CSA Share #8

I love my new apartment! I think a housewarming party this weekend is in good order.

Sangria + CSA produce + friends + summer nights = happy people

In fact, my eighth CSA share seems like it was designed just for a nice summer dinner:
- 1.5 lbs Yukon gold potatoes
- 1 bunch Thai basil
- 1 bunch beets
- 1 Italian eggplant
- 2 heads garlic
- 1 bunch red onions

Extras:
- 1 green bell pepper
- 1 bunch carrots

CWTC: POTATOES! Eek! I love new potatoes and these are as new as they get. They look so lovely and waxy and yummy... My absolute favorite dish to cook when I'm in a hurry but need a crowd-pleasing favorite for potlucks or dinners is roasted new potatoes. This "recipe" is super forgiving. Quantities, temperature, and timing are all approximate and have large margins for error, which is excellent news for challenged cooks like me.

1. Preheat oven to 350 ish.
2. Wash potatoes thoroughly.
3. Quarter into bite size chunks. Leave the skin on!
4. Drizzle with olive oil.
5. Add a dash of salt, rosemary, and pepper. Extra points if you can get coarse sea salt flakes, fresh rosemary, and freshly ground pepper. I just love the texture and taste of the giant salt crystals on the potatoes. In lieu of rosemary, feel free to experiment with dill, parsley, or plain.
6. Line a pan with foil for easy cleanup.
7. Evenly spread the potatoes in a single layer.
8. Pop in the oven and wait a while. Depending on the size of the potato chunks, this could take anywhere from 15-40 minutes. Check the potatoes by poking them with a fork (or chopstick). If the fork slides in easily, the potatoes are cooked. If not, best leave them a bit longer. If I'm in a huge hurry, I'll slice the potatoes smaller so they cook faster.
9. Garnish with sprigs of rosemary or other pretty things if desired. ENJOY.

I'm getting hungry thinking about this. Oh man. I'll probably roast them along with the beets and onions. I still have another batch of beets from last week that I need to use up too.

WTF: None. I like all these. And I know what to do with mostly all of these.
TAV: Thai basil. Everything else is pretty garden variety, but I'll admit that I'm less sure of how to use this herb. However, I've eaten it in pho and curry countless times, so I know I definitely like it. Brainstorming ideas for this weekend...my best ideas so far are:
  - Thai basil infused lemonade (spiked :D)
  - Eggplant stir fry with garlic and thai basil

If I still have leftover basil, I suppose I could always try to freeze it. Nahhh...moar cocktails! :D

CSA Share #7

Alright, I've resigned myself to perpetual busyness. I'll be moving to a new apartment this week and I'll need to figure out a new routine for bringing my produce home. Seems like I'm not the only one staying busy though - our farm has their hands full trying to combat the record drought and heat.

A few posts back, I touched on last year's season and how the heavy rainfall (and Hurricane Irene) wiped out a lot of farms and CSAs. The idea of rain being a bad thing for crops honestly didn't really cross my mind until I read last year's Free Bird Farm blog posts. However, droughts and excessive heat are nothing new to me (yay Arizona). When our CSA sends out the farmer's updates on how weather is affecting what's ending up in our share boxes, I definitely empathize.

On a related note, corn fields in particular seem to be getting hit pretty hard. From what I remember in my plant genetics lab research days from high school, corn is quite heat-hardy but needs a lot of water. Not only does this mean no sweet corn for me :( but it means less corn for everyone. Including animals. So...we can probably expect higher corn, beef, pork, and chicken prices next year. Ah well. Good thing I don't eat much meat these days anyways. :)

This week's share was pretty good (no more broccoli yay!):
- another bunch of beets
- parsley
- 3/4 lb green beans
- 3 medium red onions
- 1 bunch carrots
- 1 Italian eggplant
- 1 red cabbage

Extras (not included in the original distribution list but available at pickup):
- 2 patty pan squash
- 1 yellow zucchini

Alrighty then. This week's roundup:
CWTC: GREEN BEANS! I love green beans. I rarely manage to cook them - I end up eating them way too fast. I don't even really need dressing or dip for these, as long as they're fresh. Just wash, snap off the tips, and voila. Snacks.
WTF: parsley...
TAV: Eggplant. I love eggplant in Chinese food, but I've never really eaten it on my own. I have no idea how to cook it. Everyone loves to hate on eggplant for some reason, but I'm determined to make this work. Just watch me!

Side note: I love how much purple there is in this share! The onions, cabbage, eggplant, and even the beets are all various lovely shades of red-purple to deep purple-black. Pretty!

Side note of shame: I still have a lot of leftover produce from last week. I'm falling behind...help! I still have the romaine lettuce, zucchini and squash, chard, broccoli (for the last two weeks, actually), and garlic scapes from a while back. I think I should invite my friends over for a housewarming party. Little will they know it's really just a cover for using up all my extra produce. I feel like it's not a good sign when you start viewing your friends as broccoli vegetable disposals.

hard times

This has been a rough week. First of all, I have more broccoli in my fridge than I ever cared to have. Second of all, Jeremy is no longer a local, so I will not be able to talk about him anymore. T____T


but, lol.

Kohlrabi

Cooking takes time, so when I'm busy, I usually end up trying to eat my CSA share in the form of raw snack food. Last night, I spent about 10 minutes washing, peeling, and chopping up carrots, cucumbers, and kohlrabi. I sliced them matchstick style for easy snacking. I normally leave the skin on cucumbers, but these were not so pretty cucumbers, so I just peeled them. The carrots were still very young, so I left the skin on and made sure to scrub them very thoroughly. The kohlrabi was very easy to prepare: snap off all the leaves and stems, wash, and peel like a turnip or other root vegetable.

Lunch was leftover bbq chicken from Virgil's and a hefty slice of chocolate chess pie (!), so the vegetable sticks were a welcome way to stave off the impending food coma.

The kohlrabi ended up being surprisingly good, considering my strong aversion to broccoli. I offered a stick to my coworker who bravely took a nibble. Her face was a study in polite aversion, so I don't think she's a huge kohlrabi fan. However, she noted that it tasted like brussel sprouts. I had zoomed in on the texture, which is a cross between radishes and jicama, so I didn't make the brussel sprout connection until she pointed it out to me. It makes sense though, since kohlrabi falls in the Brassica oleracea family, which includes brussel sprouts, cabbage, kale, broccoli, and cauliflower.

I think my issue with broccoli lies mainly with the texture of the vegetable, but fortunately, kohlrabi is much crunchier and crisper than broccoli. I happily snacked my way through the entire bulb. I don't know if I'll bring it back to the office again though. As the kohlrabi sticks warmed up to room temperature, I noticed a distinct boiled-cabbage smell permeating the air around my desk. I suppose that's why the family is falled B. oleracea.

While I was munching on my veggie sticks, I pondered other ways to eat kohlrabi. If I had more than one bulb, I doubt I could eat them all raw. Cruciferous vegetables give me a headache if I eat too much of them raw. Since I am passionately in love with the taste of roasted brussel sprouts though, I'm thinking roasted kohlrabi might be a lovely way to handle extra kohlrabi bulbs. CSA Share #7, bring it on. I am prepared!!!

This is kind of random, but I bet kohlrabi would make a fantastic 무김치 (radish kimchi). It has the right texture and it tastes kind of like daikon radish. I'm so clever! Maybe that would be a fun project to try when I have a bit more time.

----edit----
Never mind. A lot of other people are also clever. I googled "kohlrabi kimchi" and it's definitely been done by adventurous cooks elsewhere. Oh well! At least I'm starting to get creative :)

CSA Share #6

Apparently upstate NY is suffering the opposite problem of last year: not enough rain. Sadly, the sweet corn crop is one of the casualties, which is a bummer since there is really nothing better than a lovely corn on the cob sprinkled with a smidge of salt. Or just eaten plain.

On the bright side, the fruit shares are benefiting from the hot, dry weather. Too bad I didn't sign up for a fruit share...next year, perhaps? Those white nectarines I walked past during today's pickup smelled amazing.

Here's the roundup for this week:
- 1 head romaine lettuce
- 1 bunch carrots
- 2 kohlrabi
- 1 bunch broccoli
- 1 bunch sweet onions
- swiss chard
- 2 patty pan squash
- 1 golden zucchini

I'm steadily accumulating salad greens and lettuces in my fridge. I really should invest in a salad spinner for next season!

The carrots and patty pan squash are noticeably bigger than last week's version, but they are still super adorable. :)

CWTC: patty pan squash. I have a tender spot for these bright yellow zucchini-like vegetables. So good!
WTF: more broccoli? shit. haha.
TAV: kohlrabi. I've seen them before but I've never tried them. Apparently, they're like a cross between radishes, turnips and broccoli stems. I love radishes and turnips but broccoli stems are really not my thing. So...I suppose we'll find out how I feel about these vegetables this week. They do look fascinating though! I googled them and one person described them as "green Sputnik-like bulbs." Intriguing. I think I'll chop some up and try them raw as snacks, along with my carrots.

I still have garlic and cucumbers left from last week's share too. Cucumbers are good snack food. Garlic will keep forever, so I'm not in a hurry. I can probably saute the garlic with the onions and some eggs for a nice brunch this weekend. Yum.

Beets and BBQ

What a lovely weekend full of friends, swimming, and lazy lounging in the sun :)

I contributed my zucchini, beets and lettuce to the BBQ this weekend and the reactions were interesting, to say the least.

As always, people were politely interested in the idea of a CSA, and I doubt most of them would go the extra step and sign up for one.

However, when it came to eating the vegetables, a very clear divide emerged. Reactions fell squarely into one of two camps:
1. Yes, please!
2. Is anyone going to actually eat that?

Interestingly, perhaps unsurprisingly, almost all the girls fell into the first group, while almost all of the guys were firmly in the second camp.

We lost a few slices of zucchini to the coals, but the rest disappeared pretty quickly. Beets also disappeared pretty fast. We ran out of coals, so the beets were more like gently-warmed beets than grilled beets, but they were still quite tasty. I didn't even know you could eat beets raw until this week. o.O

The guys, for all their earlier scoffing, were intrigued and I saw more than one person tentatively trying out a beet slice, probably for the first time in their lives. Very amusing and I managed to use up my CSA share and get other people to cook my vegetables for me. #winning :D

CSA Share #3 and #5

Wow. Between traveling home for some (much-needed and much-appreciated) vacation time and a million other life-events, I just haven't had time to do much beyond pick up my CSA share and try to figure out ways to incorporate more veggies in my life.

Quick recap of the last few weeks...

CSA Share 3
- garlic scapes (picked by yours truly :D)
- patty pan squash
- romaine lettuce
- swiss chard
- kale
- arugula
- basil

CWTC: Patty pan squash. They're just so cute!
WTF: None. I like all of these :)
TAV: None. THese are all pretty garden-variety (haha). And I got so up close and familiar with the garlic scapes after spending an hour picking them that I don't really consider them adventurous fare anymore.

I picked up this share, dropped it off at home, grabbed my luggage, and ran like crazy to catch my flight back to Arizona. But...this share was too cute and I couldn't help but pack a few veggies into a bag and carry them with me. I imagine a lot of the passengers on the plane were a bit confused. I know security at JFK was certainly a bit bewildered. As I was collecting my shoes and laptop from the plastic buckets, I overheard one security person whisper to another as they examined the x-ray screen, "Are those...vegetables?"

Haha. My parents were very impressed by my dedication and even more impressed that I cooked a lovely lemon-basil pasta with summer squash for dinner the next night. Most of all, they were impressed that I did the dishes (voluntarily!) and kept my room clean. I feel like they think I'm still 16 years old sometimes.

As an added bonus, the basil kept my air-sickness at bay. Every time I felt a bit nauseous, I just snagged a leaf from my bag and took a quick sniff of my basil. Mmm.

CSA Share 4
Skipped - out of town :/
On the bright side, I was having the time of my life at home, so I could care less. Plus, my CSA donates leftover vegetables, so it's not wasted!

CSA Share 5
- 1 head fresh garlic
- broccoli
- purple basil
- 2 cucumbers
- 1 Cousa-style squash (aka Korean hobak/zucchini)
- 2 golden zucchini
- red leaf lettuce
- carrots
- beets

CWTC: Carrots! They're so adorable :)
WTF: Broccoli. I like vegetables. I do. But not this one. Sigh...I still packed some for lunch, but I'm not thrilled about it.
TAV: Golden zucchini - zucchini itself is pretty standard stuff. But the color! So pretty! :)

Not sure what to do with this share yet. Very happy there is hobak in there. Apparently people didn't know how to cook/eat it, because this week's newsletter included a request for ways to prepare it. I EAT THIS ALL THE TIME. GIMME MOAR. 호박전, 된장찌개, 호박 무침...omg. More korean-style veggies are popping up in my CSA share than I expected. Plus points!

I might just pack some of my share and bring it with me to the BBQ my friend is throwing this weekend. Zucchini and beets will probably grill nicely. Lettuce on a burger? Cucumbers for snacks and cucumber water! Basil and cucumber for making mixed drinks? Mmm.