CSA Week 14: The To-Do List for the Week

I couldn't go pick up our farm share this Friday and with the farm having no power for a majority of the week (therefore no email was sent out with the list) so we were in for a total surprise with what was on deck.  After dividing up the share, this is what we took home

-3 ears of corn
-1/2 of a large cantaloupe
-7 good sized cucumbers
-2 bell peppers (1 green and 1 purple)
-4 large tomatoes
-1 bunch of beets with greens attached
-1/2 pound of carrots
-2 large eggplant

I knew that I had a very busy week ahead of me and in order to put everything to good use, some planning and a schedule was going to need to be involved.  You have to understand that I'm a list maker and for the most part, one that thrives off of a schedule (when you rely on metro north for a majority of your transportation every minute counts!!).  For as long as I can remember I have been obsessed with the weekly Kate Spade planners and even with iPhones and all, I still can't bring myself to give them up and even after the year is over, the past planners go on a bookshelf just in case.  So I sat down and mapped out what we got in the box, different ideas that I had at first thought with what I wanted to do with them and finally went back and started to schedule when all of these veggies would be eaten.  As you can see below, here is a peak inside of one of my notebooks:

With some veggies like the tomatoes, corn, carrots, and beets I had instant ideas on how I wanted to use them.  With some such as the peppers and eggplant I was going to have to dig deep on some new tricks because I for one have totally hit the eggplant wall and then with a quick glance at my calender to see a mostly free Sunday, it came to me what was going to take place with the cucumbers...I was going to make pickles!!!!  I love many different types of pickles but never made by own before.  I kept seeing different blog posts and recipes for "DIY" pickles at home that looked intriguing and really what else does one do with 7 large cucumbers?  So I set up my canning station in the kitchen this afternoon, used a basic pickle recipe that all I had to pick up was fresh dill and more white vinegar and within an hour the jars were filled and complete and now we just get to play the waiting game for a few days to see how they turned out. 



just waiting for their brine bath



CSA Week 7: The Zucchini Circle

So I fully admit that I have gotten a little behind schedule with blogging about our CSA life but here is the recap of what came in our box for week 7.  We have actually upgraded to a full share for the rest of the season because we had a friend that was interested in joining and it works out great because you get more then double the contents.  This is what we took home out of the share:

-2 lbs new red potatoes

-1 bunch early onions

-2 bunches of beets

-4 lbs yellow squash and zucchini

-1 greenhouse cucumbers

-1/2 lb  leaf lettuce mix

-2 bunches of radishes

-2 bunches of hakurei turnips

-1 bunch of toscano kale

Monday night was our smorgasbord vegetable dinner night where we used up a lot of our veggies to go along with the pork tenderloins that I did on the grill.  We roasted up the new baby potatoes with butter, olive oil, salt and pepper and finished them off with some fresh rosemary from the herb pots.  They had a delicious, earthy flavor and don't need to be "over-prepared" in some fancy recipe.  We had a bunch of broccoli from last week that we cooked up, and then sauteed up another batch of the hakurei turnips like I have been doing all season. 

Being mindful of last week's kale debacle, I picked a night that only I was eating (or so I thought) and made a new version of a kale pasta dish (yes, I'm still fully invested in the kale).  This week we had the toscano kale which is a little bit of a different variety then the curly kale that we have had all season since the leaves are larger and flatter (more like a collard) and have a dark green hue to them.  They sauteed up really nicely and I tossed them with some sweet Italian sausage, garlic, olive oil, white wine and some umami paste (an upgraded tomato paste that has become my new obsession).   In went the pasta and a small handful of Parmesan cheese and I had a dinner that I really enjoyed.  The next day I came to discover as I was looking for the leftovers, Andrew also happened to like this version as well since there was hardly any left and now we just have to get my mother on board for this and we can have another enjoyable kale dinner .  

As I said last week, all of the August food magazines have arrived in our house and they are all chock full of fantastic summer recipes that involve lots of farm stand produce.  If you know anything about me, you'll know that I have been a faithful reader of  the big food magazines such as Bon Appetit, Gourmet and Food and Wine for years and actually have quite the cataloging system in order to save all of the back issues.  The magazines and I had been in a rut lately ever since Gourmet closed at the end of 2009 (which I still haven't gotten over) and then I felt like B.A. had gone stale but my hope has been renewed ever since Adam Rapoport took over as B.A.'s new editor in chief and it feels like a completely different, exciting, new magazine.  I have made so many things out of the magazine over the past few months, the point of view is hip, relaxed and refreshing and I encourage you to pick up an issue if you haven't read through one lately so you can have the same success.  And how can you not be excited for an August issue when the last line of the editor's letter reads as this: "Because eating local isn't just about some political statement, it's about good taste".  

Here is one of my favorite's from the August issues that I know is going to become one of my instant summer classics - Zucchini Ricotta Fritters.  I'm not usually drawn to Mario Batali recipes but the picture of these guys sucked me in to try them in the first place and after one bite I was hooked.  They were super easy to make and would either be a great mini appetizer or a perfect light summer supper with a green salad on the side.  Usually zucchini becomes the hindrance of the garden because you get so much of it but I can not wait to make these again next week when the new round of it arrives.  And since our friend Maria stopped over Thursday night when I was cooking up the fritters, it reminded me of a blog post of hers last summer when she talked about the zucchini quiche recipe that my mother passed along to her more then a decade ago which is another easy summer recipe.  It's all one big culinary circle!!    

I've become that "earthy crunchy" kind of girl

7 weeks into the summer of the CSA and I finally took the plunge Monday night and made the kale chips.  We have gotten an over abundance of kale so far and as Andrew told me earlier, it's going to keep coming all summer.  Before this summer, I had never had kale before on a regular basis, always thought it was quite the hippie vegetable but I've done a pretty damn good job in embracing the leafy greens and making them a variety of different ways.  Regardless of what the food is though you are bound to hit the point of no return whenever you are eating something on such a consistent basis and we hit that wall quite hard last week.  I made the pasta with the tomato sauce, ricotta and kale like I did a few weeks ago and maybe because it was 9:45 when dinner finally made it on the table and I was ready to eat my arm off since I was so hungry that I was ok with the dish but my mother and Andrew were not feeling it at all.  I spent my dinner listening to comments of "the kale is too big" and "there is so much kale" that I was just like pick it out but I knew I was going to have to ease up on the onslaught of kale that I have been pushing on my family. 

So here is where the kale chips come into play.  Everyone who I know that has had them absolutely loves them and has told me what a breeze they are to make and that you will use up a lot of the kale in the process.  Stacia from Stone Gardens included a recipe for them in our weekly email and they really were so simple to make. 
-Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. 
-Pull the kale leaves off of the stalky middle and rip into 2-3 inch pieces.  Give them a quick spin through the salad spinner and then toss them with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and arrange onto a cookie sheet in a single layer.  Sprinkle the kale leaves with Parmesan and salt.
-Pop in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes until the leaves crisp up and start to brown on the ends. 

nice and crisp right out of the oven

Maybe it was because I was starving again from just coming from a zumba class but they were really good.  So good that the next day I proceeded to inhale the whole bag of them when I was at work on a conference call and a hell of a lot healthier then the potato chip binge that we sometimes like to go through in our house.  Now I'm looking forward to the next batch of kale that is coming to do this again. 

CSA week 3: conquering the Asian green mix

After feeling like I did really well with week 2's box and being totally in love with the kale and escarole, here is the rundown for what came in week 3:

-1 bunch of green onions

-1 Bok Choy

-2 kohlrabi

-1 bunch hakurei turnips (At first glance, the first thing that came to my mind was Harajuku which was the name of Gwen Stefani's backup dancers when she went solo as a singer.  Obviously we are talking about 2 completely different things here, but for a quick explanation they are a small white bulb that has a sweeter taste to it compared to a regular waxy turnip that you would find in a grocery store).

-1/2 lb leaf lettuce mix

-1/2 lb Asian/braising mix 

-1 head red deer tongue

-1 head red leaf lettuce

-1 head romaine lettuce

-1 2 inch sage plant

All of the lettuces went to salads throughout the week and by the following Friday (which is the day that we pick up our box) there was no lettuce left.  The hakurei turnips were trimmed and will be used with the ones that we get in week 4 since you do not get a lot of them and I believe a simple pan sear with some butter and sugar is going to be the preparation method of choice.  Our sage plant was planted along with the rest of our herbs and as you can see below are coming along nicely on the deck.

CSA Week 1: getting over the bok choy wall

This year we decided to join a CSA in our house.  For those of you not familiar with what a CSA is it stands for Community Shared Agriculture and basically the short gist of it is that you join in the beginning of season, choose whether you want a half or full share, pay a certain fee upfront, and then each week you go to the farm and pick up your designated share to eat and enjoy.  I've heard about CSA's for a number of years and was always intrigued at the concept and our friend Maria (among many other things, my modern earthy crunchy friend who would become a farmer in a heartbeat if she could) joined last year and I was always amazed at the amount of veggies she would get each week from it.  We are going the half route this year to ease into the program and to also gage how we make out going through the box on a weekly basis because we have pretty busy lives and aren't home all that much.   The only drawback to a CSA is that you don't get to pick what you get in your box so if you are a picky eater or have a major aversion to lets say tomatoes then it could become a problem.  I on the other hand loved the idea of the challenge of not knowing what you were going to get each week and looked at it as an opportunity to expand my veggie palate with certain things that were not in my cooking/eating repertoire.  My only rules that I threw out to my family before Box 1 arrived was that we needed to be totally committed to whatever arrived in the box so we wouldn't be wasting a lot of food each week and to throw away any preconceived notions that one might have on a particular veggie so that way the mental wall wouldn't automatically go up at the first thought of certain things.   We are doing ours through Stone Gardens Farm in Shelton, CT and each week Stacia, who heads up the farm sends you an email letting you know what to expect in the box as well as some recipes and ideas on how to use the contents.  At first thought, I had this brilliant idea that I wanted to be surprised each week (because for some reason, I've been on this kick lately where I'm all about surprises) so it would feel like some crazy cooking challenge to have the contents of the box in front of me and then I would just be able to go with it but I've broken down and started reading the emails so I could be mentally prepared for what we are getting. 

Week 1's Box consisted of the following:
-a bunch of bok choy
-a head of red deer tongue lettuce
-a head of green leaf lettuce
-a half bag of Asian greens
-a bunch of radishes
-a 4in oregano plant
(for some reason looking at it now I feel like I'm forgetting something but I will update if I remember what it is)

The lettuces are not an issue at all in our house because we eat a lot of salad and I'm prone to just bring a bag of lettuce with me to work for lunch with a few mix-ins and call it a day.  The radishes also were used in salads and the oregano plant was potted with the rest of our herb plants on the deck.  I'm not going to lie but I'm still a smidge freaked out on the Asian Green mix so I think the best use for this is going to be stir-fryed along with a protein and rice.  My biggest challenge though from week 1 was the bok choy.  We never ate bok choy in my house growing up and have always shied away from recipes in it because the few times that I did have it, it wasn't good so my relationship with it wasn't a good one.  But I thought of different flavor combinations that I liked already and kind of treated it like spinach so during an Asian-inspired meal of honey balsamic salmon and sesame noodles, I sauteed the choy with some garlic and siracha (Asian hot sauce) and we had success on all ends.  Bok Choy can now have a permanent place in my veggie diet.