Adventures in CSA: Week 14, Part I

This week, if you'll recall, I had a friend offer to pick up my CSA share while I was out of town. Naturally, I took him up on the offer. That's a far sight better than giving it all away! Mr. Paul procured:

1 bok choy
1 lettuce
3 beets
1.5 lb potatoes
1.5 lbs (mooshy, gooshy) tomatoes
1 lb shelling beans (CHALLENGE VEGETABLE!)
1 peach (bonus fruit)
1 plum (bonus fruit)

We're off to the races now, kids! This was a big batch and we haven't gotten through it yet. So, what did we eat so far?




1. CSA Pasta Sauce and Pasta. The tomatoes were super-ripe and turning to mush, so I felt we needed to use all of them immediately. A vat of pasta sauce seemed the perfect solution. I sauteed leftover CSA squash from week thirteen in olive oil with half a large onion, added 2 bulbs of CSA garlic that have been kicking around the kitchen for a while, smashed the tomatoes, and added basil, oregano, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.

I forgot to salt the pasta water, so I had to add a fair amount of salt to finish the dish, but otherwise it was perfectly simple and comforting.





2. Peachy Yogurt Breakfast. I posted earlier on my week of yogurty breakfasts. This one was a bowl of raw honey, bonus CSA peach, puffed brown rice, sesame seeds, dried cherries and cranberries (the final, frozen "crispy rice cakes" from July), plain yogurt, and flax seed.

I do believe Dan ate the bonus CSA plum, though I don't know if he yogurtized it in so fine a fashion.





3. Beet and Goat Cheese Salad. I baked the beets (2 golden, 1 red) in foil, then cooled and sliced them to add to a salad of CSA lettuce, clover sprouts, and goat cheese. Dan dressed it with oil and vinegar, and it was done. I love beets.





4. Bok Choy and Mushroom with Noodles. This was a week of fast suppers and light labor. We have had leftover cellophane noodles in the house for a month or two, and since preparing them is much quicker than cooking rice, we added the remaining noodles to a stir fry of bok choy (the leaves were a little bitter, but didn't harm the dish much), scallions, baby portobella mushrooms, and leftover soy-glazed almonds (from that magnificent green bean salad recipe I've raved about). With peanut and sesame oil, fish sauce and soy sauce, the whole thing cooked up nicely, though the noodles are a bit fiddly and tend to stick together -- perhaps I should be cutting them?


----

I picked up a smaller lot of vegetables yesterday (for week 15), which is great, since I still have some lettuce, some peppers, all of the potatoes, and the beans (which I have shelled) from week 14. Watch this space for more on that.