Here’s one tip for now about CSA meal planning – order pizza. I’m serious! The day you get your box, spend all your energy sorting and prepping the produce and planning your week. You won’t want to cook after all that, so order pizza or make a frozen dinner or something else really easy that everybody loves. At most serve a fresh salad on the side. Or even go out.

Putting all your Wednesday (or Tuesday) energy into dealing with the week’s produce instead of cooking Wednesday supper is the key to Thursday’s supper going well. And Friday’s. And Saturday’s…. Well, you get the idea.

I’ll be back soon with more. In the meantime, here are some older posts that I hope you find useful.

Meal planning

The exciting world of the prep cook

Advice for newbies

Get some style

• sausage
• chevre (goat cheese)
• arugula
• honey-flax-wheat bread
• spinach
• 2 heads of lettuce
• popping corn
• watercress (This was really wet! Check yours and wrap it in a paper towel in another bag if necessary.)
• sorrel
• coffee
• eggs
• sweet potatoes
• corn meal
• herb mix
• Leiden cheese
• cabbage
• carrots
• kabocha squash
• most of a blueberry-oat mini loaf
• not pictured: 3 mini-muffins (They didn’t make it home.)

We were excited about a bunch of things in this delivery.

Sausage and cheese

The Gum Creek sausage is wonderful. It’s singlehandedly responsible for derailing our conversation about going veggie. It went down something like this: “We eat so many vegetarian meals now; maybe we should try going vegetarian for a while to see if… oh, my goodness, this sausage is insane!!!”

About cheese, I agree with Pat, our CSA manager, who wrote about her fondness for cheese in this week’s newsletter.

I’m working on a post about how the CSA has taught Chris and me to be satisfied and happier with smaller portions. Except for cheese. I could eat this whole chunk of Leiden cheese in the course of a day. Same with the cheddar and the blue that I’ve gotten in the past. Thankfully, I restrained myself and only ate about half of it yesterday.

The Leiden is made with cumin seeds. The first time I had it, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be a fan. But now I totally am. It’s best if you let it get to room temperature. Makes a great afternoon snack with some carrot sticks. Mmmm.

Sorrel!

I love raw sorrel, and I’ll just snack on it for a couple of days till it’s gone. However, not everyone appreciates the flavor. Take a bite, and if you don’t like it, you can mix it in with lettuce to dilute the taste (boo!) or make sorrel sauce.

Kabocha squash and cabbage

Chris’ favorite vegetable in here is the kabocha squash; mine is the cabbage. Yep, cabbage. I came to love sautéed cabbage over the winter. We had this huge head of green cabbage that lasted and lasted. We’d shred some and sauté it lightly with onion and garlic. Who would believe cabbage could be that good!

So I’m really looking forward to cooking the cabbage. But since I know it will last longer that the greens, I guess I’ll have to wait a while. Sigh.

Greens report

The hydroponic lettuce goes first. It’s really pretty and tasty. We had some last night with scrambled eggs and two terrific sweet potatoes.

I mixed some of the watercress in with the lettuce. It’s peppery and gives it a little kick. I’m also considering watercress sandwiches (with honey-flax-wheat bread!), roughly according to this recipe with par-cel instead of parsley.

The arugula smelled so good coming out of the bag. I’m going to try to serve that as salad soon. Maybe we’ll have lettuce one meal and arugula the other. I’m not convinced that combining these two is the best path. To me, the tastes are too distinctive.

The spinach is also beautiful – very green with big, healthy leaves.

Corn stuff

I’m sticking the corn meal in the fridge for this summer for stir-fried squash and zucchini.

And we’re going to have to have a movie night – maybe even a movie party – to eat some popcorn! It’s easy enough to make and really good. We just never seem to get around to it.

The popcorn’s very white in real life. Must be the butter filter on my camera.

The popcorn was delicious, but that was only act 1. Then we turned to this great recipe from Allrecipes.com. We made ¾ cup of corn, and it came out to close to 5 quarts, so we just followed the recipe with the exception of using our CSA cane syrup instead of corn syrup. The result was terrific – if eating entirely too much caramel corn in one sitting can be considered terrific.

We cooked the ribs from a couple of deliveries ago. I “grilled” them in the oven according to a recipe from How To Cook Everything. I basted them during the last roasting part with a balsamic-orange dressing I originally made for our supper guests. I wasn’t thrilled with it as a salad dressing, but it made a nice marinade.

We ate the ribs with rice grits, butternut squash, and arugula plus some toasted walnuts for fun.

Shepherd’s pie

We made shepherd’s pie to finish up the arugula and some beet greens that had been languishing in the fridge.

Here’s a picture of the pie in progress.

I made 5 pounds of mashed potatoes in order to freeze some for future pies. (Actually, Chris handled the mashing and did a great job!)To freeze them, I mix in a raw egg and spread them into ice cube trays.

Then, once they’re frozen, I pop them out and into a plastic bag for easy division later. I’m not saying that frozen mashed potatoes make perfect mashed potatoes. But they’re definitely good enough for shepherd’s pie.

Eggs and pasta

Speaking of raw eggs, we also made a batch of chocolate-chip cookies last week.

We’re more confident about snarfing up the dough when we use fresh, local eggs. See?

Speaking of fresh, local eggs, scrambled eggs have starred in a couple of recent suppers.

eggs, garlic bread, and spinach with walnuts

salad, eggs, and sweet potato

And pasta made up the rest.

spinach and salmon-garlic scape casserole

The salmon-garlic scape casserole was pretty good. I combined the pesto with the salmon and a little bit of cream cheese, then tossed the pasta in it, and put it in the oven for about 15 minutes.

However, I don’t think I’ll make this again. I ’d never used salmon from a can before. While I was expecting the taste to be marginal, I wasn’t expecting was all the bones. There were four or five vertebrae along with countless little bones!

We made these with the whole-grain pancake mix from the CSA and frozen blueberries from last summer’s deliveries. I suppose we could have used CSA eggs, but we went with this ricotta cheese recipe instead.

Chris and I are trying to learn how to do pancakes for two. This time, we made the entire batter recipe, cooked a few pancakes, and then put the batter away. (Who wants to stand around cooking all those pancakes if you’re not going to eat them right away?) We tried a reprise with the leftover batter a few days later, and the pancakes wouldn’t cook right. Burned on the outside, raw on the inside. We think it was because the batter went direct from fridge to pan. So we still believe in leftover pancake batter – it just has to reach room temperature first.

Butternut squash seeds

Mmmm… just toasted them in the toaster oven with olive oil and salt.

It took about 30 minutes at 250 degrees. I stirred them every 10 minutes, but I’m not sure how necessary that was. Anyway, there all gone now. A tasty mid-morning snack.

Peanut butter and creamed honey

If squash seeds are for mid-morning, peanut butter-and-honey sandwiches are for mid-afternoon. This one’s made with CSA creamed honey and honey-flax-whole wheat bread. The creamed honey spreads easily, doesn’t drip out the sides, and has lots of honey flavor.

Mini blueberry oat loaf

These little loaves are so moist.

I tried toasting one once, but that’s not really its best milieu. So this time I sliced one lengthwise into quarters and popped them into the microwave instead. Added a little cream cheese and surprised Chris with a non-cereal start to his day.

Last night’s supper

The shrimp cooked in garlic were tasty. I forgot the beer bread in the oven for twenty minutes too long. It was still okay when dipped in the garlic-olive oil from the shrimp. My carefully laid-out schedule went haywire in the last half-hour. And no pictures, I’m afraid.

But anything that didn’t work out perfectly was totally eclipsed by the fun of being with our friends.

Before I served the shrimp from this week’s delivery to guests, I thought Chris and I should try it out. So I defrosted and cleaned a handful.

Then I set out making a garlicky-tomato sauce. I started with sautéing some minced garlic in olive oil.

I added a little red wine, a can of diced tomatoes, and some salt and pepper. (Some crushed red pepper would have been good here, too.) Once the tomatoes had cooked down and become saucy (about 15 minutes on medium), I turned the heat to low and added the shrimp.

Nothing CSA in here but the shrimp: tomatoes with herbs from a can, garlic from a jar, and wine from a bottle.

I left the shrimp in there for about 10 minutes.  (When they’re cooking on low like this, you can be sloppy with the timing. You can tell they’re done when they get a little firm. Or you can taste one. Or two.)

And here’s our supper…

The shrimp were excellent. They had far more shrimp-like substance than the ones I get at the grocery store. (It could be that I don’t buy the right shrimp, though.)

Eating them was like recovering a memory: “Oh yeah. This is what shrimp tastes like.” So I’m sold on these little guys and will look for them in the Farmers’ Fresh online store later in the season.

Mushroom and (sour)cream pasta

We had some leftover pasta, so the next night we made a mushroom-cream pasta dish with garlic and lemon thyme.

mushroom pasta, salad, and half of a leftover baked sweet potato

I cut up the oyster mushrooms and sautéed them in olive oil with some garlic and salt. When they were soft, I added some white wine and let it cook for a minute. Then I reduced the heat, added the lemon thyme and the end of a container of sour cream, and let it cook a couple of minutes more. Using sour cream for a cream sauce instead of regular cream worked great – another wonderful tip from How To Cook Everything. I never have cream around, but there’s usually a little bit of sour cream languishing in the fridge.

Our supper tonight: garlic shrimp, baked butternut squash, salad, and beer bread. And whatever delicious chocolate dessert Joy’s bringing!

• Ezekiel bread
• Carolina Gold rice
• hydroponic lettuce (green and red)
• mixed leaf lettuce
• butternut squash
• Bordeaux spinach
• wildflower honey
• arugula
• strawberries
• eggs
• carrots
• Shiitake mushrooms
• oyster mushrooms
• mini-breads
• chervil, lemon thyme, and salad burnet
• Sea Island red peas
• 2 lbs shrimp!

I also ordered three things from the store

• dried herbal tea mix
• creamed honey
• Blue Farmhouse cheese

Happy bread surprises

So much of our experience of food is vision and taste. I looked at the Ezekiel bread and thought that it was probably pretty nice whole-wheat bread. But when I touched it, I fell in love.  Something about the weight and texture is really compelling. And it tastes good, too!

I also had the little blueberry muffin this morning. What a treat! It had a light, lemony taste that I wasn’t expecting but loved. And it was so soft. It’s kind of spooky to think about what food manufacturers do in order for packaged muffins to (unsuccessfully) mimic this special softness and still have a shelf life.

Salad round-up

The Bordeaux spinach is a really nice spinach with a sweet, pecan-y taste. But we probably won’t get to it till next week because the lettuces need to be eaten first. If you eat it this week as a salad, don’t forget to add sliced strawberries. (Unless you’ve already gone ahead and frozen the strawberries like me!)

Even though the arugula will also keep till next week, I’ll probably serve some with the mixed leaf lettuce. But it’s not necessary to dilute thisarugula; when it’s young and fresh, it’s delicious raw all by itself. (There are also plenty of wilted arugula recipes to try, like Pasta with Tuna Arugula and Hot Pepper.)

I’ve already washed and dried the hydroponic lettuce, and we had some last night for supper. We’ll eat the leaf lettuce soon, too. In fact, once we eat enough hydroponic lettuce to make room in the salad spinner, I’ll throw in the leaf lettuce.

Mushrooms!

We ate the Shiitakes for a late supper last night. I sautéed them in olive oil and then tossed them with minced garlic, parsley from the last delivery, and some of the lemon thyme from this week. I have to confess that I used garlic from a jar for the mushrooms. I only have two big cloves of fresh garlic left and I need them for this weekend.

Also featured were hydroponic lettuce, chervil, salad burnet, a carrot, and a little blue cheese.

How adorable are the oyster mushrooms?

Shiitakes, carrots, and oyster mushrooms

They look like something out of a fairy tale. I’m planning to combine these with a handful of the shrimp. If we have some Tom-Yum soup mix left, we’ll make that; otherwise, it’ll be another sauté with olive oil and lemon thyme, served on top of Carolina Gold rice.

Dinner guests Sunday night

We’re having friends over Sunday night, and I’m going to cook the shrimp slowly in garlic-infused olive oil according to “The Simplest and Best Shrimp Dish” recipe from How to Cook Everything. Basically you slice a clove of garlic (or two!) and cook it sloooowly in a bunch of olive oil. Once it’s golden, you turn up the heat, add the shrimp, salt, and pepper. (The recipe calls for other cumin and paprika, but we’ve just stuck with salt and pepper.)

We’ll serve the shrimp with a mixed salad and fresh beer bread. Probably won’t have a fancy appetizer – just a plate of carrot sticks, blue cheese, and crackers in case anyone’s hungry. You know these are good friends if I’m considering putting out the blue cheese. It’s absolutely dreamy. Part of me would like to play around with making a blue cheese dressing for our salad, but I just can’t risk messing up this cheese.

Peas possibilities?

I’ve got dried red peas piling up in my fridge. Natalie suggested this recipe from the Anson Mills site.  My mom has a recipe she likes, but she’s out of town this week. Anybody else got a pea recipe to share?

• 3 cups of self-rising flour (or 3 cups all purpose + 1 ½ tbsp baking power and 1 ½ tsp salt)
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 bottle of beer (I’ve read you can also use ginger ale or anything fizzy.)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a Dutch oven (if it’s not well-seasoned)
2. Mix the dry ingredients together.
3. Pour in the beer. Don’t over mix. White streaks are okay.
4. Dump the dough in the Dutch oven and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

after baking

No kneading, no rising, no nothing. And the results were awesome. That’s what Chris kept saying over supper: “This is awesome.” The bread is a little crunchy on the outside and wonderfully chewy on the inside. The beer and sugar add just enough flavor. I used an amber ale  although it’ll be fun to experiment with different beers. I could easily see us making this bread once a week this winter. Great for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. An epic win, as the kids say.

Kale with raisins and pine nuts, baked sweet potatoes, and toasted honey-flax-wheat bread with wildflower honey.

We whine about kale a lot, but this wasn’t so bad. We cleaned our plates and everything.

(Both of us are feeling the after effects of kale, though. I’m glad we ate early!)

Tomorrow I’m going to make fried rice with what I’ve got left: kale, turnips, sprouts, and onions.  The hardest part about making fried rice is remembering to cook the rice a day ahead. But I accomplished that this morning. I also went ahead and chopped everything.

This way I can just throw it together for lunch tomorrow.

Update: Here’s the fried rice, and it was really tasty. Definitely a great way to use up veggies.

I’m looking forward to Wednesday. More than anything, I’m craving the strawberries. I flash freeze them on a cookie sheet,

store them in the freezer, and eat a handful frozen for dessert. They’re so good!

Preparation

I’m still not at the stage where I do anything fancy with it. I just bake it in the oven for a couple of hours and then dress it up with butter and a touch of maple syrup. Simple and delicious. Here’s a basic recipe for baking winter squash.

Here’s our squash after the baking.

(NB: if you put a whole squash on the top rack of the oven and the stem comes in contact with the element, the stem will light and your house will smell like pot.)

At this point, the squash slices easily.

I scoop out the seeds and put them in a colander. The flesh goes back in the oven along with a couple of pats of butter and teaspoon or two of maple syrup.

The seeds get rinsed in the colander with warm water and then dried on the counter for a couple of days. Once they’re dry, I toss then in olive oil and salt and roast them. These seeds are not my favorite, however. They’re big and thick, so the ratio of salt to seed is smaller than with roasted butternut or pumpkin seeds.)

Plates!

Here are two of the meals that included squash.

Finally, a  note to the farmers: Please plant more kabocha for next fall. Thank you.