New goal: Try Takis.

Personally, I prefer Jalapeno Cheetos to Hot Cheetos. But what are these Takis you speak of?

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 10 Pick-Up

We were out of town during week nine, and missed out on a great share week (we donated our produce to a friend, since we were gone). Luckily, this week's assortment is making us very happy.

CSA Bounty - Week Ten (veggies and fruit): 

4 lbs tomatoes

1 pint cherry tomatoes

2 sweet green peppers

3 hot peppers

1 bunch basil

7 ears sweet corn

1 eggplant

1 bunch cilantro

1 bunch arugula
1 cucumber

a lot of squash

1 Garden of Eve-grown organic watermelon 

1 sunjewel melon

peaches 

Oh, yeah. And there's still a cabbage from...week seven...oops.

Guess who's making another pan of King Ranch Squash?!

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 8 Wrap-Up

At the start of Week 8 we still had these CSA items in our kitchen:
most of a bunch of green onion
1.2 cucumbers
1 head cabbage
some lettuce 

And then, our CSA provided us with an EXPLOSION of new summer produce!

CSA Bounty - Week Eight (veggies and fruit):

3 Sweet corn 

1.5  Lb mixed zucchini (we got all yellow)

1.5 lb cucumbers (we chose green)

2 stalks dill

1 bunch swiss chard

1 bunch beets

1 bunch carrots

1 bulb fennel

1 onion

bonus: half-pint of cherry tomatoes

1 plant basil (which we planted and are TRYING to keep alive, I promise)

1 half-pint Garden of Eve-grown organic blackberries

donut peaches

I kind of wish we'd signed up for fruit every week. This has been some good fruit. I miss it when we don't get to take it home.

Anywhoo, with this lot, we arranged to devour the following dishes:

1. More scrambled eggs with scallions (CSA scallion) and cheddar cheese (not pictured).



2. "I Actually CAN Believe They're Not Crab Cakes" (CSA scallion and cucumbers). I don't mean to be picky with the fine folks at Picky Kitchen, but this recipe didn't taste much like crab cakes. The texture was also clearly canned tuna. Luckily, I like canned tuna. Pickled cucumber was good on these, too, as it has been on most things the past few weeks.



3. Sausage and greens (CSA chard and tomatoes). Pine nuts and cheese were added to this dish. 



4. Cucumber salad (CSA cucumbers and dill). Dan didn't follow any one recipe exactly, but he says he more or less used this one, with slightly different proportions of ingredients. The baby devoured them. He loves vinegar!



5. "King Ranch" squash (CSA onion and yellow squash and scallion garnish). Okay! This is another contender for "Best Dishes of CSA 2012." It is also the recipe I plan to make again immediately when we (if we) get more squash. Our gluten-free neighbor enjoyed it, too, once I substituted cornstarch for the small amount of flour. Oh, also we didn't have a jalapeno, so I left that out. Layer of tortilla chips on the bottom, y'all.  Make it!



6. Fresh, raw: CSA blackberries and doughnut peaches and melon -- not pictured except for the melon. Guess what? Our kid can now say (nay, demand), "Bewwies!" I don't like cooking fruit that tastes this good. We left the peaches in a brown paper bag over night, FYI, to get them perfectly ripe.


 
7. Corn salad (CSA corn and spring onion). Avocado entered the picture (again; we love avocados), along with tomatoes and a dressing of mayonnaise, lemon, and cumin. Another standout.



8. Beet and Fennel Slaw (CSA beets, carrots, and fennel). This was based on a Martha Stewart recipe. The beets are served raw and shredded, which (if you have a food processor) is so much less messy and time-consuming than roasting or boiling them first. It was very good -- sour in a pleasing way.

Note: You won't find any Week 9 (a "veggies only" week) posts this year, as we were on vacation last week and gave our share to a friend.  Week 10 begins today. Onward!

Joining us over in Week 10:
1 head cabbage

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 8 Pick-Up

Look at Week Eight's haul! Now, THIS is getting hard to photograph. I feel like we've hit the height of this year's season, but only time will tell if that's true. Best week yet!


CSA Bounty - Week Eight (veggies and fruit):

3 Sweet corn 

1.5  Lb mixed zucchini (we got all yellow)

1.5 lb Cucumbers (we chose green)

2 stalks Dill

1 bunch Swiss chard

1 bunch Beets

1 bunch carrots

1 bulb fennel

1 onion

bonus: half-pint of cherry tomatoes

1 plant basil

1 half-pint Garden of Eve-grown organic blackberries

donut peaches

Which joined a loafing-around-our-kitchen-from-week-seven crew of:

most of a bunch of green onion
1.2 cucumbers
1 head cabbage
some lettuce 
  

Eek! Use that cabbage, lady!

What did you get in your CSA share (or at the greenmarket) this week?

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 7 Wrap-Up

Oh the bounty! How the bounty increases! Welcome corn and onion. Keep 'em coming, squash. Kinda getting sick of you, pickling cucumbers.

What we had to deal with:

Week Seven's CSA Share

2 lbs zucchini (green, yellow)

2 lbs (regular!) cucumbers

1 head cabbage

1 bunch spring onions

1 head radicchio -- error! it was lettuce, not radicchio

2 pieces dill

3 ears sweet corn

1 bunch beets

*PLUS* The leftover produce from Week Six, still in the mix:

2 pickling cucumbers

And, so, long on ingredients (but, as you'll see, short on photos), we made and ate:



1. Beet Burgers (CSA beets, cucumbers, and dill). These beet burgers were major players in Week 7. You'll see their return below, but for this first appearance we quick-pickled some more cucumbers and used them to top this NY Times recipe. They tasted pleasantly of beets and white beans (rice and goat cheese were also in the mix), but I think the sour pickles were an excellent topping that made them extra-special. The buns were English muffins.





2. Squash and pasta (CSA squash). Okay, we're boring. We really like pasta. It's E-Z food. This one also contained grape tomatoes, garlic and lots of cheese. Fine by me!


3. Fresh corn on the cob (CSA corn) -- not pictured. You really don't need to do much to corn this good. It was quite sweet and tender. I wager we could have eaten it raw, but it was lightly boiled. I didn't even add butter, and for me that's a big deal. Just. Corn.





4. Beet Burger Lettuce Wraps (CSA beets and lettuce). Here are the leftover beet burgers, chopped up and used as the filling for lettuce wraps, along with some red onion and more goat cheese. I really liked these -- more than the beet burgers themselves, in fact. The lettuce was crispy and not too bitter.


5. Scrambled eggs and scallions (CSA scallions) -- not pictured. I used some of the green onions in one morning's eggy scramble. You may notice in week eight (going on as I type this) that we try this trick again. Must've liked them!

Still hanging out at the end of Week Seven
most of that bunch of green onion
1.2 cucumbers
1 head cabbage
some lettuce

Adios, amigo:
2 yellow pickling cucumbers from two weeks ago (oops) that got slimy. Tossed!

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 7 Pick-Up

It's week 7, which means we're about a third of the way through our CSA season. The dill has gone to flower, but the corn is just getting started. What did you pick up this week?

CSA Bounty - Week Seven (veggies only):

2 lbs zucchini (green, yellow)

2 lbs cucumbers

1 head cabbage

1 bunch spring onions

1 head radicchio

2 pieces dill

3 ears sweet corn

1 bunch beets

Leftover produce from Week Six, still in the mix:

2 cucumbers

So, what would you do with these ingredients?

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 6 Wrap-Up

Let me refresh your memory before I get to the good part (the eating part). 

Week 6's CSA produce was:

1 bunch dill

1 zucchini and 1 yellow squash

1 cabbage

1 head lettuce

1 kohlrabi

1 broccoli

4 pickling cucumbers

1 bunch carrots

1 bunch cilantro

3 pints organic blueberries

Already in the fridge -- leftovers from previous weeks:

2 heads broccoli
3 yellow pickling cucumbers
1 kohlrabi
some lettuce
1 bunch mustard greens -- I think these might have gone bad while I waited to buy Ritz crackers for a gratin. Curses!

With all this, we made and ate up, greedily:

1. Blueberry Scones (CSA blueberries). For these, I tried a Martha Stewart recipe, but with orange zest instead of lemon. I only had medium eggs in the house, so I used 2 1/2, to try to approximate 2 large eggs. Don't worry -- I didn't throw out that other half egg.  Instead, we scrambled it (with some of the leftover cream and a couple more eggs) and ate it while we waited for the scones to bake. 

Ultimately, Martha's recipe didn't produce as tender and moist a scone as I would have liked, but they were perfectly good, flaky blueberry scones. It's just that I was trying to recreate some incredible, rich and tender blueberry scones we ate at Nick's parents' house over the July 4th holiday, and these were not them.




2.  Kohlrabi Slaw (CSA Kohlrabi and cilantro). I was really trying to feel inspired by kohlrabi this week -- especially with two in the house that I didn't want going to waste. I read through the comments on this New York Times blog post about kohlrabi and discovered a commenter raving about a slaw made with equal parts kohlrabi and Bosc pear, plus cumin, cilantro and lime. It sounded perfect -- a little unusual, but made of good flavors. Dan and I both like cumin. Well, we made it, and it tasted weird. I didn't like the cumin in it at all, and Dan thought it was merely okay. The next day, it was even worse, as the pear released its juices and turned everything slimy, and neither of us could bear to finish the leftovers. Boo, NYT commenter. Boo!






3. More, more, more pickles (CSA cucumbers and dill). Keep on picklin'! We added the dill flowers that came in the share this week.






4. Cabbage slaw (CSA cabbage and carrots and cilantro). Dan's a bigger fan of coleslaw than I am, but even I enjoyed it. And the baby beat us both on consumption of this particular batch. It was that good. What do you like to do with cabbage? I'd love some non-slaw ideas (beyond soup and cabbage rolls).






5. Bacon salad (CSA lettuce). Homemade croutons, avocado, tomato, onion ended up in the bowl, too. Blue cheese dressing finished it off well.





6. Squash quesadillas (CSA squash). This week's summer squash was sauteed with onions, and the quesadillas were filled with refried black beans, tomato and raw onion, cheddar cheese, avocado, and hot sauce. Delicious!






7. Broccoli and cheese soup (CSA broccoli). Dan said he looked at the pictures in a Pioneer Woman post before making this soup, but he never actually made it to the words of her recipe, so he clearly didn't follow it exactly. He chose to partially blend it with the immersion blender, so it was chunky rather than smooth. This soup was a great way to use up three heads of broccoli -- the finished product featured big cheese flavor and only a slight broccoli stinkiness.





8. I had thought about making homemade blueberry doughnuts with the blueberries left at the end of this week, but I couldn't find a recipe online that looked just right. I thought I was settling when I happened upon one for Blueberry "doughnut muffins" double-dipped in lemon glaze (using CSA blueberry), but I think that it was actually the superior choice. Here's the recipe for these muffins; you should make them. They are remarkably tender and the lemon glaze (I used a tablespoon lemon juice instead of the water) was extra-tart, just the way I like my lemon glazes. What a treat!




Current Leftovers:
2 cucumbers, waiting to get pickled. Not too shabby!



Lost, lost, lost (gone bad and tossed into the trash during week 6):
1 bunch mustard greens 

I'm happy with how this week went. Let us not weep for the mustard greens lost, but rejoice for all the produce found. And let us welcome week 7 with open arms. 

What's cooking at your house?

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 6 Pick-Up

 

Mr. Baby and I had to go to a birthday party yesterday morning, so Mr. Dan picked up our weekly CSA share. It's hot stuff!

CSA Bounty - Week Six (veggies and fruit)

1 bunch dill

1 zucchini and 1 yellow squash

1 cabbage

1 head lettuce

1 kohlrabi

1 broccoli

4 pickling cucumbers

1 bunch carrots

1 bunch cilantro

3 pints organic blueberries

And, lest we forget, the following items are still hanging out from previous weeks:

2 more heads broccoli
3 more yellow pickling cucumbers -- eek!
another kohlrabi
some lettuce
1 bunch mustard greens -- I think these might have gone bad while I waited to buy Ritz crackers for a gratin. Curses!

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 5 Wrap-Up

Our Week 5 CSA Share Consisted Of:
4 small yellow squash
1 head unlabeled lettuce
1 bag loose lettuce (mesclun mix?)
2 heads broccoli
5 pickling cucumbers (2 yellow, 3 green)
1 kohlrabi
1 onion
1/2 lb. fava beans

And we still harbored these odds-and-ends from previous weeks:
5 small radishes
1 bunch ruby chard
1 bunch mustard greens
1 bunch carrots
a little bit of parsley

On to The Stuff We Ate!



1. A beet salad (CSA beets and lettuce). Also included: plenty of pepitas and goat cheese. Dan's asleep, but I'll ask him in the morning if he recalls what the dressing was.



2. Long-Awaited Carrot Cake (CSA carrots). This is technically Dan's birthday cake, but it came late this year. Luckily, we got carrots in the CSA share the week of his birthday. I had to pad them out with a few "regular" carrots, but the cake still tasted great. I almost always use a Cooks Illustrated recipe from 2003, and I didn't deviate from that this year. Here it is online (I don't add nuts). However, I followed the print copy's more heavily spiced variation (so much cardamom in my spice cabinet right now!) and this year I topped it with a cream cheese frosting that included Greek yogurt and orange zest. Happy Birthday, Dan!



3.  Grilled fava beans (CSA fava beans). I know that fava bean pods aren't to be eaten, but when I chanced upon a recipe that called for preparing them edamame-style (seasoning on the outside, licking your fingers, eating only the beans, and tossing the pods as you go), I pounced. Here's the recipe, from 101 Cookbooks. Ours were seasoned as suggested -- with olive oil, coarse sea salt, and red pepper before grilling (I used our indoor grill pan) and doused with lemon juice and zest (and more salt and more red pepper) afterwards. We ate them on the spot, standing up next to the stove, and really enjoyed the licking-our-fingers part. This was our standout dish this week, and definitely a "best-of" CSA recipe. I hope more fava beans are in my future!



4. Pasta with squash (CSA yellow squash). Pasta is so simple, but it's a very effective way to use up CSA veggies. Dan topped his with ricotta. I just added a little extra butter to the noodles.



5. Turkey burger (CSA pickling cucumbers, onion, and parsley). This was served with sauteed CSA swiss chard (not pictured) on the side. Once again, I've skirted the whole "canning" issue and pickled half of the cucumbers without fuss.

It's 1 AM, and the clock has rolled over to Week 6. Pickup's in 9 hours. Good night!

The Stuff That Remains:
2 heads broccoli
3 yellow pickling cucumbers
1 kohlrabi
some of the lettuce
those darn mustard greens



The Stuff We Tossed Into the Garbage:
The sad little radishes.  Look, I wanted to roast them. It got too hot. Then I wanted to make this. I got too lazy. Next time!

-------

Are you furious at my radish waste? Got any great ideas for that leftover broccoli? Did you make any standout dishes with your CSA produce last week? Please leave me a comment so I know I'm alive (that's the kind of joke I make at 1:08 AM).

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 4 Wrap-Up

Week Four Produce (veggies and fruit)
2.5 lbs summer squash
2 pickling cucumbers -- CHALLENGE VEGETABLE
1 "regular" cucumber (but I'd swear this is just a big pickling cucumber. It looks the same as the smaller ones)
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch arugula
.75 lb mesclun mix lettuce
1 bunch carrots
1 bunch kale
3 pints blueberries

Plus the following items leftover from previous weeks:
5 radishes
a baggie of snap peas
1 bunch mustard greens
1 pattypan squash
1 bunch kale

With these ingredients, we made:



1. Double-your-pleasure kale salad (CSA kale). Kale, lemon, coarse salt, avocado, olive oil. This is the stuff.



2. Zu-canoes (CSA squash, including pattypan, and parsley). Dan stuffed these with squash, parsley, two types of cheese, green rice, and mushrooms. The pattypan squash's skin was a bit tough, but the zuchinni and oblong yellow squash were terrific.



3. Arugula salad (CSA arugula and mesclun mix). Arugula and greens, tuna, lemon, sunflower seeds. dried cranberries. Dan felt this was a little bland, but I quite liked it. I want to have dried cranberries in all of my tuna salads.



4. Blueberry Cobbler with Cream Cornmeal Biscuit (CSA blueberries). I found this recipe in the Rustic Fruit Desserts cookbook I was given as a Christmas gift. You can also find the recipe online. Unlike rhubarb, I think blueberry is best mixed with other fruits. I find its baked flavor a bit heavy, sweet, and overwhelming alone. Thank goodness for the superb biscuits on this cobbler. They cut the blueberry sweetness in just the right way.

5. Raw snap peas, eaten as a traveling snack (not pictured).



6. Several snacks of quick pickles (pictured) and raw cucumber (not pictured). I mentioned in a previous post that I am intimidated by the canning process. I've yet to "put up" any batches of...well, anything. But I did turn our pickling cucumbers into "quick pickles" by slicing them into thin rounds and spears before giving them a bath in commercially prepared (dill) pickle juice that just happened to be in the refrigerator.  24 hours later, they were good. 48 hours later, they were great!  We had them on sandwiches and raw. Baby-approved!



6. Epic Frito Salad (CSA mesclun mix). What a doozy, in the greatest possible way! Cotija cheese and a shredded Mexican mix of cheese, corn off the cob, Frito chips, tomato, black olives, red onion, and that mesclun mix came together under an elote-inspired dressing of lime, mayonnaise, and Tapatio hot sauce. This is Dan at his best, folks.

We traveled over the 4th of July holiday, meaning we didn't get through as much produce as we might have otherwise. And so, still in the fridge, fated to join Week 5's produce, lie:
5 small radishes (booo!)
1 bunch ruby chard
1 bunch mustard greens
1 bunch carrots
a little bit of parsley

Oh yeah, and thrown out this week:
2-3 handfuls of snap peas that sat in a hot car overnight while we were camping. Goodbye, cruel world!

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 5 Pick-Up

Okay. I'm a little behind, seeing as I pick up Week 6 produce tomorrow and still haven't written Week 4 or 5's wrap-ups.  Whoops. Let's start with the easy stuff.

Last Saturday, we still had the following items in our fridge from previous weeks:
5 small radishes
1 bunch ruby chard
1 bunch mustard greens
1 bunch carrots
a little bit of parsley

And then we received the following veggies:



CSA Bounty - Week Five (veggies only)
note: nothing on this week's pickup was labeled, as there was some sort of key that had been lost (I was told).

4 small yellow squash
1 head unlabeled lettuce
1 bag loose lettuce (mesclun mix?)
2 heads broccoli
5 pickling cucumbers (2 yellow, 3 green)
1 kohlrabi
1 onion
1/2 lb. fava beans

And that's what we had to work with, folks...

Adventures in CSA (2012): Week 3 Wrap-Up

Another week's gone by. We didn't quite get through everything from our pickup last Saturday, but we got respectably close, I think.  And nothing has gone to waste from this batch, so far.

Week 3 CSA veggies:
1 head lettuce (I suspect this was "butter lettuce," aka Boston Bibb)
1 head bok choi
1 head escarole - CHALLENGE VEGETABLE
3 summer squash
1 pint snap peas
1 bunch cilantro
1 bunch kale
1 large cucumber
1 bunch ruby chard
1 bunch mustard greens

What we made this week:



1. Start-the-week salad. I said you might get sick of me making and photographing a series of salads, but I'm not sick of eating them yet. They're a great way to eat a lot of CSA vegetables in one meal, and it's easy to get creative with the ingredients and the dressing (not that we always get that creative). Hey, why am I defending salad? 

For this one, we used the CSA cucumber, some of the CSA lettuce, and added red onion, bacon, and avocado.



2. Swiss chard with cotija cheese (CSA chard). One of my favorite ways to prepare Swiss chard is to chop and sautee the stems with an onion in a little olive oil, then add and wilt the leaves. Dan had the idea to top it with cotija cheese. It was delicious. It would have made a great taco filling (or lettuce cups), but we ate it on its own.



3. Did someone say tacos? Another night, we ate tacos filled with CSA squash and cilantro, as well as store-bought tomato, onion, refried black beans, and leftover cotija cheese. Tacos, salad, stir fry, pizza, pasta, rice, soup -- no matter what ingredients I have on hand, I come back to these dishes over and over again.



4. Bok choi slaw (CSA bok choi). This was Dan's idea, and I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but bok choi makes a very nice slaw. He added carrots and scallions. The dressing included mustard, sesame oil, mayonnaise, and lemon



5. Salad again (CSA lettuce, cucumber and escarole). This one also includes additional lettuce from the store, pancetta, corn, tomatoes, scallion, cheddar, and blue cheese dressing.

This butter lettuce was absolutely tender and delicious. What a sweet little variety of lettuce. More, please!

Leftovers being added to Week 4's share:
4-5 radishes found lurking in the back of the fridge
a baggie of snap peas
1 bunch mustard greens
1 bunch kale
1 pattypan squash

I tried just a bit of the mustard greens raw. Yeowch! That's a potent green. I'm off to research recipes for that ingredient, as well as the squash.

P.S. Guess who hasn't figured out how to eat salad yet (but loves poking at and "stirring" the leaves)?