Posted in CSA reports, Farmers Fresh CSA on June 25, 2009| 2 Comments »
Here are a bunch of leftovers from the past couple of weeks.
Cheese toast!
The Leiden cheese makes good cheese toast or good cheese and crackers for an afternoon snack. The best part about the cheese toast is the cheese is the same shape as a piece of bread.
Posted in CSA reports, Farmers Fresh CSA on June 25, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Last week while the CSA program was on vacation, I went to the Powder Springs Farmers’ Market. Here’s what I got.
Posted in CSA reports, Farmers Fresh CSA on June 11, 2009| 1 Comment »
Getting fennel, leeks, and Savoy cabbage this week sent me running to my copy of How to Cook Everything
Cabbage
How to Cook Everything calls Savoy cabbage the best of cabbages.
I’ve still got that whole head of Napa cabbage in the fridge. Logic says to use the older cabbage first, but that’s not always the best plan. The difference between the Napa now and in a few days will be minimal. However, I have a chance to use the Savoy super-fresh, so I’ll probably use it tomorrow either sautéed or quickly boiled and buttered.
The Napa cabbage will be split between fried rice and a side dish of cabbage sautéed with ginger and soy sauce. Other items going in to this week’s fried rice are celery leaves, peas, onions, and all the beet greens and stems. I’m tired of shrimp, so I’ll either use some chopped pork loin or just go with eggs.
Fennel
I had to do some research on fennel. It seems you cook the white bulb at the bottom and save the fronds and stalk for garnish.
The one fennel recipe in How to Cook Everything sounds like a good place to start. You chop up the bulb, cover it with chicken stock, a little olive oil, and salt and pepper. Then top it with bread crumbs and Parmesan and put it in a 375 degree oven for 45-50 minutes.
I read somewhere that you can steam fish on a bed of fennel fronds. I’m not good at cooking fish, though. It’s on my list of things to get better at.
Leeks
Once again, How to Cook Everything comes through – with Crisp Sautéed Leeks. You wash and julienne the leeks and crisp them in a little oil with garlic. The trick seems to be limiting the number of leek sticks in the skillet at a time. If you put too many in, the collective moisture ends up steaming them rather than crisping them. After they’re crisped and are draining on paper towels, you sprinkle them with spices.
My plan is to crisp the leeks and then serve them over salad with crumbled goat cheese, sliced roasted beets, and maybe some more raspberry vinaigrette. However, this salad may have to wait until later in the week. Last week, I learned that leaf lettuce (as delicious as it is) doesn’t stand up to goat cheese and pecans. I’m not sure how leafy this week’s lettuce is, but I plan on trying it as a simpler salad before dumping sautéed leeks on it. If it’s leafy, we’ll eat it first as simple salads and on sandwiches before turning to the romaine from our garden for the leeks.
Even if beets don’t get to go on the salad, I’ll still serve them sliced and topped with crumbled goat cheese, chopped dill, and chives. I’ve been dreaming about this dish since I stumbled into it a couple of weeks ago.
Raspberry vinaigrette
My mom taught me a great trick for making up a fruity vinaigrette – use whatever jam you have in the fridge. You mix up some vinegar, water, salt and pepper, and any jam. Then add some olive or canola oil to thicken it and shake it some more. Just keep tasting it as you go to get the proportions right. For two people, I use about two tablespoons of vinegar, a teaspoon or two of water, pinches of salt and pepper, a tablespoon of jam, and only about a tablespoon of oil. We like our dressings pretty vinegary. You could use fresh or thawed strawberries instead of jam, but you might need to add a little sugar.
Too many “sides”
With all the fresh produce, I often find myself with too many side dishes and no meaty ideas.
Exhibit 1: last Tuesday’s lunch
Was that really a crazy meal? Or have I become accustomed to thinking that a meal’s not a meal unless there’s a main (and meaty) dish?
As the summer goes on, I know I’ll make more of these all side-dish meals, so I’m going to revisit Diet for a Small Planet to make sure we’re getting what we need.
Here are some ideas I’m considering to complement our occasional stretches of spontaneous vegetarianism.
In the meantime…
I’m defrosting some turkey drumsticks. I’m going to bake them like this recipe for chicken drumsticks from simplyrecipes.com. (I hadn’t been to simplyrecipes.com in a while. Silly me! All the latest recipes look wonderful. Like Jamaican Jerk Burgers, Noodles with Mushrooms and Lemon Ginger Dressing, Gingersnap Cookies, and Chocolate Ganache Torte.)
Since turkey legs are bigger than chicken legs, I’ll expect to leave them in at least 45 minutes. I’ll cook all three legs (What kind of crazy turkey was that?!) and expect to have some leftover. In any case, it will be good to have something to put in the oven along with the beets that need roasting.
Maybe the best part of living with a CSA subscription is that vegetables naturally become the focus of meal planning and meat the afterthought.
Posted in CSA reports, Farmers Fresh CSA on June 10, 2009| 2 Comments »
Ever notice the change in color between May and June? Sometime in May, spring ends and summer begins. The change comes in color as much as temperature. The landscape shifts from playful spring green, colorful blossoms, and budding oak trees to the serious-business green of summer.
That intense summer green is what my box of produce makes me think of. (Maybe it shouldn’t because almost everything here is a spring crop. But it does.)
Before I put everything away again, I turned the plastic bags inside out. The bags were wet on the inside, so it seemed like a good idea.
Beets
In addition to my regular subscription, I also ordered a pound of beets from the online store. Aren’t they beautiful?
Celery
I love celery! What a nice surprise! I don’t think of celery as a Georgia plant.
This celery has really nice leaves on it. Celery leaves are great to chop and put in tomato sauce, soups, and salads. I use them instead of chopped celery in recipes that need the celery flavor but don’t require any crunch. And, of course, celery sticks make great snack food.
Garlic scapes
Check out the chaos that is garlic scapes.
I’m going to look for something other than pesto to make with garlic scapes. Pesto will be the fall back if nothing pans out.
Herbs
Although I couldn’t read what my herb mix was this week, the smell and taste made it very clear. One of the herbs is a very nice mint although I’m not sure which kind.
The other herb I didn’t recognize until I took a tiny nibble. It was incredibly sweet and unmistakably stevia.
In fact, stevia’s so sweet that the taste reminds me more of Sweet N Low than sugar or honey. I could sweeten my tea with it for sure, but I’ve got enough mint syrup to keep me going for a while. I found a recipe for making an extract from dried stevia leaves. I always have a problem air-drying herbs. Nowhere in my kitchen is ever really a cool, dry place. So I’m thinking about hanging these in my bedroom closer to an air conditioning vent. If my stevia leaves dry right, I’ll keep you posted on the extracting.
Muffins
We’re always happy to get more chocolate-raspberry-pecan muffins.
Yep, they're as good as they look!
I’ll be back with ideas for fennel, cabbage, and more tomorrow!
Celery
Celery! I love celery. What a surprise! I don’t think of celery as a Georgia plant. This celery has really nice leaves on it. Celery leaves are great stuff to chop up and put in tomato sauce, soups, and salads. And, of course, celery sticks make great snack food.
Posted in CSA reports, Farmers Fresh CSA on June 10, 2009| 2 Comments »
Two meals
One was a bit of a disappointment considering how much thought and work went into it. The menu was
The salad didn’t mix up right. The leaf lettuce didn’t go as well with the goat cheese and toasted pecans as I imagined; I should have saved those for some of our romaine or field greens and just served the leaf lettuce with carrots and radishes.
And I wish I had served the salad separately and early rather than on the same plate as the pasta. The flavors weren’t well-matched, and the pesto cooled down too quickly. It’s not nearly as good when it’s not hot. It would have been better to eat the salad and leave the pasta on the stove. I’ve shied away from doing serving courses in the past because it seemed too fancy (and my husband would grumble about extra dishes). But I guess some things are really better eaten in succession rather than on one plate.
Yesterday’s much simpler – but still delicious – lunch finished off most of our produce. We had yummy sweet potatoes baked in the microwave, steamed pea pods from our garden topped with goat cheese and dill, carrot sticks, leftover coleslaw, and some dried apples for dessert.
Leftovers
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Posted in CSA reports, Farmers Fresh CSA on June 5, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Wow, what a catch this week! I listed everything in yesterday’s post, but here’s another look.
While laying out this food for the picture, I realized spreading the food out and then putting it away is vital to my planning and prepping for the week. Having my hands on the food seems to inspire meal ideas better than anything else.
For instance, I saw the ground beef, the potatoes, and the cutest little onions but didn’t put them together until I was separating the chives and chamomile. Then I thought, “Chives! A beef, onion, and potato skillet dish would be tasty, and I could add chives at the end.” That’s what I made last night along with some leftover Portobello mushrooms, winter savory, half a bay leaf, garlic powder, salt and pepper. And we had salad with sliced radishes and carrots on the side.
Every week I get excited opening up my box and seeing what’s in there. (I know, I’m a total goob). But I try to ride that momentum into prepping stuff for the coming week. Sometimes it works. Usually I stall out somewhere in the middle.
But I got a lot done yesterday. I picked through the outside leaves of the lettuce, washed some for supper, and put the rest away. I trimmed the root veggies and chopped up the Asian turnips. The turnips will be part of today’s fried rice. Everything’s ready and I get to use up some leftovers: watermelon radish, turnips, kohlrabi stems, onion, cabbage, and watermelon radish greens. I’m not going to add shrimp this time but instead use at least four eggs.
I also made candied pecans to send to a friend. I have to get them out today or tomorrow or I’ll break down and tear into them. Or I could just shell more pecans, I suppose. What a treat to get shelled pecans! I’ve shelled a bunch lately and still have more to go. I use this hand cracker that relies on some sort of ratcheting system that I don’t fully understand. (My husband doesn’t get how it works either, so it’s not just my girl genes.)
In the same package, I’m also sending some lavender hand cream. I put the dried lavender from last week in a jar and poured warm sweet almond oil over it. In a few more days, I’ll strain the lavender flowers out and combine the oil with some shaved beeswax and vitamin E. Hopefully, it will smell really nice.
I also made a pound and a half of garlic scape pesto with all the scapes. Chopping garlic scapes is kind of frustrating. They have all these unwieldy curves and never stay where you put them. I’m glad only to have to chop them into inch pieces or so for pesto.
Then I grind some cheese (Romano and Asiago this time) and some pine nuts, add the scape pieces and some olive oil, and grind it some more. I add enough olive oil to keep the mixture sticky. I made 5 4-oz. containers of pesto for the freezer and one larger one for this weekend. I’m going to cook shrimp in some of it and then toss it with pasta.
It's the leaning tower of pesto!
I also hope to get around to the 5 pounds of cooking apples today. Cooking apples are apples that have been around awhile. They have some wrinkles, spots, or bulges, and aren’t as pretty or firm as maybe they once were. But they’re still good at – I mean, for – lots of things. (I’m starting to suspect that I bought these apples more out of sympathy than anything else.)
Good lighting always helps.
I’m thinking about making Patricia’s Quick Apple Betty from the Farmers’ Fresh Cookbook. Or I may just slice and dry them all for now. Nancy Garry (of recent celebrity here and here) taught me about rehydrating dried apples for baking. The problem is it’s too easy to eat dried apples plain. I can sit down with a bag and munch through ten or twelve apples worth. That can’t be good.
Posted in CSA reports, Farmers Fresh CSA on June 4, 2009| Leave a Comment »
This post just lists what came from the CSA this week. Tomorrow I’ll write up my plans for the week and what I’ve already done. I’ve been so busy playing with all this great stuff that I’ve run out of time today.
I also bought a few things from the online store: garlic scapes, cooking apples, and a pound of ground beef.
Until tomorrow!
Posted in CSA reports, Farmers Fresh CSA on May 29, 2009| Leave a Comment »
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!
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.
Posted in CSA reports, Farmers Fresh CSA on May 26, 2009| 2 Comments »
This past week, I got to visit Nancy and Jacque of Red Hott Tomatoes again – this time with a fully charged camera battery. I had a wonderful time and took a lot of pictures and am working on another post about the farm. But here’s one of my favorite pictures for now.
I also had a lot of fun with food this week.
Frozen strawberries and the art of not over-thinking things
Turns out you don’t even need a plan to enjoy frozen strawberries. Chris discovered they’re terrific right out of the freezer. They don’t freeze completely solid so you can bite into them like a strawberry popsicle. To me, they’re even better than fresh because they don’t have the slimy fruit texture I can’t abide.
I’m not sure how well this will work for other fruits, but I’m certainly going to try it and see what happens. Just think what a great, easy midsummer snack frozen fruit could be all by itself.
Candied pecans + key lime pie
Candied pecans require egg whites. Key lime pie requires egg yolks. So we made both this week. Egg yolks will keep a couple of days in the fridge and do best with a little water added to them. (However, I didn’t know this and my egg yolks seem to have done fine without water.) Egg whites can stay in the fridge for a week.
I separate eggs the easy way: crack the egg in a bowl and reach in with a clean hand and scoop up the yolk. The white eventually falls back into the bowl. This is even more fun with CSA eggs because the yolks are so well formed that they won’t break easily. I first saw it done like this by a pastry chef on a Julia Childs’ show. I figured it must work pretty well because pastry chefs have to separate a lot of eggs.
Here’s our key lime pie.
The recipe is very simple. It comes from the back of a Nellie and Joe’s Key Lime Juice bottle.
————-
1. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Combine
3 egg yolks,
1 can of sweetened condensed milk, and
½ cup of key lime juice.
3. Pour into a 9” pre-baked crust. (We used a Keebler shortbread one.)
4. Bake for 15 minutes. Then let cool for 10 minutes before refrigerating for a couple of hours (or however long you can stand it).
————-
Herbed goat cheese with beets
My favorite meal this week was a little supper that had a distinctively Russian flavor. I added chopped chervil and dill to some wonderful goat cheese (Thanks, Nancy!) and put some chilled sliced beets and peapods on the side.
What this picture doesn’t show is how good the beets went with the goat cheese and herbs. I ended putting the beets on my sandwich. And I saved a couple beet slices and enough goat cheese and herbs to make myself another sandwich. I know my husband and stepson will want to split some leftover stromboli or go to Subway sometime this week, and I’ll get to eat my little sandwich instead.
Fingerling potato fun
I considered this stuffed fingerling potato recipe and decided it was just easier to top the potatoes with blue cheese and bacon rather than stuff them.
The carrots are from the CSA box, and the lettuce is from our garden.
I also had planned to top the potatoes with garlic chives, parsley, and some greenish onion slices, but I forgot until we were almost done.
better late than never, right?
So I used the fingerlings for three meals. The first time I just roasted them with olive oil, salt and pepper, and rosemary. The second time I roasted them and topped them with bleu cheese and bacon. I roasted all of the potatoes that day but only topped and served half of them. The final time was lunch today. I reheated the remaining potatoes in the toaster and topped them with goat cheese and the rest of the forgotten herbs.
With the potatoes, we had sliced beets (also previously roasted) and stir-fried squash. It was a really good meal.
Pre-roasting seems like a good idea for quick lunches especially in the summertime when you’re not looking to heat up the kitchen. I roasted the beets in aluminum foil, put them in the fridge, and peeled and sliced them as needed. The fingerling potatoes were roasted uncovered in a dish and reheated just fine in the toaster oven. I would have used the microwave to heat the potatoes, but I needed to toast the bread. I did microwave the beet slices for twenty seconds so they would go better with the warm potatoes.
That’s all for now. Stay tuned for news about tomorrow’s delivery as well as posts about Red Hott Tomatoes and the wonder that is goats!
Posted in CSA reports, Farmers Fresh CSA on May 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »
We ate all the lettuce before I took this week’s photo. Luckily, I did take a picture of my plate last night.
Garlic scapes!
I didn’t know about garlic scapes until this week. They’re the green shoots of garlic that have to be cut off in the summer so that the plant will put its energy into making a bigger bulb. So scapes are a delicious freebie.
Most of what I read about garlic scapes suggested making pesto, so that’s what I did today. I made it just like regular basil pesto: about equal parts chopped scapes, grated parmesan, and pinenuts plus enough olive oil to hold it together. We had it over sourdough toast for lunch, but I think it will be even better over pasta. I bet it freezes well just like basil pesto, too. So bring on the garlic scapes!
Thursday night supper
Tonight I’m making a big supper because for lunch all we had was garlic scape pesto on toast. We’re having ground turkey cooked up with onion, roasted fingerling potatoes, sliced beets, stir fried squash, and braised peas.
I’m really excited about the fingerling potatoes. Tonight I’m just roasting them with some rosemary and finishing them with chives and parsley. But I also want to try Bleu Cheese Stuffed Fingerling Potatoes, for instance.
Other plans
This week’s fried rice will feature the kohlrabi, an onion, and maybe some of the squash. I have to get back on the fried rice horse. Last weekend, I had to throw out a whole batch of pork fried rice because I forgot to boil the pork marinade before adding it to the rice. I realized it before I added the kale but after the pork, rice, and onions. Those must have been some happy raccoons.
We froze most of our strawberries again. Last week we used them to make really yummy strawberry daiquiris. We put some frozen strawberries, a third cup orange juice, and rum into the blender and added water and ice to fix the consistency. They turned out great – not too sweet but very, very strawberry. They’ll be even better later in the summer when it’s really hot.
Coming soon…
More pictures of Nancy and Jacque’s farm!
thoughtful consumption 