thoughtful consumption

This week’s delivery in three parts

• hydroponic lettuce
• yogurt
• sorrel!
• sprouts
• baby turnips with greens
• yellow polenta
• carrots

I was happy to find the bonus sorrel leaves in my bag of lettuce. Sorrel leaves and cheese is currently my favorite breakfast.

• eggs
• strawberries
• celery
• pretty spinach

Where did this celery come from? It’s so big and pretty. I thought that this kind of celery only came from California.  Celery stick for snacks, diced celery and celery leaves for cooking – I plan to use every inch. If you haven’t used yours and the bunch starts going limp, cut the stalks into sticks and put them in a tub of water for a few hours. They’ll be crunchy and good again. The leaves and stem parts can be frozen and added to nearly any soup or casserole.

• oyster and Shiitake mushrooms!
• nice-looking Tuscan kale

Mushrooms and rice

I blew through all the mushrooms Wednesday night. I sautéed them in butter with garlic, celery, and onion and served them over Carolina Gold rice

I’ve really enjoyed having the CSA butter. I’ve got a few more pounds of store-bought butter to go through, but then I hope to stick with Sparkman’s. It’s too much fun to cut off a hunk of butter. Plus, this stuff probably has more nutritional value considering the happy cows it comes from. I’m for anything that allows me to rationalize the use of more butter.

Anson Mills is understandably proud of its Carolina Gold Rice. It’s whole grain, an heirloom variety, and has a lovely buttery flavor. From the website at www.ansonmills.com:

We’re fussy. We wouldn’t be doing all this if we weren’t. Our products are fussy, too. They may look like their grocery store counterparts, but they don’t cook in a predictable way. We have spent hundreds of hours developing the recipes we offer. These recipes follow the stream of authentic foodways and work beautifully with our products.

So if you purchase our oats or grits, wheat flour or rice, be sure to use the recipes and techniques we provide—at least until you have a good, working feel for the products.

Bottom line: Our products won’t work with standard recipes. Standard recipes won’t work with our products.

Anybody else scared? I’ve been using my standard rice instead of Carolina Gold because none of my rice recipes seem worthy. However, Wednesday night, I took a deep breath and cooked some Carolina Gold Rice using my plain old white rice recipe. Worked like a charm – a delicious, buttery charm with a soft, yet non-mushy texture.

Blue cheese dressing!

I bought some of the Farmhouse Blue Cheese last week and enjoyed it tremendously. This week, I was looking at the ends. (Not the rind – I cut that off.) These ends were a little too hard and rubbery for me to want to eat, but I knew the flavor was still there. So I made blue cheese dressing according to How To Cook Everything.

Basically, it’s just blue cheese, mayo, lime juice, and pepper. (I would have used buttermilk and lemon juice if I’d had any.) And it’s so good with celery and carrot sticks and pretty much anything.

Catfish

Finally got to the catfish. I fried a pound last night (four filets) in CSA butter and cornmeal. I liked it a lot, but it turns out Chris is not the biggest catfish fan. Too bad – we had it for lunch, too, with leftover Carolina Gold Rice, blue cheese dressing, celery sticks, and coleslaw.