thoughtful consumption

Wait a minute… that’s not kohlrabi

It’s pac choi. I said I had kohlrabi in my bag and was looking for a recipe. My neighbor suggested making kohl-slaw by slivering the kohlrabi root and using it in place of cabbage. I found a beef with kohlrabi stirfry recipe. When my kohlrabi turned about to be pac choi, I used the same basic recipe. I separated the stems from the leaves, diced the stems and cooked them with the onions, and chopped the leaves and added them with the mushrooms.

The recipe worked out really well. I want to try more Asian cooking, and, from what I can tell, the secret is to use whatever sauce is in the recipe. This recipe called for oyster sauce. Oysters?! It didn’t sound so good to me. But I obeyed and found a bottle at Kroger, and it made all the difference.

I love winter squash!

The acorn squash were wonderful! I had two from CSA bags in the past month. I was going to make soup, but then I found this easy recipe. The only hard part is halving the raw squash. Yesterday, I made the second squash the same way but only used a 1/3 of the brown sugar. And I forgot to put water in the pan. It was still delicious. The maple syrup flavor goes really well with the squash. How cool that something could be so cute, last 5 weeks on my kitchen table, and taste so good! I still have a butternut squash left, and I’ll probably try that the same way sometime this week.

Sweet beets

The little beets were really good, too. We couldn’t believe how sweet they were all by themselves. I baked them wrapped in foil at the same time as the squash. Then I let them cool in the foil and put them in the fridge. The next day, I skinned and sliced them and put them on a salad. The skins come off really easily after they’re baked. Everyone loved them.

Confession time

I had to toss some chard. Not the swiss chard that I ruined earlier this week, but some I discovered in the back of my fridge. It had been there a while. I think we did eat some of it a few weeks ago in a spinach salad.  When I’m writing this blog, I tend to want to focus on my successes, but I guess it’s important to admit that these things happen. (Thankfully, they happen far less frequently than they did my first season.)

One of the reasons subscribing to a CSA makes me eat better is that I hate throwing things out. After all, someone nearby planted that produce, harvested it, and put it in a bag with my name on it. It’s just rude to let it go bad, don’t you think? So I am sorry, Mr. or Ms. Chard Farmer.

Other notes

We lost a sweet potato when we cooked it way too long in the microwave. The microwave started billowing smoke, and we had to run it outside. The microwave recovered, but the sweet potato was toast. We used to think the longer you cook a potato the better, but I guess there is a limit.

I’m out of apples and am looking forward to this week’s fix. Thank goodness it’s Wednesday.

I still haven’t made my arugula pesto, but I’ll do it tonight and maybe try it on pasta and report back.

And we haven’t gotten to the eggs yet. I think we’ll scramble some tonight. My husband offered to make a pound cake again. I first said no in the interest of our waistlines, but now I’m reconsidering. I guess sometimes you just have to do what you have to do…