CSA Summer Share Closeout

Blogs. They seems like such a good idea. You post some pictures, get in a habit. Then you miss a week and it all goes to hell. I now have five (!) CSA summer shares that I have failed to write about, as well as two winter ones. Yikes. I am going to post the pictures all together, then do some quick writeups of what I remember as being standout uses of them. Since a lot of it is months old though, details will be foggy.

Week 16:
Week 17:
Week 18:
Week 19:
Week 20:

It always seems a bit odd to get lettuce (and mizuna for that matter) so late in the season, but I guess they can get two harvests so there's an early and late one. Arugula on the other hand seems to belong to the late season, because of it's peppery bite. It all got turned into salads, of course.

The last tomato of the season seems so very long ago now. We were very pleased with the quality and quantity of tomatoes that we got this year, and most of them (this one included) just got eaten with a little salt.

We have several leek recipes that we did with the various doses of them we got. We made a risotto, a fritatta (I think), and a soup. Other than that last one (which I liked but Mary did not) they were generally delicious recipes.

I think that the veggie that the CSA has most opened out eyes to is squash. It's something that we never really had before joining the CSA, and now that we've tried many recipes (all of which we love) we actually look forward to its season. We've even gone so far as to purchase it at the store, which is pretty serious praise.

The acorn squash we mostly stuff with a delicious southwestern filing that has sausage, tomatoes, black beans, cumin, and red pepper. It's delicious and offsets the sweetness of the squash.

The butternut squash and delicata squash are pretty much interchangeable to us. We have a half dozen recipes we love, including a risotto, several pastas, and a stew that mixes the squash with dried fruit and beef for a great sweet and savory meal.

I honestly can't remember what we used this celeriac for. I am pretty sure that we used half in a pot pie recipe we have, and that the second half ended up going bad in the fridge. We like it, but do need to go out of our way to find recipes for it.

Through the fall, we got a lot of apples and pears. Most of these we just ate as is, but we also made apple cake with some of those.

We got a wide variety of peppers as well. As I have said before, we mostly consider them to be fungible and tend to wantonly swap (sweet) varieties. We do have a bag of green "chili peppers" in our freezer, waiting for inspiration or a bout of cleaning to strike.

Onions are another common fall crop that we've gotten a lot of. We mostly got yellow onions, but have also seen red onions and sweet onions cross our paths. This is fine though, since we tend to use them a lot without trying.

Green Beans usually just get steamed, though for Thanksgiving we made an amazing recipe with shallots and bacon. It was amazingly good, and disappeared quickly.

I honestly have no idea how we used these turnips. I do know that we are not compelled to use the greens from beets and turnips when we get them though, so those suckers went right into the trash.

A big daikon radish was delicious sliced into salads, and lasted quite a while. That's good, since it was the size of a baby's arm and took a while to get through.

This year's challenge crop was definitely carrots. We don't use them that much, and for much of the season got a big new bag weekly. We frequently cut some for a snack at work (along with celery,) but only if we remembered to do so the night before. We used them in a few dishes, but few of those call for more than a little. Still, we were pretty good about not tossing too many away.

We always manage to use one half of each head of cabbage pretty easily, but the second one causes us issues, for some reason. We made a soup and slaw out of this one, which worked well because the soup could freeze.

Parsnips tend to get used along with other root veggies: in the aforementioned pot pies; in pot roast; caramelized and mashed with potatoes.

This was the first time we got rutabaga and marked the first time we made the pot pie with it. We had been subbing in whatever other ingredient that we had extra of, and I can't say my palate is so refined that I really noticed the change in using this instead.

I historically have not loved sweet potatoes on their own, but we have a bunch of recipes that use them with other ingredients that are delicious. We have a burrito filling that uses it, which is quite good. We also made a sweet potato casserole for Thanksgiving that was popular, but way to sweet for me.

We made a mac and cheese bake with some of the broccoli which, while designed to hide veggies to get your kids to eat them, was delicious for us adults as well.

It's a good thing that potatoes last. We like them, but it does take a while to use them up. We have started to find some entree recipes (like Rosti, a Swiss dish that's basically hash browns for dinner) which help to use them up a bit more quickly.

Spinach has a zillion uses. I think we made soup with this batch, but we also like it in a calzone-like spinach and feta pie and in spinach-kale turnovers. Speaking of kale, for whatever reason we didn't manage to use the batch from the last share before it went bad. We do have several recipes we like with it, but none of them managed to get on the schedule before it went bad.

I turned the pumpkin into puree and we used it to make pumpkin bread and for a cinnamon roll recipe that gets a little extra flavor and color from it. This time around we roasted it instead of steaming it, which lead to a much less soupy puree.

Dried mint is the grape leaves of the fall. All the enthusiasm that the newsletter can work up is, "Great for tea". It doesn't even get an exclamation mark. I would say that it's fine for tea, though I won't necessarily pine for it once it's used up.

Last and least, brussels sprouts. How can roasting and the addition of shallots and pancetta not make something amazing? Brussells sprouts easily sunk to meet that challenge, ending up bitter and mushy. We'll give these another try next year with a different recipe, but as of now our dislike of them stands.

CSA Week 15

Though we have used most of the produce from last week, nothing really stands out as a particularly noteworthy usage. We managed to finish the mizuna from two weeks ago and last week's head of radicchio in salads, so that feels like an accomplishment. We're still stockpiling bags of potatoes like there's a famine coming, but hopefully some of that will change.

Oh! Potatoes, potato bread. I used a pound and a half of potatoes (which made a depressingly small dent in our stockpile) for my first shot at potato bread. My usual source for bread recipes (The Bread Baker's Apprentice) wasn't much help as the potato bread recipe in there is for a sourdough, and I didn't want to spend a week getting the starter in place. I found a good sounding recipe online (good in that it used a pound and a half of potatoes) and made that. It was a very soft bread with a texture more like sandwich bread than the rustic loaves I made all last winter. It was good though, and found it's way into grilled cheese and breakfast toast. Plus: Pound and a half of potatoes.

French breakfast radishes

Lettuce

Tomatoes. Still not getting old. The biggest of these was a two pounder!

Leeks went into a rustic mushroom tart, built on a foundation of phylo dough. It was good as a side, but definitely was a bit light for an entree which is how we were using it.

Another head of radicchio was used for a pasta dish that also used our two pound tomato. This was fantastic tasting and also used up most of the head, so that was great.

Last time we got spaghetti squash it did not cook well and ended up tasting raw and crunchy. This time, we managed to get it cooked all the way through and tossed it with herbs and garlic. We still weren't overwhelmed with the recipe, but at least the veggie didn't seem horrid. Another veggie rescued from the swap box by a second try.

Carrots

We're catching up with the garlic and can envision a day when we actually have to buy it from the store again.

Apples and pears

CSA Week 14

Week 14, and we may be in trouble. We managed to go for 10 weeks with no toss aways, but now we've had our second in as many weeks. While we have managed to use most of the mizune from last week, the endive was out of sight/out of mind and managed to get really squicky before we got to it.

As expected, the beets ended up in our old standby salad which was delicious as always. We also made our standard asian slaw with half a head of cabbage, and the warm cabbage salad (I was wrong about calling for potatoes.) The warm cabbage salad was odd, but grew on us over time. It had apples and caraway seeds, which was an interesting blend of flavors.

It's the second season for lettuce apparently. This head will help us use up some of the other random greens that we've been getting.

Mary predicted that our making Best Beef Ever (which calls for two cups of carrots) would spur the CSA to send them. The girl is spooky. I, of course, suggested that we just make it again, but she's afraid it'll lose it's specialness, as if that's possible.

In light of the early demise of the celery two weeks ago, I cut off the root and leaves from this head (bunch?) and stuck it straight in water. It seems to be working, as it's still quite crisp several days later. Yay? Now we need a use for all this celery.

Ah potatoes. Potatoes, potatoes, potatoes. We have gone from having eight heads of garlic in our pantry (down to two!) to three bags of potatoes. I kind of preferred the garlic situation. I am going to use this as an opportunity to try a potato bread recipe, which takes about a pound and a half (I think, it's a bit vague) which will both scratch my bread making itch and use up some potatoes.

Onions

These pears are super sweet and tender. They're great as is, so we'll probably just eat 'em all raw.

Green Beans

Radicchio is a pretty strongly flavored green. We used half the head for a risotto recipe, which was delicious and pretty easy to make. The other half will end up in salads, a little at a time. Sadly we still have some mizune left from last week, so we'll be having some pretty strongly flavored greens in our next few salads.

More italian frying peppers are destined for a chicken chili.

It's amazingly still tomato season around here. That's fine with us -- we'll never get sick of ripe tomatoes sliced and eaten with a little salt.

CSA Week 13

Nothing too exciting to report from last week. The pizza bianca recipe we made was excellent, and really reminded us of the pizza rustica we had gotten in Rome. Next time, we'll throw on some cherry tomatoes and prosciutto (or maybe some chopped anchovies) and it will really bring us back. We've been working our way through the tomatoes, but having received so many last week we still have some left. The last handful of romas are going in a chicken dish for dinner tonight. We even managed to use some of the potatoes, which is quite the feat for us.

Despite making several sage heavy dishes (a great pasta with garlic chips, sage and sausage as well as sweet potato ravioli in sage brown butter) we're still awash in the stuff. I think we'll try to dry it this week (or we'll put off trying to dry it long enough that we can feel justified in throwing it away.) This? Is why we stopped planting herbs in our window boxes.

Mary has always had a rocky relationship with fancy greens, so this week's curly endive and mizuna are a bit of a challenge. Thankfully, at least the huge bunch of mizuna is milder than the arugula was so it can be mixed into salads in greater quantities. We've yet to dig into the endive, so we'll see how that goes.

We really did briefly consider doing something with our beets other than roasted beet salad with onions and feta, but then we came to our senses. We have a beet risotto recipe that sounds fascinating (and like it would be an awesome color,) but since it's a side we'd need a pretty easy dinner to go with it. I've also been tempted lately to try to make a quick bread or cake with shredded beets (which I'd probably base on some form of carrot cake recipe) but that may be a bit experimental for Mary. If I do give that a go, I'll post pictures of the misadventures.

Two red onions.

Thank goodness, it's more potatoes. We have a few potato recipes on the menu for the coming week, including a dill potato salad and a roasted potato recipe that we've made before, so hopefully we won't fall too far behind. I made hash browns with some of last week's, and they actually came out crispy! The trick is to keep squeezing the shredded potato until you can't get any more moisture out before tossing them in the pan. Who knew?

Half of this head of red cabbage is getting turned into asian slaw, and the other half will likely become a warm cabbage salad. With potatoes, so it's a twofer!

Italian frying peppers

Honeycrisp apples and moonglow pears both sound a bit like they were named by the same guy who names paint colors. We had the apples in a pork dish where you simmer them in apple cider, then reduce the cider into a glaze for the pork. It was delicious, though whole wheat egg noodles are to be avoided in the future. The pears will probably just get eaten as is.

Sungold tomatoes are like candy. We grew them last year, and they are sweet and wonderful.

Green zebra tomatoes and our "heirloom" tomato (no variety name was given) pretty much tasted like tomatoes, but with less acidity.

This red slicing tomato ended up in an omelet with some of the red onion and italian frying pepper. A hat trick!

CSA Week 12

Last week's CSA went well, though we did have our second (or third, depending on if you count our willful disposal of the first grape leaves) bit of CSA produce expire before using. The juvenile celery that we got wilted almost immediately, and my placing it upright in cold water did nothing to revive it. The crab apples were successfully integrated into a summer fruit crisp along with the apples from the share, which was delicious if a bit overly sweet.

Sadly, the grilled pizza was a bit of a letdown. I am not sure if I under-kneaded it, or if it just had too high a content of whole wheat flour, but it never really developed gluten and didn't really rise during grilling. It also got quite soggy once the sauce was added, and partially disintegrated on the grill. I am not saying we won't try it again, but we will use a different recipe next time.

On with the show.

Two pounds of roma tomatoes will get turned into a topping for pizza (based on the Cook's Illustrated pizza bianca recipe) and maybe sauce.

Acorn squash is slated to get stuffed for lunch today, we'll see how that goes. The stuffing has turkey sausage in it, so it can't be all bad.

Would anyone like some sage? Because we have a ton. We plan to make a couple three dishes that call for it (white bean dip, a pasta dish, and chicken saltimboca) but will still likely have a ton leftover. We're going to try drying it, so that'll be an adventure.

Zucchini and a pattypan squash are both going into zucchini bread. Putting the squash in that isn't exactly cannon, but what else are we gonna do with one small one?

More garlic to add to our ever growing collection. We did make a rub for grilled chicken that took 8 cloves, so at least we are only up a half a head this week.

Pears and more crab apples will probably go into the same fruit crisp we did last week. Mary had one of the pears and reported that it was very tart, so that should help offset the sweetness of the crisp itself.

Red and cubanelle peppers

This? Is a really effing big boc choi. I should have thrown a small child or yardstick in for scale, because this is a seriously mutantly large vegetable. We'll probably do a stir fry kind of thing with this, since that seems to be the prominent way to cook it.

French breakfast radishes still look just like fingers and taste just like radishes.

Potatoes will be keeping all the garlic company in our pantry. I've looked up a technique for making crispy hashbrowns, and I also want to try making potatoes with onions and bacon (sort of a variation on lyonaise potatoes), so at least we have some plans for this batch.

Arugula will join the little bit we have left over from last time. It's got such a strong taste that only a little can go into salads without blowing us away. Maybe we'll look for a soup or something that can take it. We have a pretty mild spinach soup that might benefit from the sharpness.

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.

CSA Week 10

Crimini mushrooms are going into fake ravioli (fake because they are wrapped in wonton skins) with some smoked cheese.

These odd little dessert pears are much smaller and sweeter than normal varieties, and also ripen earlier in the season.

Wax beans are something that I remember very fondly from my childhood. They were always one of my favorite veggies when I was little, probably because there are so few yellow options there.

Two smallish leeks.

Red slicing tomatoes will never get old.

The broccoli was slow to mature this year. Guaging from how often this fact was mentioned in our newsletters, this was a Big Deal.

Radishes are going into salads.

Another japanese cucumber.

Basil is getting pestoed along with last share's. We'll probably have that over the fake mushroom ravioli.

As with the banana pepper last week, I am unsure what we'll do with a cubanelle pepper. Probably just pretend it's a normal green pepper and use it however we used the other one we got this week. We also got a purple pepper, which we'll cut up for salads.

Another eggplant. As good as the caponata was with the last eggplant, we figured we'd branch out and try something else. We made eggplant parmesean from a recipe in the CSA newsletter with this one, and it was ok but needed more sauce. Live and learn.

Corn is one of the things that we most look forward to from the CSA (along with berries and tomatoes.) This was delicious, if a little on the small side. We used it and the leeks to make Cooking Light's creamed corn with bacon and leeks. It was so amazing that I am linking the recipe. Sweet and savory and smoky; just the perfect way to show off corn. We will definitely do it again.