CSA 2012 Week 11

It's midsummer, so it's officially time for me get to behind on posting the CSA pictures and watering the plants. Like clockwork, I am. Hopefully the chard on the roof isn't all dead.

More corn is always welcome. We tend to sneak it into various soups and dishes that don't necessarily call for it, and it brings a nice sweetness and crunch. Love it. Quite a mix of tomatoes this year. I don't recall getting as many cherry tomatoes last year as we are this year, but I am sure that if I looked back I'd be wrong. Green beans It seems early for a rutabaga, but they keep well so it's fine if it ends up sitting for a bit. Rutabaga is probably our favorite root veggie, so it's welcome even if it is early to the party.

I have nothing left to say about potatoes. Towards the end of the season, broccoli plants start sending off a bunch of smaller offshoots which look like slightly leggy florets. We got a huge pile of them this week, and ended up roasting and tossing them with chili-garlic paste. Roasting makes most things better. Onions These bell peppers got roasted and made into a salad. We've swapped pickup sites this year, and due to the logistics of the new location our veggies are spending a bit more time un-refrigerated. This has lead to some stuff arriving slightly overripe or -- in the case of peppers -- already with some soft spots. It's tough to use this many of them in such a short amount of time, though roasting helps to extend the runway. The farm is aware of the issue and trying to adjust the shares a bit to compensate.

CSA 2012 Week 10

More corn! It's odd, because corn is the crop that is most often shown when the news wants to demonstrate the drought conditions, but I feel like we are getting a ton of it from this farm. I think we'll finally grill some (with delicious Chorizo Brats from Paulina Meat Market) and then wing it with the rest. I cut out two recipes for corn ice cream that Mary is not at all on board with, but I am dying to try. We'll see if I can sneak that in. A giant bag of yellow and green beans. The bulk of these will go into a salad with dill and sweet onion, the rest will probably just get steamed. Fingerling potatoes do well in potato salads, so we'll likely pull one of those recipes out. Shockingly brightly-colored orange eggplants. We made caponata last week, but we also have a pasta recipe that calls for either zucchini or eggplant, so we'll probably swap this in on that.

So, about that cantaloupe...I guess they really like the weather. While last week's was absurdly small, this is one of the largest I have seen. We're scheduled to get another this coming week, so I am curious to see if they will continue to grow until we need a separate box just to hold the melon. Shallots, garlic, and onion all came bundled together. Nothing has a specific destination yet, other than the bean salad (these are supposedly vidalias and the salad calls for sweet -- serendipity!) More lovely tomatoes. These are going into the aforementioned pasta dish with the eggplant, and getting sliced and eaten with salt. Mmm...tomatoes. A honest to goodness, full size green pepper. We always seem to get a wide variety of sweet and hot peppers from this place, so sometimes it's nice to see a plain ol' bell pepper. Ah, the simple things.

CSA 2012 Week 9

This week's share felt a bit smaller, but it's hard to judge the farm harshly. There are currently four counties out of over a hundred in Illinois that are not deemed at an emergency level of drought, and the non-drought ones are all the urban area around Chicago. Yikes.

This week the full-sized tomatoes begin! We also got a nice mix of various cherry and grape varieties. mmm....tomatoes. This rather large bunch of basil will get pestoed. I have read that if you blanch the basil before making the pesto that it will stay greener, but time will tell if I will go through the effort. More glorious corn. A bunch of this got used for our favorite corn recipe. So good. Though we have been grilling a fair amount this summer, we haven't actually grilled corn yet. Weird. One gigantic cucumber. This guy is just massive. It went into a simple tomato, cucumber, and feta salad.

This cantaloupe is evidence of how spare the veggies are. Generally fruit only goes to folks with the fruit shares, but I think the veggie harvests are so far down they are scrambling a bit. Red potatoes The New York Times had a big article on ways to use eggplant last week that proved to be well-timed. We had a few from last week still, so we made caponata with those and some of this batch, then will use one of the NYT recipes with the rest of these. Aside: White eggplants actually look like eggs. Weird! A big bag of small sweet peppers. These run the gamut from green to red, and were used in the caponata and here and there. We did our roasted pepper salad, but used last week's share for that.

CSA 2012 Week 8

Very darkly skinned blue potatoes. They are less shocking on the inside, though still quite distinctly blue. Assorted sweet peppers. No specific plans here, which means we are probably in trouble since peppers tend to come in landslides. Our first tomatoes of the year are these cherry tomatoes. These ones will be getting roasted along with the potatoes for a salad. Not finding the recipe online oddly, though I feel like that's where it came from in the first place. A bunch of greens, which we have declared to be mustard greens. Going with the old standby of winter green pizza, along with some of the chard from the garden. Kohlrabi got honey-buttered.

More glorious corn! Part of this will get banked, and part will get made into a side with leeks. Oh man, I go and shoot my mouth off about being done with cucumbers and what do we get a huge new batch of? That's right. These are pickle-shaped, so I will probably either do another batch of the ones we tried this year (which were fairly traditional) or attempt another batch of Science Pickles. Sweet onions Oh okra. We have found a recipe that I like for this (cut it, salt it, roast it) but Mary's still not entirely on board. Also, I need to prep it when she's not looking, because it really is a horror show inside those pods with their sticky oozing goo.

CSA 2012 Week 7

Despite the weather, the CSA carries on. Not too much exciting to report from last week. I did make a double batch of my mojito cucumber sorbet, and it came out well. I think I may fiddle with the portions a bit more, see if some extra rum smooths it out more. Still, it's not rock hard so that's a step in the right direction.

We are very excited because it's corn season! Corn and tomatoes are two clear favorites when it comes to veggies, so we are always overjoyed when they appear. We made corn and tomato pie with some and froze some for later. Onions A small head of orange cauliflower and a small head of romesco cauliflower. Both got roasted and dressed with brown butter. Garlic

We appear to be on the comedown from cucumbers at this point. We got one english (seedless) and two of the more normal variety. The assorted baby squash is very assorted this time around. Not sure what we'll do with this batch just yet. We don't love eggplant, but we've found a few recipes that we like. This got grilled with some zucchini and dressed with goat cheese and a balsamic reduction. Oh cabbage, my vegetable nemesis. We used this for a recipe that we call "Polish Grandmother Stuffed Cabbage". And, as always, potatoes.

CSA 2012 Week 6

Week six, and things are going well. We aren't feeling too terribly far behind on anything, and we're getting a nice mix. The weather continues to be insanely hot and dry, and I wonder what things will look like later in the season. It seems like everything has been pushed forward by several weeks, so what will we see come late august? Good thing we like cooking greens and winter squash, I guess.

Holy cucumbers! We are pulling out the stops and making a double batch of sorbet with these, as well as a few other dishes. I am also making pickles with the cukes from last week, so it will be a very cucumbery weekend. Four tiny little baby artichokes. No idea what we'll do with this few. We may just prep 'em and freeze 'em. Fingerling potatoes. We are actually keeping up with potatoes so well that we had to buy some last week. Madness! We think that this is a gigantic white beet and are moving forward on that assumption. Most root veggies are somewhat interchangeable, and they are all good roasted (as this guy is fated for) so if we're wrong it won't be the end of the world. This is sprigariello which is a sort of broccoli-flavored winter green.

Green beans A giant pile of zucchini. We totally remember not getting much zucchini last year, but apparently we were very wrong. No worries, we are baking up another batch of zucchini bread and have a zillion sides that take it. Red onions We get kohlrabi rarely enough that we pretty much always make the same dish with it. Eh, when you find something you like, why not stick with it? This basil will go into our chicken with basil and peaches, which is just so very much better than its name leads you to think it will be. Carrots

CSA 2012 Week 5

We missed week four due to travel, and a friend picked up the share. It's always interesting to hear other people's experiences with the CSA. We have been doing it so long that we're old pros, but talking to newer folks brings us right back to how it was to start.

Three heads of garlic including one gigantic one. Mixed baby squash, which appears to be mostly pattypan. We have a great recipe with feta and basil for this. Arugula A really oddly shaped head of green cabbage is destined to be slawed A huge bag of pickling cucumbers. I am not sure what we'll do with these suckers. I may take a stab at vaccuum pickles again, or I may make sorbet. We'll see how the week goes.

Broccoli Kale Onions These green beans are to be wed to bacon for a new dish. Lucky ducks. More new potatoes. We are already falling behind on potatoes, so we'll need to get cracking on those soon.

CSA 2012 Week 3

Broccoli These fava beans got shelled and frozen, to be dealt with later. They actually need to be shelled twice, since there is a tough membrane around the beans themselves. Last time, we did that via cooking, though in theory freezing will do the same. We'll know how that works when we get around to using them. The first new potatoes of the year. Not the last. This purple kale ended up getting sacrificed to the busy-week-before-a-week-out-of-town gods. They are mighty. Spring onions

Purple carrots We found a great hot and spicy slaw for this napa cabbage. Of course, that only used half this giant head, but baby steps. Beets with greens (which we used, this time.) Zucchini Garlic scapes will go into a garlic lover's rub for grilled chicken.

CSA 2012 Week 2

More potatoes carried over from the previous year, these were blue on the inside. Golden beets with huge greens. We've taken to using the beet greens in general, though I am pretty sure this batch got binned. Kale Spinach This is what actual baby carrots look like. I am sure we should be gaga over these and do somethin' fancy, but we always just treat them like normal carrots. I think they went into salads. There is actually a small bunch of cilantro hiding in here, like a spicy vegetal Waldo.

This green garlic was pretty much proper garlic at this point. It had very well formed cloves, and a noticeably woody stem. Crazy weather. Turnips Leeks Red spring onions These english peas got shelled, frozen, and the made into a great pasta this week. Red leaf lettuce

CSA 2012 Week 1 (finally)

Boy I had big plans to actually be on top of things this year. I was going to be get these posts out quickly, link recipes, the works! Yeah, not so much. Life has been very busy lately, so here I am five weeks in and totally behind. I am going to do a quick dump to where we are now, then hopefully be better about keeping up going forward. We are doing Nichols Farm again this year, which is the one we did last year. We did nix the fruit share, and have been buying what we want (i.e. not 100 pounds of apples) at the Farmer's Market. With the weather being so bonkers this year, it's a bit of a mystery what we'll be getting when, so it's like a whole new adventure!

Green onions Snap peas Arugula Red beets Mizuna is a fancy looking, slightly bitter salad green. We planed our own lettuce this year in a fit of madness, so we started out behind the eightball on salads. Potatoes which they store year to year (new potatoes come later.)

Kohlrabi We really don't recall them sending much Lettuce last year, but this time we got it right away. Spinach We have fully embraced the cooking of radishes. It cuts their heat a bit and makes them taste a bit more like a turnip. Green garlic

So far the winter share is going well, though we are coming into holiday travel season so we'll see if that lasts. We have some travel plans coming up, so delicate stuff runs the risk of getting lost in the shuffle.

Both lettuce and this gigantic bag of mizuna can really only be used for salads. Actually, It is possible that mizuna can be cooked, but we've never tried. If we get another huge bag like this I will have to ask the internet. More sweet potatoes. We had planed on making the samosas this week, but it didn't happen. We did make a sweet potato mash with curry flavors, but I can't find the recipe online and the physical one seems to have wandered off. It was very good, so I'll try to link it if we make it again. Blue potatoes This celeriac is going in a risotto this weekend. It is an odd recipe, with less stirring than usual, so we'll see how that goes.

Oh apples. These are going into our usual apple sauce, a new pizza recipe with this arugula, and no doubt many other things. We managed to get the apple drawer empty enough that we can put this week's apples in, which means we will be freeing up the counter for next week's apples. Yay? These leeks are going in the risotto with the celeriac. After spending an irritating amount of time peeling these sweet dumpling squash, I had an epiphany: Peeling them is foolish, so stuff those mofos. We have a few different acorn squash recipes that should adapt pretty well and save us from having to get into all the indentations on these suckers with a peeler or knife. We are roasting these beets for our favorite salad and used the greens in our winter green pizza (linked last week.)

CSA Winter Share 1

Winter share! Last time we did a winter share, we were buried under a pile of potatoes, had our car break down and lock us out at the pickup site in freezing temperatures when we had no coats, and discovered that we are incapable of eating two pounds of novelty cheese a month. What adventures does this year hold? Tune in to find out.

I am going to attempt to mix it up this time through and actually link in recipes where I can. We'll see how long that lasts.

More cabbage, this time in the form of an oddly shaped savoy cabbage. You can't really tell here, but it's very flat and wide. No idea what we will do with it, having just come off the six pound napa last week. This garlic has been added to the garlic chain in the closet. Though we still have a dozen or more heads in there, I do feel like we are going through it at a fair clip. We will probably use this zamboni rapini to keep our ice rink nice and smooth. We may also make some winter green pizza with it, a favorite recipe of ours. No specific plans for this arugula, so it'll probably end up in salad. I tossed these sweet onions into my onion bin, so hopefully they aren't that much different than the other half dozen varieties we have in there.

The very first time we got Brussels sprouts we tried roasting, and didn't much care for them. Now that we know that there are good preparations of them, we're going back to that well. Radishes for salad and snacking. More potatoes. More lettuce. Still odd to be getting so much so late. Oh apples. Apples, apples, apples. So much for getting fewer from the non-fruit shared winter share. We plan to make a new recipe for apple sauce this week, so we'll see how that goes. We are also taking advantage of fresh cranberries to clear out some pears from the apple drawer in the form of pear cranberry pie.

CSA Week 21

This week is actually our last summer share. Due to the timing of the farmer's market where we pick up our share, this one is both share 21 and 22 leading it to have a few items in bulk.

We've signed up for the winter share and it starts this coming week, picking up on Wednesday. We prefer later week pickups, so that's an improvement. We also hope that with so much of the winter share being hearty stuff, they will know what is in a share a bit earlier and send us that before our pick up. That's been an issue this time around, and not knowing until we bring it home has seriously interfered with our normal system.

Finally we are getting some cooking greens, in the form of kale and swiss chard. The chard went into our scramble for a quick weeknight dinner, and the rest of that and the kale are going into soup. This pumpkin is actually a culinary one, so I plan to roast and puree it. I think they current plan is to use the puree in my Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls for Thanksgiving morning. I'll also roast the seeds, and may get creative with the spices there, depending on if Mary plans on having any. Various squashes. Two of these look like rounder delicata, so we may be able to eat the skin. The others will definitely need more prep work, but that's ok. Squash has grown on us so much that it's worth the work.

Twelve heads of garlic. I had a storage crisis due to this garlic, and did a flurry of re-organization in our pantry/root cellar. It's better, but I am still agitating to deal with our overflow spices that also live in there. Another celeriac. Sunchokes are something that folks seem to go gaga for, but we have yet to find a recipe that we're in love with. We've only gotten them once before, so it's not a huge deal. At least this time we got a bunch of them, so it should be easier to find a recipe of the proper scale. A lovely bag of turnips. Less sweet that many other root veggies, we're big fans. These have already been roasted and glazed, along with some other roots. Notable about this recipe is that it appears to be a gateway for walnuts, perhaps the nuttiest of nuts. Onions The last CSA did not grow sweet potatoes. They actually had a policy against it, because they are an extra-hippy farm and sweet potatoes don't fit into their overall philosophy. Every time I worry that I have become the crazy guy that composts his own feces, someone comes along and reminds me that I am not actually that bad.

Guess the weight of this napa cabbage. Four pounds? Too low. Five pounds? Too low. Six glorious pounds. Of cabbage. We have three recipes planned, and with any luck we won't be throwing out too much after all that. These leeks are going into a pasta dish with lemon and chicken. Sounds a bit odd, but it's very good. A very large bag of potatoes of widely varying sizes and colors. A lot of times when we get oddly colored veggies, they prove to be the same as their non-oddly colored brethren under the hood. These purple carrots actually have streaks of purple in the flesh as well as purple skin. Fun! The last apples of the season! They are sitting on the counter at the moment, since the apple drawer in the fridge is full. Also, I am sure we will see more apples in the winter share, though hopefully fewer now that there isn't a formal, separate fruit share. I think that in the end, doing a fruit share with all local fruit in the midwest just isn't viable. Once you get past the berries of spring, there just aren't enough options.

CSA Week 20

We have so many apples at this point that I am considering making my own cider. Not very seriously, but the thought has certainly crossed my mind. We made our green bean, dill and feta salad with these beans. It has easy prep, and we could consume them over time. Garlic. Our first (and so far only) butternut squash from this place. This remains our favorite winter squash, and we are saving it for a beloved pasta dish (with roasted squash and red pepers.) Green cauliflower. Onions.

More lettuce means more salad. The greens on the beets were pretty anemic, so I actually tossed them. How odd that I have gone from making fun of others for being so frontier woman as to cook the greens on their root veggies to feeling sad that I had to toss them out myself. As with many new vegetables, after finding a way in via a gateway recipe (Brussels sprouts with lemon and caraway) we have successfully branched out and come to like other recipes. Not sure yet what we'll do with these, but they keep well so there's not too much rush. Green onions One nice thing about the zillions of potatoes we have gotten from this CSA is that many have been fingerling potatoes. Since they are small and have thinner skins, prep is much faster. It's nice to have potatoes that we can prep on weeknights and still eat at a reasonable hour.

CSA Week 19

I had actually gotten caught up on the blog and was feeling so good about myself, then life got crazy. Oh well, these things happen. Onward!

We're getting properly into root veggie season, though we've been getting potatoes all along. They last well, so we're not too worried about them. It feels like leeks have been a pretty popular veggie here. It's always interesting to see how much the CSAs vary between providers, given that it's all sourced from roughly the same area. I am quite fond of celeriac, and not just because it sounds like a vegetable-based super villain (though that undeniably helps its case.) It has a mild celery flavor without the stringiness of actual celery. This one got glazed and roasted, but in general they can be treated like any other root veggie. Parsnips need a little extra prep work compared to other roots (the core is very fibrous and generally gets removed) but it has a nice sweet flavor and we really like it mashed with potatoes. Apples and pears

The salad green situation from this CSA has been so bizarre. We ramped up for the spring onslaught, and it never came. Now that we are expecting lots of cooking greens, we get lettuce and arugula. Weird. I have gotten so much better about prepping radishes and bringing them as snacks. The secret is not buying my lies when I tell myself I can just prep them in the morning. A few small heads of broccoli. More poblano peppers went into a fritatta and got subbed for bell peppers. They are not very hot, so it's an easy sub. Dried black beans are sitting in the cupboard, getting stored until winter. We tend to use canned beans rather than dried, though that's just habit so maybe having these will convert us. Several of our cooking magazine suggest prepping a huge batch of dried beans on the weekend and then using it throughout the week, but we just don't eat that many of any one kind of bean.

CSA Week 18

As of this post, I will be fully caught up! For a few hours, anyway.

More dragon tongue beans. These look fun, but can be treated as wax beans, which is cool with me because I've always liked wax beans. Decorative mini pumpkins gave last week's gourds the boot. We can only be so festive here. Green tomatoes for frying. This is our first time with kabocha squash I believe. I am sure it's roastable and delicious. Cauliflower And the gigantic 500 pound elephant in the room, apples and pears. So many apples and pears. We did apple butter and a rustic apple tart this weekend, and I do believe I am officially buying an apple corer and slicer. We signed up for the winter share, so I am expecting our apple drawer to stay full for a while.

A zillion little eggplants are going into componata. More garlic It's been ages since we made our sweet potato samosas, so that's likely where these fellas will go. Red onions We finally broke down and bought oyster sauce, but we didn't really notice a significant change in the recipe we make for boc choi. It had been my impression that everything it goes in take on its flavor, but maybe this recipe just had too little. Various gigantic radishes. I was worried that these would be crazy fibrous and hot, given their size, but they actually aren't bad. We used most of the red ones in our cooked radish recipe and they turned out well.

CSA Week 17

What'da'ya'know, it's more apples. Brussel sprouts More carrots. This time we roasted them with salt, pepper, and fennel seed. Beets with greens. The beets got roasted and saladed (our old standby) and the greens were cooked and served on pizza.

Sugar snap peas are great stir fried with red pepper. And we got these mixed peppers, so perfect! Onions I can't for the life of me recall what we did with this spinach. We actually were running low on garlic after making naan and our braise last week, so it's nice to get more. These gourds are purely decorative, which is a shame because I was all excited to actually cook with them. What can I say, the CSA has made me like novelty vegetables. We dutifully propped these on the mantel for a week. Festive. Fingerling potatoes

CSA Week 16

After having so many recipes that called napa cabbage and subbing in regular, we finally actually have the darn thing and we are flummoxed as to what to do with it. Ain't that the way? We ended up slawing it, and that appears to be the one way it's inferior to normal. Live and learn. Mizuna is a pretty mild flavored salad green. Mild enough that we made salads with it subbed in for the lettuce. Delicata squash is unique in the squash world because you can eat the skin. For real! It looks like it will be the crazy armor that other winter squashes have, but you don't even notice the texture of it once cooked. Bizzare. We used these italian plums in an Asian-inspired pork tenderloin with plum barbecue sauce. It's fusion, yo. After all this time being serious(ish) about food, I still make a "take a leek" joke every time we cook with them. We make our own fun.

What's this? More apples? Not that we have any shortage of potatoes (shown here along with their sweet cousins), but apples are quickly replacing them as our vegetable that we are buried under a heap of. The largest drawer in our fridge is now our official apple drawer, and each week we worry that we will overflow it. Arugula for pizza. We talked a big game about swapping up our recipe for Brussels sprouts but couldn't pull the trigger and swapped back at the last minute. Wax beans

CSA Week 15

Ah, so far behind. You know how it goes, you start something, then you get a little behind, then you get so far behind that being behind is the excuse for not actually doing the new posts. Yeah, I'm in that spiral. This share was a solo pick-up by Mary, since I seem to have a knack for scheduling work obligations on Tuesdays. I stink that way.

Lima beans went into a three bean salad. Inoffensive. I think that these carrots went into our favorite fall and winter dish, Best Beef Ever. While I am sad to see summer go, I do love cold weather food. Apples and pears We usually have trouble finding a use for spaghetti squash. We keep trying fancy recipes that we think will rescue it one way or another, but this time we broke down and just doused it in a tomato based sauce (with turkey and a lot of red pepper.) It was pretty good, and I think part of that was roasting (instead of steaming) the squash. I feel like we've turned a corner here, and dare I say I am hoping to get another to experiment with?

Cauliflower Broccoli Various onions While this fella looks like boc choy, the claim is that he's asian spinach. Not sure if that's the same thing or not, but we subbed it for normal spinach in a soup and it was fine, though a bit bland due to following the recipe (vegetable stock) instead of our hearts (chicken stock.)

These green beans are actually hariocot verts. Ooh lah lah! This mix of tomatoes are the tail end of the season. Farewell, tomatoes.

CSA Week 14

Between learning Italian in our free time, me playing video games, and me working on writing my own video game, I have gotten myself very behind on the CSA post. I am going to attempt to do a flurry of catch-up posts, but we'll see how far I get before losing steam...

Assorted tomatoes I think of leeks as a spring thing, but this farm is rocking them in the fall. We have a ton of recipes that use them, and I don't think we've had to revert to subbing them for other onion-relatives yet. Nice! This farm has not been great about sending us what is in the share beforehand. With this share, we actually got that email two days after picking up the share. We did a lot of internet research on these two purple colored forms of peas. Turns out all our research was wrong. The first are a form of shelling pea (which we subbed into our fave pea pasta) called missippi crowder peas and the second are edible shell beans called dragon tongue beans. For the record, we had guessed purple hull peas and cranberry beans. This watermelon turned out to be yellow. We froze most of it and have been enjoying the resultant margaritas (they turn into a very fun color when you use both pink and yellow.)

Holy mother of bell peppers! This place sure likes 'em. Most of these either got stuffed (the larger ones) or sliced and used in a recipe for pepper chicken (which was quite tasty.) Caped gooseberries were less bitter than their non-caped brethren, but still had a certain oddness about them that it's hard to put my finger on. They had a sort of....almost savory or meaty flavor, but not in a necessarily good way. We ended up subbing them for fresh cranberries (augmented with some fresh cranberries) in a crisp with some of these pears. Apples mostly got turned into our favorite apple sauce. Fingerling potatoes got added to the giant pile of potatoes in our pantry. We have a few recipes for fingerlings, we just need to clear a whole in the menu plan for 'em.