thoughtful consumption

Blueberry pancakes

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.

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Dry shrimp run

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!

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• 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?

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Tonight we had a very CSA supper.

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!

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We love kabocha squash! It’s now our favorite winter squash now even though we’re mighty fond of butternut and acorn. (Of course, it terms of specific squash, these two guys are still my favorite.)

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.

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Pre-season (and early spring) always means lots of salad. And salad goes with lots of things. Here are some of the meals Chris and I have had with salad.

• scrambled eggs

• sausage and kabocha squash (More on kabocha squash later. And this supper was one of my favorites ever. It’s when I figured out that the creme fraiche and the beets go on the lettuce.)

• corned beef wraps

• pasta and pine nuts

• onion soup with cheese toast

Can you see how the hydroponic lettuce turns pink and red in the ribs? I can’t tell any difference in the taste or texture, but I appreciated the heads up that it was time to finish it. It’s gone now along with the crème fraiche. With food from the CSA, I don’t throw stuff out at the first sign of age. Because I know the food’s history, I’m willing to try it and see how it goes. The reward this time was another day of fresh lettuce. (The bunnies outside, however, are not in favor of this policy.)

The onion soup came mainly from this recipe. (I always opt for onion soup with cheese toast rather than official French Onion Soup. It’s so much easier and usually results in less mouth burning.) I’ve made this soup plenty of times before, and I’m so glad I finally got to make it with homemade beef stock! It was much better than with boullion – thicker, more flavorful, but less salty.

So the stock, garlic, and bay leaf were local. The onions were from Kroger, and the wine was Three Buck Chuck.

Now we just have a bunch of spicy salad to eat. One night we’ll have spaghetti, I think. And Friday’s lunch will probably be cat food salad and a couple of sweet potatoes.

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Here’s what we got in our first set of pre-season boxes. I think it’ll keep us for two weeks. And sorry about the distant pic. The larger bi-weekly boxes make it harder to get everything in the frame. I’ll take multiple close-ups next time.

• sweet potatoes
• kale
• lettuce
• strawberries
• spicy greens
• kabocha squash
• more spicy greens
• granola
• popping corn
• honey-flax-wheat bread
• eggs
• pork ribs
• sprouts
• carrots
• crème fraiche
• baby turnips
• herbs (chervil, salad burnet, and par-cel)
• sweet bread mini-loaves

Let’s talk salad

There’s awesome stuff in here for salads. (We’ve already had two and are looking forward to more.) We got two basic types of salad greens: delicate hydroponic lettuce and mixed greens. (The mixed greens can also be braised or stir-fried, but we like them best as spicy salad.) I try to use the hydroponic stuff first because it won’t last as long as the mixed greens. This type of lettuce is one of the things that makes converts to local food. It would never last long enough to be sold in a store, but the flavor and texture is far superior when you can get it fresh.

Here’s what we had for supper Wednesday night.

It was a great start to the CSA year. The lettuce, carrots, and eggs are all local foods that beat the pants off their conventional counterparts. (The beets and bread are from Kroger.) The crème fraiche is delicious – a cross between sour cream, cream cheese, and goat’s milk. And it makes an outstanding salad dressing. Just put a dollop on top and mix it up as you eat. It’s amazing – so amazing that I don’t think our crème fraiche will have a chance to be anything else.

Salad herbs

The herbs will add nice, subtle flavor to a salad.

chervil, salad burnet, and par-cel

Salad burnet has a light cucumber taste, and chervil has a minty-anise taste. The par-cel tastes like a combination of parsley and celery. (If you got any of these herbs, break off a piece of each and see for yourself. That’s good, perhaps obvious, advice for any herb, but it took me a long time to realize that I could – and should – sample herbs before using them. Before it was as if they were some magic ingredient that could never be treated so casually. Nonsense! Try some, see if you like it, and then decide how you might use it.)

Par-cel is good on pretty much everything, but it is strong herb and will overpower the burnet and chervil if you use equal amounts. Also, you can use the par-cel stems for celery flavor in casseroles, soups, spaghetti sauce, and pretty much anything that calls for onions.

I’m storing my chervil and parcel in a glass of water under a plastic bag in the fridge. They’ll keep for a good long while this way. The burnet doesn’t have stems to dip in the water, so I patted it dry and returned to its bag. Hopefully, it will last a while, too. (Another tip/superstition: I always turn my plastic bags inside out before I put or return anything to the fridge. I think it keeps what’s inside less damp.)

The salad burnet and chervil are fantastic with the crème fraiche! If I have time, I break off the leaves before adding them to the lettuce, but I’ve also just torn them up and eaten the stems, too.  I haven’t added the par-cel to salads yet because 1) I want to be sure to taste the burnet and chervil, 2) it’s easy to find uses for par-cel, and 3) it will last the longer than the other two.

Other salad additions

The carrots are sooo good and have sooo much flavor. I like to serve them as sticks with salad. They also make terrific afternoon snacks along with a chunk of cheese.

And don’t forget the sprouts! If you don’t use them all in salads, they’re good in fried rice and stir-fries.

Kale and turnips …mmm?

If you can make out the kale at the far end of the first picture, you’ll see it’s a gorgeous dark green. It makes me feel healthier just looking at it. Unfortunately, for the full effect, you have to eat it, too. Kale is not one of my favorite foods, but one thing I love about the CSA box is it makes us eat vegetables we might not choose on our own. If you like kale, I bet this beautiful bunch will knock your socks off. If you don’t, try Kale with raisins and pine nuts. It’s what I usually make. (You can also adjust the ratios in the recipe to make Raisins and pine nuts with kale.)

Turnips are another unfavorite in my house. (Can you tell that I sliced one of the turnips in half? That was in the hope that it might actually be a watermelon radish. No dice.) These turnips are babies, so they will be milder than their full-grown kin. But they’re still going in one of two recipe ideas that I rely on for vegetables I’m more interested in using than tasting:

• fried rice
• shepherd’s pie

My guess is I’ll make fried rice sometime next week with turnips, sprouts, and maybe some of the mixed greens. We’ll see what I’ve got left then.

More soon!

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Chris and I are very much looking forward to our pre-season delivery this week. In the meantime, here are some leftovers.

Here’s a picture of beef stock made from local bones and scraps. I froze it in ice cube trays for later.

So far I’ve made beef stew and shepherd’s pie with it. It’s pretty good and much better than bouillon, but I wished I’d salted it more. (I made the beef stew with CSA chuck roast and the shepherd’s pie with CSA ground lamb. Both were warm and yummy.)

In addition to the long-lasting butternut squash, I’d like to recognize three veggies that kept us going through the CSA break: garlic, sweet potatoes, and green cabbage. Fresh garlic is so nice. We’re now on our last head, so my fingers are crossed that there will be some in one of our pre-season boxes.

I bought a 5-lb bag of sweet potatoes sometime in the beginning of December from CragerHager Farm. All of them were still good as of yesterday when we baked them to make a sweet potato pie.  Maybe it helped that my kitchen has stayed pretty darn cool this winter. (Bet yours did, too!)

The cabbage was a surprise hit. I knew it would keep longer than the lettuce, so I didn’t hurry to eat it when it came with our last delivery of 2009. Then we lost it in the back of the fridge. The brave little cabbage was limp when we found it, but I shredded and sautéed some, and it was still delicious! We ate sautéed cabbage with nearly every meal for a week or so and never complained. (The recipe, if you can call it that, is sauté some shredded cabbage in olive oil with garlic and onion till just softened. Then add a couple of splashes of rice vinegar, turn off the heat, and let it steam for a moment before serving.) The trick is to never cook more than you’ll eat at a meal. It sounds like a pain, but it’s worth it and pretty easy to whip up – especially if you pre-shred, dice, and mince your ingredients.

And right now I’m drinking some nice tea made from dried lemon verbena and lemongrass. Perfect for perking up on a winter afternoon. These two herbs are my favorite to dry because the secret is to put them in a plastic bag in the vegetable drawer and forget about them for months. Then, in the middle of January, you get lemony tea!

Between now and Wednesday, we’ll finish up our shepherd’s pie and enjoy some pancakes made from Logan Turnpike Mill pancake mix and blueberries frozen last summer.

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Without meaning to, I guess I took a month off from blogging. It was nice, but it’s good to be back!

Now let’s catch up…

Here’s what I got for the last order of the CSA season.

• Sweet potatoes
• Cauliflower
• Kabocha squash
• Cabbage
• Lettuce
• Arugula
• Spinach
• Parsley, par-cel, and chervil
• Rice
• Red peas
• Eggs
• Popping corn
• Spiced nuts

Chris and I have never been big fans of cauliflower, but we enjoyed these. (The broccoli we had the couple of weeks before was really good, too.) I just steamed the florets and added a little butter, salt, and pepper. The stems and leaves I chopped up and used for fried rice and shepherd’s pie.

The kabocha squash was incredible! Chris said it was the best squash he’s ever eaten, and I guess I agree. It tastes like a combination of butternut and pumpkin. I roasted it in the oven for a couple of hours. (Kind of forgot about it, actually.) Then it collapsed, and I scooped out the flesh and added some butter and just a little bit of maple syrup. The seeds are heftier than other squash seeds, too. So if you like roasted squash seeds, these give you more per bite.

Monster store order

I also 1) made a monster order from the store that week and 2) took an inventory of what’s in my freezer. Kind of wish I’d reversed those.

But it’s not that bad. The plan was to stock up before the break. I may have stocked up a little much, but most of what I bought from the store was meat, which I didn’t have any of in the freezer except for a half pound of pork loin. So this meat goes in the freezer and can stay there for a while if necessary.

Here’s my order:

• Bay leaves
• Rice grits
• Goat cheese
• Honey flax bread
• Mixed Asian greens
• Dozen eggs
• Beef bones for stock
• Ground beef
• Sausage
• Ground lamb
• Beef chuck

I divided the chuck roast into half pound portions and put them in the freezer. We’ve already used one to make vegetable beef soup. Yesterday, I made beef stock with the bones, some frozen celery scraps, an onion, some parsley and par-cel stems, and some garlic. (I’ll put those pics in another post with more detail.) This is a first for me, so I hope it turns out well. In a few days, I’m going to try make some beef stew with the stock. We’ll see how much of an improvement it is over bouillion.

Christmas presents

My mom and dad got me a massive amount of goat cheese for Christmas.  I also got some ingredients to make my own goat cheese. (Can I say that here? I’m not sure – especially since I drank it all before I made any goat cheese! Merry Christmas to me!)

And I got a faster computer from James, which is going to make blogging more fun.

Lingering winter produce

Last night we roasted a butternut squash. (Again, I forgot it in the oven, and I’m beginning to think that’s a valid recipe for winter squash.) It was delicious – and from 10/21. That’s nearly three months! And the squash showed no signs of age before I cooked it (and definitely none after).

I also have a bunch of sweet potatoes left from a bag I bought at the Carrollton Holiday Bazaar. They’re still in good shape, too. We’ll bake these as we need them for meals. If they start showing signs of age, I’ll just cook them all up and freeze them for sweet potato pie.  (Maybe I’ll do that anyway…)

Supper pics

Finally, here are two yummy winter suppers we had recently.

ground lamb and roasted beets with goat cheese and chervil and steamed broccoli

sausage, arugula with goat cheese, French bread, and roasted butternut squash

That’s all for now, but stay tuned. Pre-season starts January 26/27. Subscriptions are still available at www.farmersfreshcsa.com.

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