thoughtful consumption

This week’s stuff

• baby squash, baby eggplant, and squash blossoms
• mixed “braising” greens
• apples
• arugula
• (very large) green cabbage
• eggs
• coffee
• Asian eggplant
• garlic
• herbs

VLGC and other planetary objects

OMG! Check out my VLGC! Lucy got one as well and christened it Audrey II. I’m sticking with more scientific naming principles. A few weeks ago I got a VLNC (Very Large Napa Cabbage). I’m hoping the story of the VLGC will go better than the saga of the VLNC.

What? I forgot to share the saga of the Very Large Napa Cabbage? Prepare for a tale of fried rice, multiple cooked cabbage recipes, and, finally, cole slaw. But not until next time; I want to get this posted right away.

This week’s plans

Aren’t the baby squash adorable? Here’s a close-up.

I cut up these babies up and roasted them  according to this recipe for lunch today. They’d also make yummy stir-fry.

If any of your yellow squash has a little hole on the outside, check for a grub on the inside. I found two grubs while cutting up the little yellow squash. I threw them in the fish pond where they were snatched up  immediately. Joys of organic produce, babe. (That’s my Detective Neil Washington impression, by the way. The first three seasons of Hill Street Blues are on Hulu.com, and we’ve been devouring them along with our local produce.)

Last night, we made a salad with the beautiful wild greens and arugula.

field peas, beer bread with radish-green artichoke dip, and spicy salad

Warning: These greens make NC-17 salads – too spicy for younger eaters. Especially the wasabi mustard greens. (I’m not sure if that’s what they are called, but that’s what they taste like.)

Powerful though they were,  we enjoyed our salads and plan to make more. Adding toasted nuts and an overly-sweet vinaigrette tames the raw power somewhat. My kingdom for some goat cheese! Goat cheese would make these salads perfect.

I’m missing a winter squash according to the list taped to my box. No big deal because I’ve got a butternut squash from a couple of weeks ago and a sugar pumpkin from Trader Joe’s. (Couldn’t resist trying one.)

Squash and Pumpkin hang out on a table

I’ll drop Patricia a line, and I bet she’ll hook me up next week.

So this week, I’m dreaming of broiled butternut squash slices, spicy greens, toasted walnuts, and goat cheese. (Oh, drat –  no goat cheese! I’m going to have to find some somewhere.)

Here’s a close up of the herbs.

anise hyssop, catnip, spearmint, lemongrass, and Pennsylvania Dutch tea thyme

The lemon grass is great. I may use the stalks for cooking, and the grassy parts dry really well in the fridge. I made a pot of tea with a couple of dried fronds from my last batch of lemongrass, and it was plenty fine. So I’ll save these fronds for later.

Last night I made spearmint tea because spearmint doesn’t seem to last as long as the other herbs. I added a little catnip and hyssop, too. I’m going to try spearmint and tea thyme tonight.

Eggplant-okra trade

I traded my Asian eggplant for Lucy’s okra.

I want to try frying okra sliced longitudinally like fried eggplant. You can make Okra Parmesan, too. Here’s one recipe.  Lucy made some a while back. Said it looked awful but tasted pretty good.

When it comes to making Eggplant Parmesan, I usually wuss out and just serve the fried eggplant with a side of marinara sauce. I’m guessing the same thing will happen with the okra. Maybe something other than marinara, though. Have to wait and see.

Two (not really CSA-related) discoveries

Yesterday morning, I really wanted some peppermint tea to calm my stomach but was out of fresh mint. So I steeped two Altoids in two cups of hot water. Not better than real mint but works great for emergencies.

Last night, I finally made a bread recipe from MotherEarth News.  It’s called Dutch Oven Beer Bread, or Bread Even Susan Can Make. The recipe is as user-stupid as they come.

• 3 cups of self-rising flour (or 3 cups all purpose + 1 ½ tbsp baking power and 1 ½ tsp salt)
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 bottle of beer

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a Dutch oven (if it’s not well-seasoned)
2. Mix the dry ingredients together.
3. Pour in the beer. Don’t over mix. White streaks are okay.
4. Dump the dough in the Dutch oven and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

after baking

No kneading, no rising, no nothing. And the results were awesome. That’s what Chris kept saying over supper: “This is awesome.” The bread is a little crunchy on the outside and wonderfully chewy on the inside. The beer and sugar add just enough flavor. I used an amber ale  although it’ll be fun to experiment with different beers. I could easily see us making this bread once a week this winter. Great for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. An epic win, as the kids say.

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We started eating our produce late this week with Friday’s lunch. But it was worth the wait.

squash muffin, sausage, crowder peas, sweet potato, and salad (lettuce, sorrel, radishes, and sprouts)

The sausage is incredible. It has so much flavor; it’s what little sausages dream of becoming some day. If I can’t develop a weekly sausage habit, maybe I can develop a monthly one.

The sweet potatoes are really flavorful, too. The flesh is rich and creamy, and you can eat them right down to the skins.

Back to the grind

My new food processor finally arrived!

It’s much bigger than the one before, and I’m very happy with it.

It fits on my blender, which I think was my grandmother’s. And I know the mixer was my great-aunt’s. It’s amazing how well these appliances hold up.

So today I (finally) made pesto and baba ghanoush. In addition to the basil from a couple of CSA deliveries ago, I pulled up the couple of plants I had left in the garden.

With my new processor, I’ll be able to make the pesto in one batch instead of three.

And why must little creatures eat 10% of each and every leaf? Couldn’t they just eat 10% of the leaves instead? Or even 15% – I’m willing to negotiate.

Three little suppers all in a row

Saturday we had salad and Things You Can Spread on Thinly-sliced Garlic Bread.

What is pesto, baba ghanoush, and radish green- artichoke dip, Alex.

Sunday night we had fried okra, garlic shrimp and grits, and sweet potatoes.

Tonight’s supper was leftovers but surprisingly satisfying. With the salad, we finished up the lettuce and bean sprouts and purple radishes. (There are still some red and pink ones left.) I’m going to miss those little bean sprouts. We also had field peas and linguine with pesto.

The dangers of unproven herbal teas

Chocolate mint tea is wonderful for late night sipping. And lemon verbena is soothing, too. But I’d never had rose geranium tea. I googled “rose geranium tea” to see what to do with the leaves, and none of the results gave directions for tea with just rose geranium leaves. All the teas described were made of rose geranium plus mint or lemon herbs. So last night I made lemon verbena with one rose geranium leaf. And it was delicious – very light and lemony.

Still I wanted to know what rose geranium tea would taste like. So tonight, I made tea with just rose geranium leaves. It didn’t taste nearly as good as the lemon verbena combo and gave me a headache and a scratchy throat. (Or I’m catching a cold. Or tired of sitting at my desk.)

Guess I’ll go back to lemon verbena tea with one rose geranium leaf. And believing in the wisdom of Google crowds.

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Here’s what we got this week.

• radishes
• apples
• field peas
• lettuce
• braising greens
• eggplant
• sweet potatoes
• herbs: lemon verbena, chocolate mint, and rose geranium

I also got a half-dozen eggs and some herbed goat cheese. One of the eggs cracked in the carton. (This is the first time this has happened in two years of egg deliveries, and I’m not sure when it happened. It totally could have been on my watch.) The funny part is the egg white leaked into the other sections of the carton. So when I opened the carton this afternoon all the eggs were stubbornly affixed to the carton. It took some careful prodding and carton cutting to pry out the remaining five eggs intact.

I took the herbed goat cheese and last week’s jalapeno pepper jelly to my friend Tatiana’s house. Her mother is visiting and makes delicious bliny, a common Russian food that’s kind of like thin pancakes. They are so good, and I ate so many of them! The jelly was great on the bliny – not really hot, but just enough to be interesting. At home, I’d put the jelly on toast with cream cheese.

The herbed cheese was very Italian and delicious.

I’d put it on toast points brushed with olive oil or perhaps on top of broiled eggplant or tomato slices. Triscuits would be good, too!

I returned home with three gorgeous eggplants from Tatiana’s garden.

Susan’s big cooking day

I’m hoping to have a big cooking day tomorrow. It’ll be even bigger if my food processor arrives in the morning mail. Here’s the plan:

• trim and blanch radish greens,
• shell and cook field peas,
• walk the braising greens over to Lucy’s house (I’ve just got too much food around to do right by these this week.),
• roast eggplant for baba ghanoush,
• make baba ghanoush and pesto (if the processor shows up),
• bake sweet potatoes,
• make squash muffins, and
• chop okra

Tomorrow we’ll have sausage (ordered from the online store), salad, field peas, sweet potatoes, and squash muffins for lunch. Chris and I play badminton on Friday evenings, so we eat a big late lunch and a little supper when we get home. For supper, we’ll have Pioneer porridge or cereal. Chris loves his Bob’s Red Mill muesli and milk. It’s practically a line item on our budget.

For the rest of the week, we’ll be eating

• mixed green alfredo with last week’s kale and this week’s radish greens,
• field peas and fried okra,
• baba ghanoush,
• sausage,
• baked sweet potatoes, and
• salad with sprouts and radishes.

Leftovers

I finally made the edamame-radish salad. It was delicious! I didn’t have any cilantro, but I threw in some bean sprouts. Here’s a picture.

a healthy plate of vegetables... followed by burgers at Five Guys

That baby squash and zucchini made excellent stir-fried squash. Some time this week, I’m going to stir fry my remaining Zephyr squash and video the process. If the video (and the squash) turn out well, I’ll post it here.

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Our food and meal planning is backed up because my two biggest eaters have been MIA. James is  off at college, and Chris has had a stomach bug. But we’re catching up now.

Saturday night we had a nearly all-CSA supper. We had scrambled eggs with fresh chopped tarragon, baked acorn squash, and a salad with sorrel, radishes, and bean sprouts. Mighty tasty, but, alas, no pictures.

I do, however, have a picture of Sunday’s supper.

I chopped up some leftover fried catfish and added it to reheated pasta with chopped summer savory and basil. Then I added some olive oil and tossed it all together.

Baked apple rings and acorn squash

Sometimes I eat an apple everyday and can’t wait for the next one. Then I’ll go a few days without craving one, and I wind up with some aging apples. Which means it’s time to make baked apple rings!

I peeled, cored, and sliced four apples, and sprinkled them with cinnamon.

Then I baked them at 250 for about 45 minutes, turning them over once.

They’re so good, and they go so fast. Chris and I ate all of  them sitting in front of the television that same night.

The green apples we got this week, we’ve eaten raw. Guess I’m back on the raw apple wagon for now.

I tried to bake the acorn squash along side the apple rings. But, at 250, the squash never baked enough. I threw it in the microwave for 3 minutes, and it came out fine.

Porridge!

This morning we had our first bowl of Pioneer Porridge. I added salt at the beginning and raisins at the end. That was all the porridge needed for us. It’s got a very satisfying and chewy texture. We’ll definitely make it again soon.

Chris no longer feels sorry for children in English novels who have to eat porridge.

The recipe on the bag calls for ½ cup porridge to 2 ½ cups water. I doubled both ingredients for two, and I think that was mistake. Then next time I make it, I’ll use 1 cup of porridge and 4 cups of water and watch it closely.

I also made edamame-radish-bean sprout salad and served it for an early supper along with stir-fried squash and zucchini and more salad.

We just had vegetables because we went to Five Guys later.

Tomorrow we’ll have tuna on a salad, squash muffins, and fried okra for lunch.

Then for supper maybe we’ll have more porridge!

And I’ve ordered a food processor attachment. Hope it arrives soon so I can get on with the pesto and the baba ghanoush.

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I’ve collected a whole herd of radishes over the past two weeks. One good way to clean out the radish drawer is to make radish chips.

I sharpened my knife before slicing all these radishes. What a difference! So much more control and less frustration.

I steamed the radish slices in the microwave for about three minutes before tossing them in two teaspoons of Jane’s Krazy Salt.

I baked them at 300 degrees for 12 minutes on each side. Then I removed the ones that were clearly done and went with four minute increments until all the chips had lost most of their moisture.

Results

A very spicy sharp tasting snack that’s kind of addicting once you start.

radish chips half gone

radish chips all gone

The sharp radish taste is still there for sure. If you don’t like radishes, you won’t like these.

(If you need a recipe to make radishes not taste like radishes, I suggest fried rice. Works with turnips and rutabagas, too.)

I tried dipping the chips in the radish green dip I made earlier this week, but it didn’t work. A sour cream or yogurt dip would better balance the sharpness of the radishes.

You could probably add these guys to a salty snack mix for a milder effect. Something like Chex mix, nuts, or pretzels.

And I get major points for consuming fifteen radishes in an afternoon, right?

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Nice haul this week!

• basil
• apples (These look like baking apples, but they’re my favorites for eating.)
• radishes with greens
• lettuce
• butternut squash
• Pioneer porridge
• pepper jelly
• onion
• bean sprouts
• eggs
• baby squash and zucchini
• okra
• Asian eggplant

Online store order

I restrained myself this week and only ordered sorrel and garlic from the online store. Next week: sausage, cheddar cheese, and goat milk soap! Or maybe goat cheese. So much deliciousness to choose from.

I’m planning on ordering garlic every week it’s available for the rest of the season. It keeps, and we go through gobs of it in my house.

Usually, I only get a few sorrel leaves so I eat them in a salad. Or I just gobble them up Wednesday afternoon while I’m taking pictures.

But this week I have enough sorrel to attempt sorrel sauce. It’s supposed to be wonderful. So I only snuck one leaf today, and Saturday I’m going to make sorrel sauce and pasta. If I run across some fish in the meantime, I may cook that with the sauce instead.

It’s salad time

Had a nice salad for lunch today with lettuce, bean sprouts, radishes, tarragon flowers and summer savory from last week’s herbs.

The sprouts are really good. I started snacking on them while taking this week’s picture. They’re crunchy!

Radish-alanche

So many radishes! I’ve divided mine into three sets: for salad, for baked radish chips, and for sliced radish and edamame salad.

I plan on having the edamame radish salad for supper at some point tonight. I’m also going to make an Asian noodle dish with the basil, some chili oil, and leftover catfish. I don’t plan on eating it all tonight. I’m going to need to take a lunch Friday.

The radish greens I turned into radish green-artichoke dip. Very tasty. I’ll probably bake radish chips this weekend and dip them in this.

Grinder grounded

The blade for my food processor attachment broke! This is a problem. I have pesto and baba ghanoush to make – stat! Neither the basil nor the eggplant is getting any fresher. I’ll hit craigslist and see if I can’t find a cheap one for sale.

So long, summer!

Fried okra and squash muffins with pepper jelly will make an appropriate end-of-summer celebration meal. And, don’t worry, I’m not making squash muffins with these delicious-looking baby squash. I’ll use the end of last week’s yellow squash for the muffins. I’ll sauté the baby squash with onion or make tian.

Butternut sasquatch

Man, we could eat for a week from this butternut squash. We’ll bake it in sections with maple syrup and butter. We’re still into that winter squash recipe. I’ll roast the seeds with salt and olive oil, too.

I read a recipe somewhere for making a butternut squash pie. I think it said to section and boil the squash and then just make it like pumpkin pie. (I think roasting would be better than boiling, though. Squash loses some flavor when it’s boiled.) So if you have a big butternut and aren’t sure what to do with it, try pie!

Empty nesting instincts

Chris and I will start on the porridge soon. James left for college today, so we’re now two for supper (and lunch and breakfast) for the foreseeable future. What does that have to do with porridge? Well, porridge makes a good supper for Chris and me. We eat late and often don’t want a lot. But nineteen-year-old James would mutiny if I tried to pass off porridge as dinner.

Now that we’re empty nesters, I think I’ll be able to feed us almost entirely from our CSA Family pack, gourmet upgrade, and ½ dozen eggs add-on. I’ll try to keep track next month and see how it goes.

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I saved the seeds from the acorn squash we had for lunch yesterday and roasted them according to this recipe. It calls for tossing the seeds in olive oil and salt and roasting them at 275 for 10 minutes or so. Since there weren’t that many seeds, I roasted them in the toaster oven.

Before...

... and after.

They were really good! My only complaint is there weren’t enough of them. I ate them all in two or three handfuls.

Now I’m eyeing the enormous butternut squash I got in my CSA box today. It probably has plenty of seeds.

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Today’s lunch was a far happier meal.

Chris had fried green tomatoes,

The last two tiny tomatoes from our garden!

and then we had pan-fried catfish topped with fresh herbs, microwaved acorn squash, and Napa cabbage and Vidalia coleslaw.

Can’t wait to see what comes tomorrow!

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Sunday’s supper was no fun at all.

I’d planned pasta with mushrooms and fresh herbs. (How to Cook Everything, p. 518 for those following at home.)

I chopped up some parcel, lovage, savory, and tarragon.

Then I chopped up some garlic and two tiny little green onions from our garden.

Then I chopped up the mushrooms.

However, when I started to cook the mushrooms, the kitchen began to smell distinctly like Pine-Sol. A few minutes later, it smelled like the zoo.

Not ZooAtlanta with its happier enviornments, but the old Atlanta Zoo with the indoor cages.

At that point, I took the pan outside and turned to Google.

It seems that when fresh mushrooms spoil they smell like ammonia and that lots of moisture speeds up the spoiling process. Lots of moisture, eh?

So I continued on with the recipe without the mushrooms. I sautéed the garlic and onion in olive oil, deglazed the pan with some beef stock (well, bouillon, actually), and added the herbs and pasta.

But the bouillon overwhelmed the herbs and the whole thing just tasted like Lipton Cup-A-Noodles.

At least it didn’t smell like elephant pee.

The squash tian next to the noodles wasn’t pretty, but I really liked it. Wish there’d been more.

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Here’s a salad made of sorrel, nasturtium leaves, salad burnet, and sliced radishes. Made me feel like a fuzzy brown bunny nibbling on fresh leaves.

Saturday I lunched alone but very happily.

• Tomato soup, a.k.a. a can of V8 with a little red wine, lots of summer savory, and Parmesan cheese
• Two scrambled eggs with chopped tarragon
• Multigrain bread with wildflower honey and butter
• A pretty little apple and lemon verbena tea for dessert (not pictured)

Scrambled eggs are a great way to use fresh herbs. I used tarragon here, but fennel, parcel, or savory would have worked, too. As often happens, I didn’t think about adding herbs until the last minute. So I ran around trying to find and chop the tarragon, soften the butter for the bread, not burn the eggs, and not boil over the soup. It’s a good thing my kitchen’s tiny. Everything’s just a lunge away.

Find an excuse to make scrambled eggs with CSA eggs. I noticed that they’re available on the online store again. If you haven’t tried CSA eggs, order some and see what you think. Or find another local source. But whatever you do, try some really fresh scrambled eggs. They’re so good!

Tomorrow I’ll be on my own again, so for lunch I’ll have Natalie’s steamed edamame and sliced radish salad. I’ll probably make baba ghanoush, too. Hopefully, I have more pita in the fridge.

Last week I made baba ghanoush from Asian eggplant. In the past, I’d had problems with using Asian eggplant because of the variety’s small diameter. After roasting them uncovered in the oven like the regular Globe kind, there’s not a lot of usable meat left per eggplant. So this time I peeled the eggplant, put them in a dish, covered it with tin foil, and roasted them in the oven.

I still couldn’t use all of the flesh because the outer layer dried out. So this time, I’m going to drizzle olive oil on them, wrap them in tin foil en masse, and then place them in the roasting dish.

One thing I learned last time while making the baba ghanoush is not to lose hope if it doesn’t taste right at first. I had a preliminary taste after mixing up the roasted eggplant, garlic, and tahini. I was not impressed and more than a little disappointed. Then I added the olive oil and fresh lemon juice, and it was suddenly delicious and I couldn’t get enough!

And for my solo supper tomorrow, I’ll have “tomato soup” again, squash tian, and radish greens-kale-artichoke dip with baked radish chips and crackers.

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