Lots of food yesterday in my CSA box!
- sweet potatoes
- eggs
- lettuce (frisee?)
- celery
- butter!
- spinach (slightly slimy)
- oyster mushrooms
- pea pods
- bean sprouts
- kale
- Pioneer porridge! I ran out of porridge last month and have been forced to eat oatmeal since. Hooray for yummy porridge!
- invisible strawberries! Well, not really…
I just froze them right away along with the extra pint I ordered from the online store. I also ordered Fran’s new herbal tea mix – spearmint, lemon thyme, and thyme flowers.
The herbs were a lot perkier yesterday, but they’ve already made two lovely pots of afternoon tea. That’s a great thing about herb tea as opposed to herb garnish: wilty herbs are not a problem.
Sorting peas
Sorting is one of those prepping steps that you kind of lose track of when you get produce from the grocery store. Most everything’s already packaged in like sizes for like uses.
Sometimes you sort to get rid of icky things – like with this week’s spinach. It may not have been ridden hard, but I think it was put away wet. Wet is the main enemy of produce. I’ve gotten in the habit of turning my plastic bags of produce inside-out every day or so. (Unless it’s cabbage or turnips or something else crazy-hardy.) The bags are always wet on the inside, so it seems like a good practice.
More happily, you can also sort for different sizes and uses. That’s what I did today with my peas.
Clockwise from the top right: tiny pods for salad, bigger pods for stir-fry, biggest pods for shelling peas.
Turns out all of these peas should have stayed pea pods. The peas weren’t really peas yet. Chris loves peas, so I wanted to try to get him some. However, I spent way too long trying to shell very green peas for this.
I ended up just adding these pealets to the tiny pods for salads. They’re crunchy and sweet, so I think they’ll be great.
Plans
Tonight’s supper will probably be kale with raisins and pine nuts plus sweet potatoes. It’s kind of silly because there are things in my fridge that won’t last nearly as long as the kale and sweet potatoes. But this menu requires very little thinking and prepping.
Sometime soon, we’ll have some sort of Asian stir-fry dish. I’d like to try a pad thai kind of thing after reading Mark Bittman’s article about it last month . I’ll use the bean sprouts, pea pods, mushrooms, and maybe some celery. Have to get somewhere to find the other ingredients like tamarind paste and fish sauce. Otherwise it’ll be plain old stir-fry. But not fried rice. I’m tired of fried rice.
Tomorrow for lunch, we’ll have a nice salad with the lettuce, celery, sprouts, and peapods plus some romaine and red onion from Kroger. I’ll probably add some tuna and romano cheese, too.
thoughtful consumption 
huh. We got kale in our basket this week, too. But our kale is curly. Interesting. I have only ever noticed the curly kale. I need to research different varieties of things apparently.
Nice stuff! yum yum
I think the kale I have is Tuscan kale…
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=tuscan%20kale&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
Hey Susan. Have you tried cooking any of those Sea Island Red Peas yet? I have two packages in the pantry and was thinking I should give them a try soon. I am curious how they taste!
Nope. Peas are still piling up. I’ve ordered some sausage from the store this week, and I’m going to try the recipe below from http://www.goosethemarket.com, subbing in sausage drippings for jowl bacon. Regular bacon would probably work, too.
Sea Island Red Peas with Jowl Bacon
Servings: 4
Active Cooking Time: Soaking beans overnight and 1 1/2 hours cooking
Ingredients
2 cups Sea Island Red Peas soaked in water overnight
1/4 pound jowl bacon cut into cubes
2 quarts chicken stock or water
1 large onion
4 cloves garlic, sliced
1 each carrot peeled and rough chopped
1 rib celery sliced
1 each bay leaf
1 tsp curry powder
1 teaspoon crushed red chilies
1/4 teaspoon sugar
salt & pepper to taste
Method of Preparation
1. Cook the bacon in a single layer in a 3 quart stock pot over medium heat until crispy.
2. Add the onions and continue to cook until tender
3. Add the peas and stock and bring to a simmer.
4. Stir in the carrot, celery, garlic, bay leaf and curry powder then return to a simmer.
5. Cover the pot partially and simmer for 1 to 1 1/2 hours stirring occasionally.
6. Stir in the sea salt, sugar and red chilies.
7. Remove 1/4 cup of the peas and about 2 ounces of the stock and puree in a blender until smooth.
8. Return the puree to the peas and simmer for five minutes and adjust seasoning.
9. Serve with grilled sausage and Carolina gold rice
That sounds really good. I can’t wait to hear how it tastes. Saw your pad thai. That looks good too. What was your sauce ratio (chili sauce to fish sauce)?
For the pad thai – 1 tsp of chili sauce to 1 tbsp of fish sauce. Tasted about right. I wish I’d added some red pepper flakes or something else to heat it up, though.