thoughtful consumption

Wednesday’s box included some pac choi that was far past its prime. Ick! I was able to salvage some of the stems. I guess this far wetter than normal weather plus plastic bags makes for some of these surprises.

Update: Patricia, the CSA manager, wrote me that the rains and some packing problems led to the smelly pac choi. She offered to replace it with something this week’s box. Thanks!

• chocolate-raspberry muffins – breakfast? dessert? Yes!
• lettuce
• sugar snap peas
• watermelon radishes
• pac choi
• coffee
• herbs: lavender, par-cel, savory, lovage and sorrel
• sweet potatoes
• eggs
• strawberries
• carrots

The good stuff

Fran’s lavender smells great. I haven’t decided what to do with it yet. Right now it’s just sitting on my desk smelling good. The other herbs are exciting, too. I got two sorrel leaves and, after tasting a piece of one, I just wrapped some goat cheese in them and ate them up. They’ve got a nice lemony taste. I’m going to put some of the lovage  in a pasta salad and the others I’ll chop and add to scrambled eggs. (I’m still not over my infatuation with scrambled CSA eggs.)

We made a salad last night with the lettuce, watermelon radishes, carrots, beets, pecans, and goat cheese plus some romaine, peapods, and green onions from our garden. The watermelon radishes are a nice surprise. Very tasty for something that looks like a turnip! I washed and dried the radish greens for a stir fry later in the week. I only wish I’d had the time to make a nice dressing from all the herbs and some strawberries. But by the time those salads were prepared, I was ready to eat!

I’m going to braise the peas in some butter with some of the chervil from last week. It’s an easy recipe from How to Cook Everything: melt a little butter, heat the chopped herbs for a minute, add the peas and heat a little more. I think the trick is to leave the peas on past their prettiest point. I accidentally discovered this last week. Eventually all those gorgeous round green peas start to lose their color and shape. That’s when they’re really done.

I’m thinking about twice baking the sweet potatoes. I’ll bake or microwave them a little bit and the slice them and bake them again with something on top – fresh herbs, butter, or brown sugar. My mom puts cumin on hers.

Online store goodies

I also bought some granola and garlic scapes from the online store.

Garlic scape pesto on pasta is the best! It was pretty good on toast, but pasta is definitely where it belongs. So I’m making more!

Leftovers

Tuesday night I made fried rice with some beef tenderloin bites, onion, kohlrabi, and squash. I didn’t add eggs to it since I was already using the nice beef (which I managed not to over cook – hooray!). The kohlrabi is the opposite experience of the watermelon radish. It’s all cool and purple on the outside but once you peel it, it looks like a turnip!

So the dish turned out visually blander than I had planned,  but it tasted just fine.