that easier. The aforementioned green onions. Red and golden beets with beet greens attached. We are fairly new to beets, and haven't worked with golden ones in the past. We ended up roasting most of them and then dressing them with a horseradish and crème fraiche sauce. It was tasty, though it hasn't supplanted our ol' standby.

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.

CSA 2010 - Week 2

Thanks to a busted DSL modem and irritation at ATT, I am without internet at home until I can get high speed set up from Comcast, which means I am posting this as I eat breakfast at work. I may get pictures up later, but for now it's gonna be a huge wall o' text.

Week 1 of the CSA went well overall. We used all of the veggies as planned, and did pretty well with the fruit. We didn't go into the fruit with a very good strategy (it was pretty much eat it as fast as we can) which I think did us a disservice. We ate so much last week that we got a little sick of it, and this week we have none left. I think that for the next fruit share we will try to preserve (freeze, jelly, dry) half of it so we can spread it across both weeks. We'll see what we get next week and how that goes for us.

On to this week's share!

Beets are one of those foods that we never would have thought to try in the past because... ew, beets. Now we find ourselves looking forward to them every year. This year we even saved the greens and cooked them along with the baby turnip greens to top a winter green pizza. We'll eat the beets too, though since I am at work I can't call out to Mary to ask her what we have planned for them. Something delicious I am sure, and I believe a new recipe for us.

Hidden in with the lettuce was a small handful of radishes. Fitting, since both will get en-salad-ed. Hrm. That came out better in my head.

You'd think with us using the beet and turnip greens that we must have had a green shortage, but you'd be wrong. We also got spinach and kale. We used both in a pasta fagiole dish already, and have some kale leftover. We have a ton of kale recipes, so I am sure that's headed somewhere tasty.

While still faced with an onslaught of zucchini, at least this CSA likes to mix it up. We got a normal looking green one along with a fun yellow one with some faint white coloration and a green cap. Maybe if we keep getting heirloom varieties we'll have to start distinguishing them, but for now they both went into a quiche-like pie.

Scallions have no specific plans, but are pretty easy to use up.

Garlic scapes are likely to end up in naan, since we are planning on grilling for the 4th even though our deck will be post-demo, pre-rebuild. It's more fun with the green flecks anyway.

One huge head of cauliflower. Cauliflower cooked in any way is another item we never thought we'd like, but roasting once again proved us wrong. Not sure what we have slated for this big fella, but I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up in multiple dishes given the size.

One tiny head of broccoli, which we augmented with another small head from the swap box. I guess the good spring shifted this early, because it really seems like we are in the tail end of it already and it's only week two.

One head? Bulb? Wad? of Kohlrabi (which, if you can believe, we augmented with another from the swap box.) Despite looking like the lovechild of Sputnik and a softball, this has a pretty mild flavor in the cabbage family. We have a gratin planned for it along with the actual fruit of the turnips.

CSA 2010 - Week 1

It's CSA time again, which means I'm blowing the dust off the ol' blog. Because we wanted to try a fruit share on top of our veggie share (and due to our pick up spot moving,) we are going with a new CSA this year. The fruit is not from the same farm, or even remotely local (lots seems to be from CA and Oregon this week) which is odd, but such is the life of the midwesterner. You'll notice that all the hardcore 'locavores' live in more temperate climates. On to the share!

So yeah, about that fruit share. Turns out, it's quite a bit of fruit. Being old hands at the vegetable share, we were already trying to outsmart it and preemptively find uses for what we thought might be trouble items (our guess this week? The herbs.) We may have to rethink that though, and start focusing our creative energies on the fruits. These pluots look and taste just like plums, despite being a hybrid with apricots. No special plans for them yet, but we'll see if we manage to get through them. Valencia Oranges are clearly a non-local choice, and hail from California. We are not big orange eaters, so having quite this many is going to be a challenge. We have a stir fry in mind for some and others may get sectioned, tossed with some booze and brown sugar, and lightly broiled as a dessert (a variation on a Rachel Ray recipe, I must admit.) We'll see how that goes. It's early yet for Cherries around these parts, so these also come for sunny CA. As I type this they are all pitted (thanks to my new cherry pitter which, while awesome, makes me feel a little like Anton Chigurh) and half are baking away as part of a coffee cake. The other half are in the freezer, banked for some future use.

Meyer Lemons are an item I always read about in blogs and recipes and wonder about, but since they only seem to be available in the Pacific Time Zone I never gave recipes featuring them much thought. Guess that's changing now. They should last a few weeks in the fridge, so they're out of mind for now. Apricots apparently have a short shelf life, so these are up first for just plain eatin', as are these Flame Grapes. Then we come to a whole buncha nectarines and peaches. Some of the nectarines are slated for a pork dish and some of the peaches for breakfast, cut up on yogurt. The others have no destiny at the moment, but will probably end up as snacks -- It's a bit early yet to bust out the preserves, butters, jams, or ice cream.

Summer squashes are starting early this year, and we are answering that start with zucchini bread. We have a few different recipes we like, and it banks some easy breakfast options, so it's a win all around. Purple and White Scallions are both headed for the stir fry that's consuming some of the oranges as well. Chard is one of our favorite cooking greens. Some of it is going into a simple but delicious scrambled egg dish that also consumes herbs, and the rest will become a calzone along with this spinach.

This poor head of bok choi came to us looking like it had to suffer many humiliations in its lifetime. It's pretty busted up, but we still plan on having it in a spicy stir fry with garlic and ginger. The warm, wet spring seems to be very kind to broccoli yielding three heads of the stuff. We have a few old standbys for this: One head will be roasted and served with raisin sauce (so much better than it sounds) and the other will be lightly sauteed with garlic and red pepper. Spring means lettuce and lettuce means salad. Our old CSA sent us tons and tons of garlic scapes, but this one only forwarded on a few. Having seen that they were coming we pulled out all sorts of recipes. Having only gotten a few, we'll likely just sub them in for garlic here and there. Herbs from the CSA like this basil and oregano are usually hard to use up during the week before the next batch drops, but these are pretty small bunches and will likely get entirely consumed in the scramble with the chard. We had thought we were getting cilantro, which caused me to pull out a recipe for Cilantro and Coriander flat breads that I've been dying to try, but the basil had to go and ruin it.