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.