CSA 2013 Partial Share #8
- 1 bunch basil
- 1 bunch leeks
- 1 bunch beets
- 1 bunch carrots
- 1 Japanese eggplant
- 1 Walla Walla sweet onion
- 1 head lettuce
- 1 zucchini
Winner: Japanese eggplant! Cause they're damn tasty (in moderation) and they're purple! :) Alternatively, leeks, because leek soup.
Challenge: basil. It's like the world is mocking me. Look! Giant, fresh clumps of basil with green leaves from plants that happily live in the soil outside with real sunlight! Ha ha, looks nothing like the spindly four-leaf plants pathetically scrabbling to survive in your window garden box, surrounded by mushrooms that SHOULD NOT BE HERE. My basil sprouts, by the way, have four leaves on them after a nearly 6 week struggle to grow. Sad.
P.S. I changed my mind about zucchini. Kind of like the stuff sliced into super thin coins and fried in butter. But that could just be the butter talking.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
veggie triage
Late night at work
+ vegetables from last week on the verge of rotting that I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT (eek)
+ a new share
+ gone for the weekend
= stress
I was a super ninja and triaged the shit out of my fridge and cursed myself for forgetting about the basil and frisee hidden in the back that I forgot about. See, when frisee starts to go bad, it goes bad at the very tips and it goes bad unevenly. At least, mine did. So when I was picking out all the slimy leaves, I literally had to pick through each little tendril and pluck off the slimy bits to salvage what was left. Sure, I could have thrown it out, but I'm stubborn like that (though I do feel a little scared to eat it now after having gotten all up close and personal with the rotting tips). Besides, I felt vaguely guilty about tossing my kale salad and squash from last week. So I plucked. And plucked. And plucked some more.
Same thing with the basil, except basil starts to go bad where the leaves meet the stem, which means plucking each leaf off before stripping out the slimy part. Sigh. Fortunately, the parsley was in good shape. There were no other orphaned leftovers from last week's share to handle and I promised myself to be better about handling my CSA shares going forward.
I have to say, neglectfulness aside, I'm really impressed with myself. In under two hours, I managed to handle everything. In fact, I'm so impressed, I'm going to write down my triaging thought process so I can marvel at my ability to think on my feet later.
- Cabbage and napa cabbage: these keep forever ish. Take two seconds and store those suckers in fridge.
- Onion and fresh garlic: semi-long lived creatures. I lopped off their pretty green tops, rinsed those and tossed them in my "odds and ends" soup bag in the freezer. Tossed the bulbs in the fridge. Done. (Pro-tip: fresh garlic can be stored in the fridge for a week. Cured/dry garlic should NOT be stored in the fridge or in a plastic container, as it will sprout or mold. Store those outside in a dark location, like a paper bag or covered, ventilated basket.)
- Green beans and wax beans: Rinsed, admired their prettiness for a few moments, and stored them in ziploc bags as snack food. No prep, no cook, just rinse and store.
- Cucumbers: Washed, peeled, and sliced them into snackable sticks. No cooking (notice a trend?)
- Frisee and parsley: I debated cooking these together, but was too lazy after all that plucking, so I just googled "parsley frisee" and discovered that the internet says you can eat these together as a salad. Boom, done. I also chopped up a bit of parsley to sprinkle on some leftover hummus. I've discovered that I rather like the taste of fresh parsley on hummus and pasta. Those flecks of green are so surprising when you come across them, unlike their dried counterparts, which bear an uncanny resemblance to green paper.
- Basil and zucchini: arguably the most time consuming part of my evening. I basically followed the recipe for marinated zucchini, but spent a lot of time picking out the edible parts of the basil :/ I left the zucchini to marinate in a ziploc baggie and I made the basil-garlic-lemon dressing in advance. I'll give it a taste tomorrow and see how that went. My fingers are crossed. For once, I'm actually really excited to eat zucchini.
And that's it! My share(s) are packed into bags or containers or are safely in storage, and I am ready to face the rest of my week. Oh, I also got another chicken. I now have three chickens in my freezer and I'm running out of room. I should butcher one or roast one early next week so I have something to feed my brother when he gets here. That boy will eat you out of house and home. One time, I had to go to the grocery store twice IN ONE DAY to feed him. When you live in a five floor walkup, this is no laughing matter.
TL;DR: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, avoid cooking like the plague, and google has all the answers.
Side note: I feel like this is a weird thing to admit, but I really like the way zucchini feels when you cut it up with a super sharp knife. It's really soft, almost buttery, in texture and it looks so clean and fresh. And it's so much less messy than chopping up, say, a chicken.
+ vegetables from last week on the verge of rotting that I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT (eek)
+ a new share
+ gone for the weekend
= stress
I was a super ninja and triaged the shit out of my fridge and cursed myself for forgetting about the basil and frisee hidden in the back that I forgot about. See, when frisee starts to go bad, it goes bad at the very tips and it goes bad unevenly. At least, mine did. So when I was picking out all the slimy leaves, I literally had to pick through each little tendril and pluck off the slimy bits to salvage what was left. Sure, I could have thrown it out, but I'm stubborn like that (though I do feel a little scared to eat it now after having gotten all up close and personal with the rotting tips). Besides, I felt vaguely guilty about tossing my kale salad and squash from last week. So I plucked. And plucked. And plucked some more.
Same thing with the basil, except basil starts to go bad where the leaves meet the stem, which means plucking each leaf off before stripping out the slimy part. Sigh. Fortunately, the parsley was in good shape. There were no other orphaned leftovers from last week's share to handle and I promised myself to be better about handling my CSA shares going forward.
I have to say, neglectfulness aside, I'm really impressed with myself. In under two hours, I managed to handle everything. In fact, I'm so impressed, I'm going to write down my triaging thought process so I can marvel at my ability to think on my feet later.
- Cabbage and napa cabbage: these keep forever ish. Take two seconds and store those suckers in fridge.
- Onion and fresh garlic: semi-long lived creatures. I lopped off their pretty green tops, rinsed those and tossed them in my "odds and ends" soup bag in the freezer. Tossed the bulbs in the fridge. Done. (Pro-tip: fresh garlic can be stored in the fridge for a week. Cured/dry garlic should NOT be stored in the fridge or in a plastic container, as it will sprout or mold. Store those outside in a dark location, like a paper bag or covered, ventilated basket.)
- Green beans and wax beans: Rinsed, admired their prettiness for a few moments, and stored them in ziploc bags as snack food. No prep, no cook, just rinse and store.
- Cucumbers: Washed, peeled, and sliced them into snackable sticks. No cooking (notice a trend?)
- Frisee and parsley: I debated cooking these together, but was too lazy after all that plucking, so I just googled "parsley frisee" and discovered that the internet says you can eat these together as a salad. Boom, done. I also chopped up a bit of parsley to sprinkle on some leftover hummus. I've discovered that I rather like the taste of fresh parsley on hummus and pasta. Those flecks of green are so surprising when you come across them, unlike their dried counterparts, which bear an uncanny resemblance to green paper.
- Basil and zucchini: arguably the most time consuming part of my evening. I basically followed the recipe for marinated zucchini, but spent a lot of time picking out the edible parts of the basil :/ I left the zucchini to marinate in a ziploc baggie and I made the basil-garlic-lemon dressing in advance. I'll give it a taste tomorrow and see how that went. My fingers are crossed. For once, I'm actually really excited to eat zucchini.
And that's it! My share(s) are packed into bags or containers or are safely in storage, and I am ready to face the rest of my week. Oh, I also got another chicken. I now have three chickens in my freezer and I'm running out of room. I should butcher one or roast one early next week so I have something to feed my brother when he gets here. That boy will eat you out of house and home. One time, I had to go to the grocery store twice IN ONE DAY to feed him. When you live in a five floor walkup, this is no laughing matter.
TL;DR: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, avoid cooking like the plague, and google has all the answers.
Side note: I feel like this is a weird thing to admit, but I really like the way zucchini feels when you cut it up with a super sharp knife. It's really soft, almost buttery, in texture and it looks so clean and fresh. And it's so much less messy than chopping up, say, a chicken.
Marinated Zucchini Salad
This looks promising, especially since I still have a ton of basil and a half lemon living in my fridge. I'll give it a go and see how it tastes. If not, I'll stock up on baking ingredients and toss all my future zucchinis into a loaf pan.
Ingredients:
- 2 zucchini
- 1/4 cup vinegar
- 1 small spoon sugar
- pinch of salt and pepper
- 1 garlic clove
- 1/4 cup fresh basil
- 1 spoon lemon juice
- 1 spoon olive oil
Directions:
1. Combine vinegar, sugar and salt. Stir until sugar and salt dissolve.
2. Using a vegetable peeler, cut the zucchini into long ribbons (not coins).
3. Marinate zucchini strips overnight.
4. Blanch garlic and basil. Reserve a spoon of the liquid.
5. Chop garlic and basil finely and mix with the reserved cooking liquid, lemon juice, and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.
6. Drain zucchini strips and top with the basil mixture. Serve!
Ingredients:
- 2 zucchini
- 1/4 cup vinegar
- 1 small spoon sugar
- pinch of salt and pepper
- 1 garlic clove
- 1/4 cup fresh basil
- 1 spoon lemon juice
- 1 spoon olive oil
Directions:
1. Combine vinegar, sugar and salt. Stir until sugar and salt dissolve.
2. Using a vegetable peeler, cut the zucchini into long ribbons (not coins).
3. Marinate zucchini strips overnight.
4. Blanch garlic and basil. Reserve a spoon of the liquid.
5. Chop garlic and basil finely and mix with the reserved cooking liquid, lemon juice, and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.
6. Drain zucchini strips and top with the basil mixture. Serve!
CSA 2013 Partial Share #7
CSA 2013 Partial Share #7
- 12 oz yellow wax beans
- 1 bulb fresh garlic
- 1 Walla Walla onion
- 2 golden or green zucchini
- 2 cucumbers
- 1 petit green cabbage
- 1 Napa cabbage
- 11 oz green beans
Winner: This is tough. Just kidding. Obvious winner of the week is the humble yellow wax bean. I won't even pretend to understand my fascination with these, but it borders on the obsessively unhealthy. I just like the idea of waxy vegetables. Waxy beans, waxy potatoes, waxy eggplants. It's kind of like my obsession with stems. I should note that wax beans are not waxy in texture. No one really knows why they're called wax beans (or butter beans, which is equally as cute). Speculative theories point to the yellow color of the beans as a possible explanation, but I personally find that solution too easy. I will ruminate over this quandary while I ruminate on some wax beans. (Sorry not sorry. Couldn't help it. When do you ever get to use the same word in different ways in the same sentence? If you have a brain like mine, the answer is "not often." Indulge me.)
Challenge: Zucchini. Sorry I just...not a fan...I like looking at them? I will try to be creative. Also a little concerned about the sheer volume of cabbage. Too bad none of these are very freezable, except perhaps the green beans. I must say though...I'm thankful for the break from the flood of lettuce and turnip/radish/beet greens. :)
- 12 oz yellow wax beans
- 1 bulb fresh garlic
- 1 Walla Walla onion
- 2 golden or green zucchini
- 2 cucumbers
- 1 petit green cabbage
- 1 Napa cabbage
- 11 oz green beans
Winner: This is tough. Just kidding. Obvious winner of the week is the humble yellow wax bean. I won't even pretend to understand my fascination with these, but it borders on the obsessively unhealthy. I just like the idea of waxy vegetables. Waxy beans, waxy potatoes, waxy eggplants. It's kind of like my obsession with stems. I should note that wax beans are not waxy in texture. No one really knows why they're called wax beans (or butter beans, which is equally as cute). Speculative theories point to the yellow color of the beans as a possible explanation, but I personally find that solution too easy. I will ruminate over this quandary while I ruminate on some wax beans. (Sorry not sorry. Couldn't help it. When do you ever get to use the same word in different ways in the same sentence? If you have a brain like mine, the answer is "not often." Indulge me.)
Challenge: Zucchini. Sorry I just...not a fan...I like looking at them? I will try to be creative. Also a little concerned about the sheer volume of cabbage. Too bad none of these are very freezable, except perhaps the green beans. I must say though...I'm thankful for the break from the flood of lettuce and turnip/radish/beet greens. :)
Monday, July 22, 2013
CSA 2013 Partial Share #6
CSA 2013 Partial Share #6
- 8 oz green beans
- 4.5 oz baby salad greens
- 1 bunch Japanese turnips
- 1 head frissee
- 1 bunch spring onions
- 1 bunch basil
- 1 bunch parsley
- 2 patty pan squash
Winner: green beens (yes, beens. It looks cuter like that.) Why? Because they are tasty and most importantly, they require little to no prep. Rinse and eat. Boom.
Challenge: Basil and parsley. I wish I had a food processor so I could make pesto T_T I did manage to use up half the parsley in some delicious buttered pasta. Apparently, even my drunk self knows that using up perishable things in the fridge is a Key Priority. I'm proud, but I'm not sure I should be.
I'm starting to wonder how long I can keep cooked veg in the fridge without making myself sick. I've been eating the maneul jjong jangachi in small quantities and so far, so good! But I have definitely been testing the limits with some of my other creations. I sauteed patty pan squash with basil and spring onions and a hefty dose of lemon and dried lavender. It was delicious. I left it in the fridge for about a week and got scared though, so I threw half of it out :/ Ditto for some massaged kale salad :/ :/
I have a bit of frissee, the herbs, and some spring onions left. I'm simultaneously excited and nervous about tomorrow's share. meep.
- 8 oz green beans
- 4.5 oz baby salad greens
- 1 bunch Japanese turnips
- 1 head frissee
- 1 bunch spring onions
- 1 bunch basil
- 1 bunch parsley
- 2 patty pan squash
Winner: green beens (yes, beens. It looks cuter like that.) Why? Because they are tasty and most importantly, they require little to no prep. Rinse and eat. Boom.
Challenge: Basil and parsley. I wish I had a food processor so I could make pesto T_T I did manage to use up half the parsley in some delicious buttered pasta. Apparently, even my drunk self knows that using up perishable things in the fridge is a Key Priority. I'm proud, but I'm not sure I should be.
I'm starting to wonder how long I can keep cooked veg in the fridge without making myself sick. I've been eating the maneul jjong jangachi in small quantities and so far, so good! But I have definitely been testing the limits with some of my other creations. I sauteed patty pan squash with basil and spring onions and a hefty dose of lemon and dried lavender. It was delicious. I left it in the fridge for about a week and got scared though, so I threw half of it out :/ Ditto for some massaged kale salad :/ :/
I have a bit of frissee, the herbs, and some spring onions left. I'm simultaneously excited and nervous about tomorrow's share. meep.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
basil mint vodka lemonade, maneul jjong jangachi and chicken soup
A weekend of cooking!
Light Chicken Stock
Straightforward, easy, just takes a little time.
In a pot, saute onions, carrot tops/peelings, and whole garlic cloves (leave skins on!)
Add chicken and cook until meat begins to brown. Add a little salt.
Add water and simmer for a while (20 min?).
Skim foam off the top. Remove chicken pieces and let cool.
Remove chicken meat from bones and return bones to the pot. Reserve meat.
Remove vegetables when the carrots and onions start becoming mushy. Keep whatever looks edible (including garlic!) and snack on them :D.
Add herbs/seasoning of choice (I used a mix of lavender, thyme, fennel, chives).
Simmer the bones for as long as you want (1 hour?).
Salt to taste. Remove bones, discard, and let the soup cool.
Store the soup in little ziploc bags and freeze for later use.
Maneul jjong jangachi update!
Had to adjust seasoning but everything is all complete and looks and tastes yummy :) I think I have enough to last me for a full year now... 밮도독 ㅋㅋㅋ
Basil Mint Vodka Lemonade
Ingredients:
- Fresh basil
- Fresh mint
- 1 lemon
- 2 heaping spoons sugar
- water and ice
Directions:
1. Chop lemon in half and squeeze out the juice. Pick out the seeds and toss them.
2. Add 2-3 spoons sugar. Stir until somewhat dissolved.
3. Add a few sprigs of fresh mint and basil and muddle at the bottom of the glass.
4. Add chilled vodka and ice, stir.
5. Add cold water to taste. Garnish with lemon peel and mint/basil sprigs. Enjoy!
Light Chicken Stock
Straightforward, easy, just takes a little time.
In a pot, saute onions, carrot tops/peelings, and whole garlic cloves (leave skins on!)
Add chicken and cook until meat begins to brown. Add a little salt.
Add water and simmer for a while (20 min?).
Skim foam off the top. Remove chicken pieces and let cool.
Remove chicken meat from bones and return bones to the pot. Reserve meat.
Remove vegetables when the carrots and onions start becoming mushy. Keep whatever looks edible (including garlic!) and snack on them :D.
Add herbs/seasoning of choice (I used a mix of lavender, thyme, fennel, chives).
Simmer the bones for as long as you want (1 hour?).
Salt to taste. Remove bones, discard, and let the soup cool.
Store the soup in little ziploc bags and freeze for later use.
Maneul jjong jangachi update!
Had to adjust seasoning but everything is all complete and looks and tastes yummy :) I think I have enough to last me for a full year now... 밮도독 ㅋㅋㅋ
Basil Mint Vodka Lemonade
Ingredients:
- Fresh basil
- Fresh mint
- 1 lemon
- 2 heaping spoons sugar
- water and ice
Directions:
1. Chop lemon in half and squeeze out the juice. Pick out the seeds and toss them.
2. Add 2-3 spoons sugar. Stir until somewhat dissolved.
3. Add a few sprigs of fresh mint and basil and muddle at the bottom of the glass.
4. Add chilled vodka and ice, stir.
5. Add cold water to taste. Garnish with lemon peel and mint/basil sprigs. Enjoy!
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
CSA 2013 Partial Share #5
Multiple post Tuesday! Cause I got behind. Woops.
CSA 2013 Partial Share #5
- 1 bunch lacinato kale
- 1 bunch Swiss chard
- 4.5 oz salad mix
- 3/4lb shelling peas
- 1 bunch basil
- 1 bunch mint
Winner: This is tough. My first instinct is to freak out about the peas, because OMG peas and I haven't had fresh peas in years. But then, the kale. And the basil and mint! So many cool things to choose from :D This is the first time Free Bird Farm has tried growing mint and shelling peas, so I'm very excited about that. When we were up at the farm, Ken was telling us how another farmer had told him to grow some shelling peas, because us city folk go crazy for them. Ken didn't understand why, since the volume of edible food per square foot of soil is quite low (you can't even eat the pea pods!), but he figured why not? Make the city people happy with some novelty items. This is why I love my CSA. <3
Challenge: On the bright side, there's no garlic scapes or multiple heads of lettuce! I'm not the hugest fan of Swiss chard, so when I saw that someone had left a half dozen eggs in the swap box, I jumped on that and swapped out the chard for some free-range eggs. They look so lovely, all brown and different sized. :)
Today was a fantastic haul for me. I love everything in my share and I even got my hands on some eggs! I got another chicken too, so I'm planning on butchering the chicken this weekend and making some soup stock. I'll use a bit of the stock to make some light summer soup with the pea pods and garlic scape trimmings. The pea pods are pretty delicate, but the garlic scapes are also mild, so I think everything will balance out nicely. I'm thinking about throwing in the mint as well. Mint-pea soup sounds so summery and fresh :)
CSA 2013 Partial Share #5
- 1 bunch lacinato kale
- 1 bunch Swiss chard
- 4.5 oz salad mix
- 3/4lb shelling peas
- 1 bunch basil
- 1 bunch mint
Winner: This is tough. My first instinct is to freak out about the peas, because OMG peas and I haven't had fresh peas in years. But then, the kale. And the basil and mint! So many cool things to choose from :D This is the first time Free Bird Farm has tried growing mint and shelling peas, so I'm very excited about that. When we were up at the farm, Ken was telling us how another farmer had told him to grow some shelling peas, because us city folk go crazy for them. Ken didn't understand why, since the volume of edible food per square foot of soil is quite low (you can't even eat the pea pods!), but he figured why not? Make the city people happy with some novelty items. This is why I love my CSA. <3
Challenge: On the bright side, there's no garlic scapes or multiple heads of lettuce! I'm not the hugest fan of Swiss chard, so when I saw that someone had left a half dozen eggs in the swap box, I jumped on that and swapped out the chard for some free-range eggs. They look so lovely, all brown and different sized. :)
Today was a fantastic haul for me. I love everything in my share and I even got my hands on some eggs! I got another chicken too, so I'm planning on butchering the chicken this weekend and making some soup stock. I'll use a bit of the stock to make some light summer soup with the pea pods and garlic scape trimmings. The pea pods are pretty delicate, but the garlic scapes are also mild, so I think everything will balance out nicely. I'm thinking about throwing in the mint as well. Mint-pea soup sounds so summery and fresh :)
Garlic Scapes: Plan of attack! + maneul jong jangachi (마늘종 장아찌)
As I mentioned, I got a little overexcited at the farm and brought home a giant mess of scapes. Visions of scapes cooked both Korean-style and American (Western?)-style danced before my eyes and...yeah. We've been getting scapes every week too. They're a little tricky to chop because of their curly nature, but I'm going to deal with all of them tonight. No more excuses. rawr.
Also, I realized I've been spelling maneul jong wrong this whole time. FFF. It SOUNDS like 마늘쫑, but it's actually 마늘종. ㅠㅠ...
Ways to use scapes:
- Maneul jong bokkeum aka garlic scape Korean stir-fry (see below)
- Sauteed with a bit of olive oil until slightly charred
- Wash, chop, and freeze in ziploc bags (try and push out all the air from the bags before sealing). Should be fine for later use in cooked recipes or in soups.
- Maneul jong jangachi: need to translate a recipe because I couldn't find anything in English. But this is pretty much my favorite banchan except for maybe the lotus roots and kkakdugi kimchi tops (I told you, I have an unhealthy obsession with stems).
I told my mama I was going to try making maneul jong jangachi and she just was like, "wtf why would you do that? It's too much work. Just go buy it." I, of course, am not going to listen to her because I really do love these things and I already have a bunch in my fridge. But after translating the recipe, I understand what she meant by "wtf" and "too much work." Erughhh.
~~~
Maneul Jong Jangachi (마늘종 장아찌)
Note: Not sure what a good translation of this would be, but maybe "Spicy Pickled Garlic Scapes"? Ugh, sounds as bad as describing kimchi as Spicy Pickled Cabbage or soondubu jjigae as Spicy Tofu Stew (yuckyuckyuck). Whatever, it is noms.
I'm dividing ingredients into two sections. The scapes need to be brined first, so I'll list those ingredients first, followed by the marinade/sauce that they will sit in.
Ingredients (brining):
- Garlic scapes (600g of scapes = 1 large bunch of scapes, which is not very precise. Hopefully this works out okay.)
- 3 cups water
- 3 large spoons of salt (literally translates to large spoon. I think that's equal to one heaping kitchen spoon? 1 tbsp? Apparently, the salt solution is supposed to be 5%, or 50g salt per 1L water. But I don't know what that means in US measurements. buh. If this turns out tasting bad, I'll go back and do the conversions and try again.)
- 1 cup minced garlic (optional, but makes everything tastier)
Ingredients (marinade/sauce)
- 6 large spoons gochujang (hot red pepper paste)
- 1 large spoon gochukkaru (red chili pepper flakes)
- 1/2 small spoon anchovy (myeolchi) fish sauce
- 1/2 large spoon vinegar
- 4 large spoons sugar*
- small amount of whole sesame seeds
- whole or sliced garlic cloves (optional)
* The recipe I'm looking at says 1 spoon sugar and 3 spoons "oligo sugar." Wasn't sure what the heck that was, but apparently it's an artificial sweetener. The aftertaste of artificial sweeteners makes me buggy, so I'm going to adjust the recipe and just use regular sugar. Honey might be okay to use as well, but use less since honey is sweeter than sugar.
Directions:
1. Bunch the scapes together and chop off bottom ends of scapes. Discard. Working up from the bottom, chop into 2 inch segments. If your scapes are super duper curly like mine, work in small bunches of 3-4 stems.
2. The recipe I am looking at says to throw away the flower buds and tips, but we all know these are yummy to eat. Set aside and use them in a stir fry or soup!
3. Wash chopped scapes.
4. Boil water and salt in a large pot. When boiling, remove from heat and let cool slightly (to 70 deg C ish)
5. Place chopped scapes in hot salted water and make sure all the stems are fully submerged. If not, make more salt water!
6. OMG. Real time translation means real time commentary. Recipe says to let the scapes sit for 3-4 days. DAYS. I thought my Korean was just sucking and I was reading that wrong, but no. It's days. >.< Okay, let your scapes brine for 3-4 days. This probably means the salt solution needs to be measured fairly accurately to prevent weird things from growing. I believe we're supposed to leave these out to pickle at room temperature (the warmer the room, the better), so I'm going to err on the side of oversalting the water, just to be safe.
7. Wash a piece of scape and taste to see if they are ready. Apparently, if there is a "hot, biting taste" (translated literally), they are ready. They should look a bit pickled and shrivelly. I'm going to include a link to the original recipe below for picture comparison purposes because at this point, I've lost all faith in my ability to follow this recipe by itself and still succeed. T_T
8. If the scape is too salty, place the scapes in a bowl of fresh water and let some of the salt leach out.
9. Wash the scapes thoroughly in clean water.
10. Place scapes in a mesh colander and press out excess water.
11. Spread out scapes over a mesh surface and let drain/air dry for a few hours if possible.
12. Mix all ingredients for the marinade/sauce except the whole or sliced garlic cloves and sesame seeds. If you're not using cloves, add some minced garlic.
13. Adjust seasoning (sugar/vinegar/fish sauce) to taste. According to the recipe, the vinegar brings out the sweetness of the sugar and the fish sauce complements and deepens the saltiness of the dish. Makes sense.
14. Combine the sauce/marinade, whole or sliced garlic cloves, the garlic scapes, and the whole sesame seeds.
15. Mix thoroughly, ensuring that all the stems are fully coated with the marinade/sauce. Err on the side of making too much marinade/sauce*. If there isn't enough, the scapes sitting on the top will dry out and lose their flavor :( or the scapes will start to mold :O
*Tip from me: If you have extra sauce leftover when you finish eating your scapes, you can mix it with plain white rice. Om nom nom.
16. Store in the fridge! According to the recipe, scapes normally go soft in about 6 months, but with the method we used above (blanching in hot salted water), the scapes should stay crunchy and asak asak fresh for a year. O.O A YEAR.
17. As days pass, the scapes will further pickle and become more and more yums. Make some rice and eat your heart out.
I shall give it a go this week and we'll see how this turns out. I really hope I don't give myself botulism or something. Also, I wonder why the maneul jong jangachi at H-Mart always says it's expiring in 2-3 weeks if it can supposedly last so long? They always over ferment everything!!! The kimchi I get from H-Mart also goes sour in less than a month. :(
Anyways...wish me luck.
Original recipe can be found here. The pictures are so, so pretty!!! This lady (or man) is a total pro.
Also, I realized I've been spelling maneul jong wrong this whole time. FFF. It SOUNDS like 마늘쫑, but it's actually 마늘종. ㅠㅠ...
Ways to use scapes:
- Maneul jong bokkeum aka garlic scape Korean stir-fry (see below)
- Sauteed with a bit of olive oil until slightly charred
- Wash, chop, and freeze in ziploc bags (try and push out all the air from the bags before sealing). Should be fine for later use in cooked recipes or in soups.
- Maneul jong jangachi: need to translate a recipe because I couldn't find anything in English. But this is pretty much my favorite banchan except for maybe the lotus roots and kkakdugi kimchi tops (I told you, I have an unhealthy obsession with stems).
I told my mama I was going to try making maneul jong jangachi and she just was like, "wtf why would you do that? It's too much work. Just go buy it." I, of course, am not going to listen to her because I really do love these things and I already have a bunch in my fridge. But after translating the recipe, I understand what she meant by "wtf" and "too much work." Erughhh.
~~~
Maneul Jong Jangachi (마늘종 장아찌)
Note: Not sure what a good translation of this would be, but maybe "Spicy Pickled Garlic Scapes"? Ugh, sounds as bad as describing kimchi as Spicy Pickled Cabbage or soondubu jjigae as Spicy Tofu Stew (yuckyuckyuck). Whatever, it is noms.
I'm dividing ingredients into two sections. The scapes need to be brined first, so I'll list those ingredients first, followed by the marinade/sauce that they will sit in.
Ingredients (brining):
- Garlic scapes (600g of scapes = 1 large bunch of scapes, which is not very precise. Hopefully this works out okay.)
- 3 cups water
- 3 large spoons of salt (literally translates to large spoon. I think that's equal to one heaping kitchen spoon? 1 tbsp? Apparently, the salt solution is supposed to be 5%, or 50g salt per 1L water. But I don't know what that means in US measurements. buh. If this turns out tasting bad, I'll go back and do the conversions and try again.)
- 1 cup minced garlic (optional, but makes everything tastier)
Ingredients (marinade/sauce)
- 6 large spoons gochujang (hot red pepper paste)
- 1 large spoon gochukkaru (red chili pepper flakes)
- 1/2 small spoon anchovy (myeolchi) fish sauce
- 1/2 large spoon vinegar
- 4 large spoons sugar*
- small amount of whole sesame seeds
- whole or sliced garlic cloves (optional)
* The recipe I'm looking at says 1 spoon sugar and 3 spoons "oligo sugar." Wasn't sure what the heck that was, but apparently it's an artificial sweetener. The aftertaste of artificial sweeteners makes me buggy, so I'm going to adjust the recipe and just use regular sugar. Honey might be okay to use as well, but use less since honey is sweeter than sugar.
Directions:
1. Bunch the scapes together and chop off bottom ends of scapes. Discard. Working up from the bottom, chop into 2 inch segments. If your scapes are super duper curly like mine, work in small bunches of 3-4 stems.
2. The recipe I am looking at says to throw away the flower buds and tips, but we all know these are yummy to eat. Set aside and use them in a stir fry or soup!
3. Wash chopped scapes.
4. Boil water and salt in a large pot. When boiling, remove from heat and let cool slightly (to 70 deg C ish)
5. Place chopped scapes in hot salted water and make sure all the stems are fully submerged. If not, make more salt water!
6. OMG. Real time translation means real time commentary. Recipe says to let the scapes sit for 3-4 days. DAYS. I thought my Korean was just sucking and I was reading that wrong, but no. It's days. >.< Okay, let your scapes brine for 3-4 days. This probably means the salt solution needs to be measured fairly accurately to prevent weird things from growing. I believe we're supposed to leave these out to pickle at room temperature (the warmer the room, the better), so I'm going to err on the side of oversalting the water, just to be safe.
7. Wash a piece of scape and taste to see if they are ready. Apparently, if there is a "hot, biting taste" (translated literally), they are ready. They should look a bit pickled and shrivelly. I'm going to include a link to the original recipe below for picture comparison purposes because at this point, I've lost all faith in my ability to follow this recipe by itself and still succeed. T_T
8. If the scape is too salty, place the scapes in a bowl of fresh water and let some of the salt leach out.
9. Wash the scapes thoroughly in clean water.
10. Place scapes in a mesh colander and press out excess water.
11. Spread out scapes over a mesh surface and let drain/air dry for a few hours if possible.
12. Mix all ingredients for the marinade/sauce except the whole or sliced garlic cloves and sesame seeds. If you're not using cloves, add some minced garlic.
13. Adjust seasoning (sugar/vinegar/fish sauce) to taste. According to the recipe, the vinegar brings out the sweetness of the sugar and the fish sauce complements and deepens the saltiness of the dish. Makes sense.
14. Combine the sauce/marinade, whole or sliced garlic cloves, the garlic scapes, and the whole sesame seeds.
15. Mix thoroughly, ensuring that all the stems are fully coated with the marinade/sauce. Err on the side of making too much marinade/sauce*. If there isn't enough, the scapes sitting on the top will dry out and lose their flavor :( or the scapes will start to mold :O
*Tip from me: If you have extra sauce leftover when you finish eating your scapes, you can mix it with plain white rice. Om nom nom.
16. Store in the fridge! According to the recipe, scapes normally go soft in about 6 months, but with the method we used above (blanching in hot salted water), the scapes should stay crunchy and asak asak fresh for a year. O.O A YEAR.
17. As days pass, the scapes will further pickle and become more and more yums. Make some rice and eat your heart out.
I shall give it a go this week and we'll see how this turns out. I really hope I don't give myself botulism or something. Also, I wonder why the maneul jong jangachi at H-Mart always says it's expiring in 2-3 weeks if it can supposedly last so long? They always over ferment everything!!! The kimchi I get from H-Mart also goes sour in less than a month. :(
Anyways...wish me luck.
Original recipe can be found here. The pictures are so, so pretty!!! This lady (or man) is a total pro.
CSA 2013 Partial Share #4
CSA 2013 Partial Share #4
- 1 head Romaine lettuce
- 1 head broccoli
- 1 bunch beets (and greens!)
- 1 bunch Japanese turnips
- 3/4lb garlic scapes
Winner: Japanese turnips. I love these mild, tender, sweet turnips. They're white and small and thin-skinned and they're wonderful in a salad or just sliced into coins and eaten raw as a snack. In fact, I love them so much I swapped out the broccoli for another bunch of turnips. Also, I don't like broccoli. I love the swap box <3
Challenge: I...may have overdone it with the garlic scapes. I now have probably 3-4 pounds of scapes accumulated over the last few weeks. O.O I shall smell, forever. On the bright side, no mosquito bites lately! I can't tell if it's because I managed to kill enough of the pesky little guys (and their dead carcasses on my walls are warning the other ones away) or if it's because garlic blood is less tasty. Whatever the cause, I am not complaining.
* I got my extra chicken! Thawed it out overnight in the fridge and butchered it successfully. Two boneless/skinless chicken breasts pounded flat, two tenderloins, two thighs, two wings, and the carcass for soup! Plus a little bowl of chicken fat that I plan to render later. I didn't realize how much chicken smells though. After butchering and cooking, my apartment smelled like chicken meat for days and I was too chicken (ha) to open the windows because of mosquitos. #firstworldproblems
- 1 head Romaine lettuce
- 1 head broccoli
- 1 bunch beets (and greens!)
- 1 bunch Japanese turnips
- 3/4lb garlic scapes
Winner: Japanese turnips. I love these mild, tender, sweet turnips. They're white and small and thin-skinned and they're wonderful in a salad or just sliced into coins and eaten raw as a snack. In fact, I love them so much I swapped out the broccoli for another bunch of turnips. Also, I don't like broccoli. I love the swap box <3
Challenge: I...may have overdone it with the garlic scapes. I now have probably 3-4 pounds of scapes accumulated over the last few weeks. O.O I shall smell, forever. On the bright side, no mosquito bites lately! I can't tell if it's because I managed to kill enough of the pesky little guys (and their dead carcasses on my walls are warning the other ones away) or if it's because garlic blood is less tasty. Whatever the cause, I am not complaining.
* I got my extra chicken! Thawed it out overnight in the fridge and butchered it successfully. Two boneless/skinless chicken breasts pounded flat, two tenderloins, two thighs, two wings, and the carcass for soup! Plus a little bowl of chicken fat that I plan to render later. I didn't realize how much chicken smells though. After butchering and cooking, my apartment smelled like chicken meat for days and I was too chicken (ha) to open the windows because of mosquitos. #firstworldproblems
Monday, July 1, 2013
Korean-style Stir-Fried Garlic Scapes (maneul jjong bokkeum / 마늘쫑볶음)
I adore these things. So much. I think I just like stems in general, because I also love pea tips and sweet potato stems. Something about the vibrant green color and the tender but stringy texture? I have no clue.
Anyways, we did our annual farm trip on Sunday and I carted home a few souvenirs, including a giant bag of scapes that we harvested at the farm on Sunday and a tomato-red sunburn. My nose hurts a bit when I scrunch it and my entire chest, shoulders, and arms make me look like I have mad Asian glow. Oddly, my neck area remained completely burn-free. My coworker is hypothesizing that my chin shaded my neck from the sun, which has now made me self-conscious about the size of my chin.
I was perplexed that people seem to have difficulties using up all their scapes. There's sooo many ways to eat them! They can be sauteed, stir-fried, frozen, pickled, pureed into pesto, sprinkled around like mini garlic bits onto pasta and pizza, and folded into omelettes. They are also one of my favorite banchan, which I found out last year after calling my mom excitedly to tell her about this new and unusual vegetable that I found in my CSA share. She drily noted that while it was good I was excited about discovering new vegetables, I had been eating these all my life in the form of 마늘쫑장아찌 (maneul jjong jangachi).
Unlike lettuce, which gets turned into salad 99 times out of 100, garlic scapes are so versatile that I pretty much never can have too much of them. So...an ode to garlic scapes. Excpect to see a few different posts on them in the coming weeks. My goal this year is to figure out how to make my beloved maneul jjong jangachi from scratch. I was too lazy to translate recipes last night though, so I just went with maneul jjong bokkeum.
Korean-style Stir-Fried Garlic Scapes (Maneul Jjong Bokkeum)
Ingredients:
- 1 bunch garlic scapes
- Soy sauce
- Sugar or honey
- Salt
- Cooking oil
- Sesame oil (optional)
- Toasted sesame seeds (optional)
Directions:
1. Wash scapes and shake off excess moisture.
2. Chop scapes into 1 - 2 inch segments. Keep the buds! They're yummy :)
Optional step: If you want, you can blanch the scapes before stir-frying.
3. In a pan, heat some oil (add sesame oil if desired).
4. When oil is hot, add scapes and stir frequently until scapes have begun to shrivel and darken. Season with salt.
5. When scapes are dark green in color, add a few splashes of soy sauce and some sugar to taste. Not sure about the proportions, but I think equal parts soy sauce and sugar should do it. Too little is better than too much, as you can always add more of both later.
6. Cook for a few more minutes, stirring frequently to ensure nothing burns.
7. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds if desired and serve with rice. Or, if you are lazy like me, eat them with triscuits. Carbs are carbs lol.
Anyways, we did our annual farm trip on Sunday and I carted home a few souvenirs, including a giant bag of scapes that we harvested at the farm on Sunday and a tomato-red sunburn. My nose hurts a bit when I scrunch it and my entire chest, shoulders, and arms make me look like I have mad Asian glow. Oddly, my neck area remained completely burn-free. My coworker is hypothesizing that my chin shaded my neck from the sun, which has now made me self-conscious about the size of my chin.
I was perplexed that people seem to have difficulties using up all their scapes. There's sooo many ways to eat them! They can be sauteed, stir-fried, frozen, pickled, pureed into pesto, sprinkled around like mini garlic bits onto pasta and pizza, and folded into omelettes. They are also one of my favorite banchan, which I found out last year after calling my mom excitedly to tell her about this new and unusual vegetable that I found in my CSA share. She drily noted that while it was good I was excited about discovering new vegetables, I had been eating these all my life in the form of 마늘쫑장아찌 (maneul jjong jangachi).
Unlike lettuce, which gets turned into salad 99 times out of 100, garlic scapes are so versatile that I pretty much never can have too much of them. So...an ode to garlic scapes. Excpect to see a few different posts on them in the coming weeks. My goal this year is to figure out how to make my beloved maneul jjong jangachi from scratch. I was too lazy to translate recipes last night though, so I just went with maneul jjong bokkeum.
Korean-style Stir-Fried Garlic Scapes (Maneul Jjong Bokkeum)
Ingredients:
- 1 bunch garlic scapes
- Soy sauce
- Sugar or honey
- Salt
- Cooking oil
- Sesame oil (optional)
- Toasted sesame seeds (optional)
Directions:
1. Wash scapes and shake off excess moisture.
2. Chop scapes into 1 - 2 inch segments. Keep the buds! They're yummy :)
Optional step: If you want, you can blanch the scapes before stir-frying.
3. In a pan, heat some oil (add sesame oil if desired).
4. When oil is hot, add scapes and stir frequently until scapes have begun to shrivel and darken. Season with salt.
5. When scapes are dark green in color, add a few splashes of soy sauce and some sugar to taste. Not sure about the proportions, but I think equal parts soy sauce and sugar should do it. Too little is better than too much, as you can always add more of both later.
6. Cook for a few more minutes, stirring frequently to ensure nothing burns.
7. Garnish with toasted sesame seeds if desired and serve with rice. Or, if you are lazy like me, eat them with triscuits. Carbs are carbs lol.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
CSA 2013 Partial Share #3
Good thing I like green things, because the first few weeks of the CSA season is pretty much solid green, every week. Salads and omelettes have become a way of life and even my eggs are green (from all the extra vegetables I keep throwing into the pan). Nom nom nom.
CSA 2013 Partial Share #3
- 1 bunch spring onions
- 1 head red leaf lettuce
- 1 bunch garlic scapes
- 1 bunch Swiss chard
- 4 oz salad mix (which I really really need to remember to wash tonight)
Winner: GARLIC SCAPES. <3 <3 <3 I adore garlic scapes. They're so cute and so tasty!
Challenge: Lettuce, especially after last week. I still have half a head of red leaf in the fridge (if it hasn't gone bad by now). Le sigh.
I was supposed to get a chicken, but I came at the very last minute and they were out by the time I got there. So I'll probably get one next week or a double chicken share the week after. I am running out of space in my freezer though, so I'm going to try and cook the first chicken with my friend during July 4th weekend.
CSA 2013 Partial Share #3
- 1 bunch spring onions
- 1 head red leaf lettuce
- 1 bunch garlic scapes
- 1 bunch Swiss chard
- 4 oz salad mix (which I really really need to remember to wash tonight)
Winner: GARLIC SCAPES. <3 <3 <3 I adore garlic scapes. They're so cute and so tasty!
Challenge: Lettuce, especially after last week. I still have half a head of red leaf in the fridge (if it hasn't gone bad by now). Le sigh.
I was supposed to get a chicken, but I came at the very last minute and they were out by the time I got there. So I'll probably get one next week or a double chicken share the week after. I am running out of space in my freezer though, so I'm going to try and cook the first chicken with my friend during July 4th weekend.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
radis avec beurre et sel
Who knew? Radishes eaten the French way are surprisingly delicious. Slice them thin, top with butter and a sprinkle of coarse sea salt. Eat.
That's it!
I'm not even a huge fan of butter (I know, but hey, at least I like bacon and chocolate...?) or raw radishes (too peppery in large quantities). But the butter goes a long way in moderating the pepperiness of the radish, while the salt brings out and balances the flavors of both. I've heard this combination makes a great sandwich as well, but I didn't have any bread, so I'll have to try that next time.
That's it!
I'm not even a huge fan of butter (I know, but hey, at least I like bacon and chocolate...?) or raw radishes (too peppery in large quantities). But the butter goes a long way in moderating the pepperiness of the radish, while the salt brings out and balances the flavors of both. I've heard this combination makes a great sandwich as well, but I didn't have any bread, so I'll have to try that next time.
Friday, June 21, 2013
frisee, bacon, and a poached egg
Fact: bacon makes most things ten times better. Undaunted by all the green heads lolling around in my fridge, I set out to find a tasty way to split an entire head of frisee with my bestie. Just like I tossed in some sausage to balance out the escarole*, I decided to use some bacon to provide some richness and satisfying depth of flavor to the frisee. It was...really, really good. Thanks, bacon! Maybe a little salty, but not noticeably so. We paired the frisee with another garden salad (that head of red leaf lettuce just keeps on giving) and a bottle of Moscato that the bestie picked out. The sweet bubbly was a perfect complement to the bacon and eggs. Now that I think about it, I guess what we really had last night was a dinner version of brunch.
* While looking for the frisee, I pulled out one of the plastic bags in the fridge and peeped inside. Imagine my consternation when I looked into one and saw coarse green leaves with thick white stems that looked suspiciously like escarole... I think we cooked the green leaf lettuce with our pasta last night. Oops.
On the bright side, if I'm correct and if the green leaves in my fridge are in fact escarole and not lettuce, then this means I've found a tasteful, tasty way to cook lettuce! Which would be kind of awesome.
As a side note, I'm making good progress with the share! Remaining items: 1/2 head red leaf lettuce, 1 head of either escarole or green leaf lettuce (TBD), two spring onions, and radishes from share #1.
Wilted frisee with bacon and a poached egg (serves 2)
Ingredients:
- 1 head frisee
- 2 spring onions
- Minced garlic
- 5 strips bacon
- Cooking oil
- Salt, pepper
- 2 eggs
Directions:
1. Wash frisee and green onions thoroughly.
2. Heat a large pan over medium high heat. Throw in the bacon strips and let them cook for a bit.
3. Chop frisee into bite size pieces (they will shrink as they cook down though, so make your pieces a little bigger than you want them to be at the end). Chop green onions and set aside.
4. By now the bacon should be done. Remove from heat and extract the bacon from the pan. Wipe down the pan with a paper towel to remove most of the bacon grease.
5. Heat water in a small pan (add as much water as possible without risking a spill).
6. Add some cooking oil to the large pan and reheat. Once the oil is hot, add chopped green onions and garlic plus a dash of salt. Stir and cook until the garlic begins to turn golden brown.
7. Add the frisee to the large pan in big handfuls. Season with a bit of salt and pepper, and cook until wilted about 5 minutes.
8. While the frisee is cooking, check the water in the small pan. When it's boiling, turn the heat down to low. Crack an egg into a small dish and slide it into the water. Repeat and slide another egg into the pan. Poach to desired level of "doneness." (I personally think leaving the yolk all nice and runny makes a wonderful "dressing" for the frisee).
9. Once the frisee is wilted, remove the large pan from heat and set aside. Take the bacon strips and chop into small pieces.
10. Arrange the frisee into a little nest on your plate, gently place a poached egg in the middle, and top the whole dish with half of the bacon bits. Serve and enjoy the goodness that is bacon.
* While looking for the frisee, I pulled out one of the plastic bags in the fridge and peeped inside. Imagine my consternation when I looked into one and saw coarse green leaves with thick white stems that looked suspiciously like escarole... I think we cooked the green leaf lettuce with our pasta last night. Oops.
On the bright side, if I'm correct and if the green leaves in my fridge are in fact escarole and not lettuce, then this means I've found a tasteful, tasty way to cook lettuce! Which would be kind of awesome.
As a side note, I'm making good progress with the share! Remaining items: 1/2 head red leaf lettuce, 1 head of either escarole or green leaf lettuce (TBD), two spring onions, and radishes from share #1.
Wilted frisee with bacon and a poached egg (serves 2)
Ingredients:
- 1 head frisee
- 2 spring onions
- Minced garlic
- 5 strips bacon
- Cooking oil
- Salt, pepper
- 2 eggs
Directions:
1. Wash frisee and green onions thoroughly.
2. Heat a large pan over medium high heat. Throw in the bacon strips and let them cook for a bit.
3. Chop frisee into bite size pieces (they will shrink as they cook down though, so make your pieces a little bigger than you want them to be at the end). Chop green onions and set aside.
4. By now the bacon should be done. Remove from heat and extract the bacon from the pan. Wipe down the pan with a paper towel to remove most of the bacon grease.
5. Heat water in a small pan (add as much water as possible without risking a spill).
6. Add some cooking oil to the large pan and reheat. Once the oil is hot, add chopped green onions and garlic plus a dash of salt. Stir and cook until the garlic begins to turn golden brown.
7. Add the frisee to the large pan in big handfuls. Season with a bit of salt and pepper, and cook until wilted about 5 minutes.
8. While the frisee is cooking, check the water in the small pan. When it's boiling, turn the heat down to low. Crack an egg into a small dish and slide it into the water. Repeat and slide another egg into the pan. Poach to desired level of "doneness." (I personally think leaving the yolk all nice and runny makes a wonderful "dressing" for the frisee).
9. Once the frisee is wilted, remove the large pan from heat and set aside. Take the bacon strips and chop into small pieces.
10. Arrange the frisee into a little nest on your plate, gently place a poached egg in the middle, and top the whole dish with half of the bacon bits. Serve and enjoy the goodness that is bacon.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
summer pasta, wine, and best friend
The bestie is in town and this means eating home cooked meals on the reg with company! Since the theme of this week seems to have been death by lettuce, we dutifully built a mini salad of red leaf lettuce, tomato, and cucumber to accompany dinner. Fairly boring, still tasty. More interesting was the main dish: pasta with escarole and sausage.
I had some leftover sausage in the freezer and the logic was that sausage in all its meaty heartiness (lol) would be our saving grace, balancing the escarole and keep us from feeling like reincarnated rabbits. I deliberately kept everything light and simple though, because it’s summer and it’s hot. A chilled bottle of pinot grigio was a perfect complement to dinner and I wondered what it would be like if me and the bestie lived just a little closer. Wistful thoughts :/
Pasta with Escarole and Sausage
Ingredients:
- 1 head escarole
- 2 sausage links
- Minced garlic
- ½ white onion
- 1 box spaghetti or pasta of choice
- Red pepper flakes
- Salt, pepper
- Olive oil
1. Wash the escarole thoroughly and tear into bite size pieces.
2. Chop onion and set aside.
3. Chop sausage into bite size chunks.
4. Cook pasta for ~10 minutes or until al dente.
5. While pasta is cooking, heat some olive oil in a (very) large pan. Add onion and garlic, stirring frequently to keep from burning and seasoning lightly with salt. When the onion just starts to turn translucent, add sausage chunks. Cook until sausage is lightly browned.
6. Add escarole, one big handful at a time (to keep pan from overflowing). Season with red pepper flakes and salt. When escarole is cooked through (3-5 minutes), remove from heat and set aside.
7. Drain cooked pasta, reserving one cup of pasta water.
8. Add pasta to the pan. Drizzle with olive oil and heat everything together over medium heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add reserved pasta water as necessary.
9. Serve and enjoy!
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
CSA 2013 Partial Share #2
#deathbylettuce comes early this year. We've been getting heavy, unrelenting rainstorms that have turned the city into a giant concrete lined swimming pool. I suppose it comes as no surprise that the farm has been turned into a muddy mess, with happy heads of lettuce thriving in the relatively cool and damp weather.
I am looking forward to seeing what the fields bring us as they dry out. Also, farm trip at the end of the month!
CSA 2013 Partial Share 2
- 1 head red leaf lettuce
- 1 head green leaf lettuce
- 1 head escarole
- 1 head frisee
- 1 bunch spring onions
Winner: Frisee, because I love wilting it ever so slightly and topping it with a fried or poached egg. And I have 2/3 of a carton of cute, brown, free-range eggs in the fridge. I find small colored eggs prettier than the standard jumbo white ones that dominate the supermarket.
Challenge: the pair of lettuce heads. Our newsletter did point out that greens go well in sandwiches, which is true, but only to a point. Lettuce sandwich anyone? You know what would be great with all this lettuce though? Samgyupsal. But there's a BBQ/pool party this weekend and samgyupsal, even disguised in a lettuce leaf bathrobe, is still the temporary enemy. T_T salad it is. Good thing I still have radishes left in the fridge...
Also, I ate a few borage sprouts today and although the flavor is still cucumbery, they've also taken on a distinctly oysterish taste. Kind of threw me off a bit. I'd never really made the connection between cucumbers and oysters up until now, but now I don't understand how I could have missed it. Weird.
I am looking forward to seeing what the fields bring us as they dry out. Also, farm trip at the end of the month!
CSA 2013 Partial Share 2
- 1 head red leaf lettuce
- 1 head green leaf lettuce
- 1 head escarole
- 1 head frisee
- 1 bunch spring onions
Winner: Frisee, because I love wilting it ever so slightly and topping it with a fried or poached egg. And I have 2/3 of a carton of cute, brown, free-range eggs in the fridge. I find small colored eggs prettier than the standard jumbo white ones that dominate the supermarket.
Challenge: the pair of lettuce heads. Our newsletter did point out that greens go well in sandwiches, which is true, but only to a point. Lettuce sandwich anyone? You know what would be great with all this lettuce though? Samgyupsal. But there's a BBQ/pool party this weekend and samgyupsal, even disguised in a lettuce leaf bathrobe, is still the temporary enemy. T_T salad it is. Good thing I still have radishes left in the fridge...
Also, I ate a few borage sprouts today and although the flavor is still cucumbery, they've also taken on a distinctly oysterish taste. Kind of threw me off a bit. I'd never really made the connection between cucumbers and oysters up until now, but now I don't understand how I could have missed it. Weird.
garlic, the smelliest savior, and lazy radish tops
I've been hacking and coughing and generally trying to expel one or both of my lungs out of my chest for the last few weeks, and it's starting to drive me slowly insane. Also, my coworkers are about to quarantine me permanently. Apparently between the pneumonia, common cold, and strep throat going around my office, I caught all three. I kid (I hope).
Anyways, it's been a week since the last share, and I used up pretty much everything except the radishes and radish tops. While radishes keep for a while, the radish tops had faded a bit. If I didn't take care of them soon, I knew they'd be destined for the trash heap.
So even though I got home kind of late, I grabbed the tops out of the fridge, picked out all the older, yellowing, mushy stems and leaves, and washed them about twenty times. I hate dirt in my food more than anything else (hi clams, I'm looking at you), and these babies had some nice sandy buildup in the base of the stems. I was feeling lazy after all that washing, so I went the Korean muchim route and made some banchan to eat with lunch (quick "recipe" below).
As I was peeling garlic cloves, I kept coughing, and a thought niggled the back of my mind as I flitted around the kitchen. I eyed the garlic cloves cautiously, hopped onto google, and confirmed my suspicions. Raw garlic, like honey, lemons, ginger, oranges, and eucalyptus, is supposed to help cure colds and coughs.
I realize raw garlic smells. I realize eating raw garlic makes you smell. I also realized that my coworkers at this point, would probably prefer garlic BO over the walking cloud of germs that I've become. So I popped a garlic clove in my mouth, crunched around for a while (omg I didn't realize raw garlic was so spicy and strong and ugh), and when I couldn't take it anymore, I swallowed it down and chased it with honey. Maybe it's a placebo effect, but I immediately felt better and my coughing subsided a bit.
I went to bed with garlic breath (I brushed my teeth extra long, but to no avail). I woke up with garlic breath. I'm still coughing, but I actually feel much better today than I did last night, so I'm thinking perhaps there's something to this home remedy after all! As an added bonus, I saw a mosquito flying around my room this morning and while I didn't manage to kill it, I don't think I have any bites, which is unusual. Viruses, mosquitos, vampires, begone! lol.
Radish Top Muchim
Ingredients
- Radish tops, thoroughly washed
- Several cloves of garlic, thinly sliced or minced
- Red pepper flakes (gochukaru)
- Soy sauce
- Sesame oil*
1. Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil.
2. Drop in the radish greens and cook briefly (less than a minute).
3. Drain and rinse the radish greens under cold water.
4. Squeeze out the excess water from the greens and chop into bite size pieces. Set aside.
5. In a pan, heat some sesame oil.
6. Add garlic and red pepper flakes.
7. Once the garlic begins to turn golden, add the radish tops and stir.
8. Add a little soy sauce to taste.
9. Remove from heat and enjoy!
Anyways, it's been a week since the last share, and I used up pretty much everything except the radishes and radish tops. While radishes keep for a while, the radish tops had faded a bit. If I didn't take care of them soon, I knew they'd be destined for the trash heap.
So even though I got home kind of late, I grabbed the tops out of the fridge, picked out all the older, yellowing, mushy stems and leaves, and washed them about twenty times. I hate dirt in my food more than anything else (hi clams, I'm looking at you), and these babies had some nice sandy buildup in the base of the stems. I was feeling lazy after all that washing, so I went the Korean muchim route and made some banchan to eat with lunch (quick "recipe" below).
As I was peeling garlic cloves, I kept coughing, and a thought niggled the back of my mind as I flitted around the kitchen. I eyed the garlic cloves cautiously, hopped onto google, and confirmed my suspicions. Raw garlic, like honey, lemons, ginger, oranges, and eucalyptus, is supposed to help cure colds and coughs.
I realize raw garlic smells. I realize eating raw garlic makes you smell. I also realized that my coworkers at this point, would probably prefer garlic BO over the walking cloud of germs that I've become. So I popped a garlic clove in my mouth, crunched around for a while (omg I didn't realize raw garlic was so spicy and strong and ugh), and when I couldn't take it anymore, I swallowed it down and chased it with honey. Maybe it's a placebo effect, but I immediately felt better and my coughing subsided a bit.
I went to bed with garlic breath (I brushed my teeth extra long, but to no avail). I woke up with garlic breath. I'm still coughing, but I actually feel much better today than I did last night, so I'm thinking perhaps there's something to this home remedy after all! As an added bonus, I saw a mosquito flying around my room this morning and while I didn't manage to kill it, I don't think I have any bites, which is unusual. Viruses, mosquitos, vampires, begone! lol.
Radish Top Muchim
Ingredients
- Radish tops, thoroughly washed
- Several cloves of garlic, thinly sliced or minced
- Red pepper flakes (gochukaru)
- Soy sauce
- Sesame oil*
1. Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil.
2. Drop in the radish greens and cook briefly (less than a minute).
3. Drain and rinse the radish greens under cold water.
4. Squeeze out the excess water from the greens and chop into bite size pieces. Set aside.
5. In a pan, heat some sesame oil.
6. Add garlic and red pepper flakes.
7. Once the garlic begins to turn golden, add the radish tops and stir.
8. Add a little soy sauce to taste.
9. Remove from heat and enjoy!
Sunday, June 16, 2013
omg cilantro i have found a use for you
I have never, ever been able to use an entire bunch of cilantro in one go. But thanks to my wonderful, amazing Lebanese summer roommate, I think I have a solution!
First of all, she's awesome because she's really sweet and I got lucky because sometimes Craigslist people are weird. Second of all, she's awesome because she feeds me. But third of all, she's awesome because while she was feeding me, she showed me an incredibly easy way to use cilantro.
Lebanese Potatoes (and Steak)
Ingredients:
- 1 lb waxy potatoes
- 1 bunch cilantro
- 1 spring onion stalk or a quarter of an onion
- Minced garlic
- Cubed steak (optional)
- Olive oil
- Salt and pepper
Recipe:
1. Thoroughly wash potatoes, cilantro, and onions. Defrost meat. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Chop potatoes into cubes (about 1 cubic inch, maybe a little smaller)
3. Toss potatoes with a drizzle of olive oil, minced garlic, salt, and pepper to taste.
4. Roast potatoes for about 45 minutes to 1 hour or until a fork can be inserted easily.
5. While roasting the potatoes, cook the steak as desired. We cooked the steak in a pan with some garlic and salt. Set aside.
6. Finely chop the cilantro and onions.
7. Heat a spoon or two of olive oil in a small pan.
8. Cook the cilantro and onions over medium heat, stirring frequently to ensure they don't burn.
9. When the cilantro and onions are well cooked, remove from heat and set aside.
10. Remove the potatoes from the oven when done, add the steak and drizzle the cilantro-onion mixture over the top. Mix well and slide back into the oven.
11. Broil for about 3-5 minutes.
12. Remove, serve, enjoy!
The sharp taste of the cilantro is muted but it provides a nice richness to the dish that I wouldn't have suspected cilantro to be capable of. Plus, cooking down the cilantro reduces the volume significantly, making it easy to use up a lot of it at once. I approve!
First of all, she's awesome because she's really sweet and I got lucky because sometimes Craigslist people are weird. Second of all, she's awesome because she feeds me. But third of all, she's awesome because while she was feeding me, she showed me an incredibly easy way to use cilantro.
Lebanese Potatoes (and Steak)
Ingredients:
- 1 lb waxy potatoes
- 1 bunch cilantro
- 1 spring onion stalk or a quarter of an onion
- Minced garlic
- Cubed steak (optional)
- Olive oil
- Salt and pepper
Recipe:
1. Thoroughly wash potatoes, cilantro, and onions. Defrost meat. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Chop potatoes into cubes (about 1 cubic inch, maybe a little smaller)
3. Toss potatoes with a drizzle of olive oil, minced garlic, salt, and pepper to taste.
4. Roast potatoes for about 45 minutes to 1 hour or until a fork can be inserted easily.
5. While roasting the potatoes, cook the steak as desired. We cooked the steak in a pan with some garlic and salt. Set aside.
6. Finely chop the cilantro and onions.
7. Heat a spoon or two of olive oil in a small pan.
8. Cook the cilantro and onions over medium heat, stirring frequently to ensure they don't burn.
9. When the cilantro and onions are well cooked, remove from heat and set aside.
10. Remove the potatoes from the oven when done, add the steak and drizzle the cilantro-onion mixture over the top. Mix well and slide back into the oven.
11. Broil for about 3-5 minutes.
12. Remove, serve, enjoy!
The sharp taste of the cilantro is muted but it provides a nice richness to the dish that I wouldn't have suspected cilantro to be capable of. Plus, cooking down the cilantro reduces the volume significantly, making it easy to use up a lot of it at once. I approve!
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
CSA 2013 Partial Share #1
Here we go! Official kickoff of my second CSA season :) I signed up for a partial share this year and I'm already feeling veggie envy when I compare my share with the full share. However, I realize a full share would be way, way too much for me, so I'll do my best to be content with my partial share. Besides, I technically have more this year, since I was splitting last year's share in half with my old roommate.
CSA 2013 Partial Share 1
- 1 large head red leaf lettuce
- 1 bunch cilantro
- 1 bunch spring onions
- 1 bunch Easter egg radishes
- 1 chicken*
I think I'll highlight two types of produce per share this year. One that I'm excited to see and one that promises to challenge my culinary skills (or the endurance of my taste buds...remember all the carrot tops last year? ugh.)
Winner: Radishes, though this is hardly a fair comparison.
Challenge: Cilantro. No one is surprised.
I flipped back to my CSA Share 1 post from last year and it's kind of funny looking back. It makes me glad I'm documenting my little escapades. I got lost, it was raining, and I was mildly horrified when some lady found a bug stowaway hiding in the produce.
This year's share and last year's share are similar (lettuce, radishes, spring onions, cilantro), though this year is starting out a lot lighter in terms of volume and variety (no kale yet :/). I think it's because we had cold weather so late into the spring. Perfectly fine by me, as I'm sure the rest of the season will be fantastic.
It should be pretty easy to use up this week's share. The lettuce and radishes will make for a nice salad, especially if I supplement them with some chicken. The spring onions can chill in the fridge I guess. Maybe I can make cilantro, radish top, and onion omelettes with some Wisconsin cheese grated over the top? I think I have some frozen sausage too. Actually, that doesn't sound half bad. I'll invite the girls over for brunch this weekend :)
On a side note, my window box got a little crowded, so I thinned out the seedlings last night. They were choking each other to death, but it was still hard to uproot so many of my little babies T_T For the record, baby borage leaves really do taste like cucumbers. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the basil, but I can't tell which of the sproutlings are basil and which are parsley. I have my suspicions, but for now, they remain unconfirmed. I suppose I could just google it, but where's the fun in that?! Stay tuned for more sprout updates.
*Poultry share will be delivered every odd week plus one extra on the last week (total of 12 birds).
CSA 2013 Partial Share 1
- 1 large head red leaf lettuce
- 1 bunch cilantro
- 1 bunch spring onions
- 1 bunch Easter egg radishes
- 1 chicken*
I think I'll highlight two types of produce per share this year. One that I'm excited to see and one that promises to challenge my culinary skills (or the endurance of my taste buds...remember all the carrot tops last year? ugh.)
Winner: Radishes, though this is hardly a fair comparison.
Challenge: Cilantro. No one is surprised.
I flipped back to my CSA Share 1 post from last year and it's kind of funny looking back. It makes me glad I'm documenting my little escapades. I got lost, it was raining, and I was mildly horrified when some lady found a bug stowaway hiding in the produce.
This year's share and last year's share are similar (lettuce, radishes, spring onions, cilantro), though this year is starting out a lot lighter in terms of volume and variety (no kale yet :/). I think it's because we had cold weather so late into the spring. Perfectly fine by me, as I'm sure the rest of the season will be fantastic.
It should be pretty easy to use up this week's share. The lettuce and radishes will make for a nice salad, especially if I supplement them with some chicken. The spring onions can chill in the fridge I guess. Maybe I can make cilantro, radish top, and onion omelettes with some Wisconsin cheese grated over the top? I think I have some frozen sausage too. Actually, that doesn't sound half bad. I'll invite the girls over for brunch this weekend :)
On a side note, my window box got a little crowded, so I thinned out the seedlings last night. They were choking each other to death, but it was still hard to uproot so many of my little babies T_T For the record, baby borage leaves really do taste like cucumbers. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the basil, but I can't tell which of the sproutlings are basil and which are parsley. I have my suspicions, but for now, they remain unconfirmed. I suppose I could just google it, but where's the fun in that?! Stay tuned for more sprout updates.
*Poultry share will be delivered every odd week plus one extra on the last week (total of 12 birds).
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
project sprouts
omg so.
Over the weekend, temps in NY were a blistering 80 to 90 degrees. Blistering is a poor choice of words, it was more like meltingly sweltering. I was a small, sad, damp puddle, too overheated to even consider dragging my sorry self anywhere except to the shower to cool myself. No AC unit, so I finally decided I'd had enough and hauled myself off to Home Depot. I was too hot to even bother putting makeup or real clothes on (I was in my pj's/gym clothes).
All this lethargy, but I perked right up once I stepped inside Home Depot. Partly because HD was about 30 degrees cooler, partly because I was thinking about how much I adore the new sandals I'd gotten myself as a reward for attempting to do something productive like fetching myself some AC (whoever put a shoe store next to HD is a genius), but mostly because I saw green things! Cute, little green things! In the basement level of HD, they have their semi-nursery and growing tools and seeds and I couldn't help myself.
I checked the boxes of AC units piled high in the front of the store and made sure there was no danger of them running out of units while I had a look around, and hopped onto the escalator going down. I didn't come back up for another hour, I was so taken by all the fun things I found.
Limited space, limited resources, but I decided that it didn't matter. I was going to have sprouts and pretty green things in my apartment this summer, dammit!
So I grabbed the smallest window box I could find, a plastic liner, some soil, and a packet of seeds marked "container herbs." I realized that was maybe a poor decision because I can barely drag an AC unit around with two free hands and now I definitely had less available hands than that, but luckily I am a small girl and the HD employees were very kind and they carried the AC unit all the way through the checkout line and onto the street for me. And the taxi cab driver was very sweet and told me "Don't touch the box! You hurt yourself!" in broken English, and hoisted it into the trunk for me. And my roommate carried it up the stairs for me once I got home. Profuse thanks to all, a big tip for the cabbie, and a returned favor for my roommate absolved my guilt and I set to work on my makeshift garden. What I really should have done was install my AC, but I was too hot and tired from all that work (that I didn't actually do myself lol).
I filled the container with soil, dampened it carefully, scattered half the seeds, and tucked them in with another quarter inch of soil. Swept up all the dirt off my floor and carefully set the box in full sunlight. I kept watching that box, checking it every few hours, hoping something would happen. Like a pot set to boil, nothing happened while I was watching it. But I went to sleep last night and woke up and SURPRISE! Little white pins reaching up out of the soil, some of them with tiny green berets. I counted four sprouts this morning and I said my goodbyes tenderly as I hopped out the door for work. I can't wait to come home and see how many more little seedlings have popped up in the last twelve hours. I'm so excited. I need to probably calm down but...eek! They're so cute!! <3
Over the weekend, temps in NY were a blistering 80 to 90 degrees. Blistering is a poor choice of words, it was more like meltingly sweltering. I was a small, sad, damp puddle, too overheated to even consider dragging my sorry self anywhere except to the shower to cool myself. No AC unit, so I finally decided I'd had enough and hauled myself off to Home Depot. I was too hot to even bother putting makeup or real clothes on (I was in my pj's/gym clothes).
All this lethargy, but I perked right up once I stepped inside Home Depot. Partly because HD was about 30 degrees cooler, partly because I was thinking about how much I adore the new sandals I'd gotten myself as a reward for attempting to do something productive like fetching myself some AC (whoever put a shoe store next to HD is a genius), but mostly because I saw green things! Cute, little green things! In the basement level of HD, they have their semi-nursery and growing tools and seeds and I couldn't help myself.
I checked the boxes of AC units piled high in the front of the store and made sure there was no danger of them running out of units while I had a look around, and hopped onto the escalator going down. I didn't come back up for another hour, I was so taken by all the fun things I found.
Limited space, limited resources, but I decided that it didn't matter. I was going to have sprouts and pretty green things in my apartment this summer, dammit!
So I grabbed the smallest window box I could find, a plastic liner, some soil, and a packet of seeds marked "container herbs." I realized that was maybe a poor decision because I can barely drag an AC unit around with two free hands and now I definitely had less available hands than that, but luckily I am a small girl and the HD employees were very kind and they carried the AC unit all the way through the checkout line and onto the street for me. And the taxi cab driver was very sweet and told me "Don't touch the box! You hurt yourself!" in broken English, and hoisted it into the trunk for me. And my roommate carried it up the stairs for me once I got home. Profuse thanks to all, a big tip for the cabbie, and a returned favor for my roommate absolved my guilt and I set to work on my makeshift garden. What I really should have done was install my AC, but I was too hot and tired from all that work (that I didn't actually do myself lol).
I filled the container with soil, dampened it carefully, scattered half the seeds, and tucked them in with another quarter inch of soil. Swept up all the dirt off my floor and carefully set the box in full sunlight. I kept watching that box, checking it every few hours, hoping something would happen. Like a pot set to boil, nothing happened while I was watching it. But I went to sleep last night and woke up and SURPRISE! Little white pins reaching up out of the soil, some of them with tiny green berets. I counted four sprouts this morning and I said my goodbyes tenderly as I hopped out the door for work. I can't wait to come home and see how many more little seedlings have popped up in the last twelve hours. I'm so excited. I need to probably calm down but...eek! They're so cute!! <3
Friday, May 31, 2013
delayed CSA start
I spoke too soon.
As difficult as it is to believe with this ridiculously hot weather, we've actually had a pretty cool/damp spring, with frost warnings in the Free Bird Farm area as late as last weekend, according to our lovely farmers. Since everything's growing a little behind schedule, our CSA has decided to push back the distribution by a week. I recall seeing something similar at the Madison farmer's market. Other than piles and piles of asparagus and morel mushrooms (apparently this is a very good year for morels), there was noticeably less variety than I would expect in farmer's market this close to June.
Of course, I'd love to see produce next week, but one week delay isn't a big deal. I just hope we don't run into drought or flood issues this season!
As difficult as it is to believe with this ridiculously hot weather, we've actually had a pretty cool/damp spring, with frost warnings in the Free Bird Farm area as late as last weekend, according to our lovely farmers. Since everything's growing a little behind schedule, our CSA has decided to push back the distribution by a week. I recall seeing something similar at the Madison farmer's market. Other than piles and piles of asparagus and morel mushrooms (apparently this is a very good year for morels), there was noticeably less variety than I would expect in farmer's market this close to June.
Of course, I'd love to see produce next week, but one week delay isn't a big deal. I just hope we don't run into drought or flood issues this season!
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Countdown + Madison
1st pickup scheduled for June 4! I'm really excited because the weather just turned super hot, which means I'm veering away from heavy comfort foods and searching for lighter summery noms. The first few shares last year were full of salad greens, green things, leafy greens, green... And green things are wonderfully light and refreshing, so I'm pretty happy.
Just got back from a trip to Madison to see the family and while we were there, we stopped by the farmer's market. Amazing! Madison might be smaller than New York, but it sure does have a farmer's market that can rival the best of New York's farmer's markets. There's a great sense of community, a history of farming, and UW Madison, which is a land-grant university and therefore maintains a strong focus and commitment to agriculture. Kind of like Cornell, but located right in Madison, instead of somewhere far away upstate.
Anyways, it was really great to see another food ecosystem all up close and personal. It's fun to see the commitment to local food in Madison. I was mostly struck by the sense of community and it was pleasantly surprising to see such visible ties between all the small farmers, producers, consumers, and restaurants. Also, we got to eat at L'Etoile, which I've been dying to do, and it was everything I hoped it would be!
The food was nothing groundbreaking, but it was well prepared and comfortable, in line with New York's locavore offerings and devoid of all the gimmicks and downright rude service that you sometimes get in the city (Rosemary's I'm looking at you). Stars of the menu included asparagus and morel mushrooms, as well as the last of the last batch of chevre from a local producer who had decided to retire. Apparently this is the best goat cheese in the region, so L'Etoile bought up all of the remaining stock once they caught wind that the woman who makes the cheese was going to retire. I sampled a little of my brother's plate and I have to say...I agree. Madison is practically synonymous with cheese, so I guess I should stop being so surprised by the quality of the cheese every time I visit.
The highlight of the meal for me was the amuse bouche, which was a lovely creme fraiche preparation with roasted asparagus, pepitas, and a drizzling of some sort of savory reduction, topped with a little tiny edible viola. I was so excited by the amuse bouche because that morning, I had stopped at a booth in the farmer's market, completely taken in by the little boxes of fingernail-sized edible violas that were on display. I gazed wistfully at them, snapped a photo, and grabbed a bunch of salad turnips instead. I thought they'd be fun to sprinkle over a salad for a whimsical summery touch, but I didn't know how my family would react to eating flowers for dinner. I was already pushing the envelope by picking up several greens they'd never seen before and I didn't want to scare them with too many new things all at once. So I gently closed the door on the idea of seeing those violas appear in my food...and then like magic, they reappeared as a delicate little garnish in the amuse bouche! L'Etoile is literally right in front of the farmer's market and I could identify so many items on my plate that I had seen just that morning, just one block away, which was all sorts of awesome. Fun times! Added bonus - my parents are now fans of farmer's markets and have decided they'd like to go every Saturday morning! I'd be jealous if I wasn't so happy :)
Just got back from a trip to Madison to see the family and while we were there, we stopped by the farmer's market. Amazing! Madison might be smaller than New York, but it sure does have a farmer's market that can rival the best of New York's farmer's markets. There's a great sense of community, a history of farming, and UW Madison, which is a land-grant university and therefore maintains a strong focus and commitment to agriculture. Kind of like Cornell, but located right in Madison, instead of somewhere far away upstate.
Anyways, it was really great to see another food ecosystem all up close and personal. It's fun to see the commitment to local food in Madison. I was mostly struck by the sense of community and it was pleasantly surprising to see such visible ties between all the small farmers, producers, consumers, and restaurants. Also, we got to eat at L'Etoile, which I've been dying to do, and it was everything I hoped it would be!
The food was nothing groundbreaking, but it was well prepared and comfortable, in line with New York's locavore offerings and devoid of all the gimmicks and downright rude service that you sometimes get in the city (Rosemary's I'm looking at you). Stars of the menu included asparagus and morel mushrooms, as well as the last of the last batch of chevre from a local producer who had decided to retire. Apparently this is the best goat cheese in the region, so L'Etoile bought up all of the remaining stock once they caught wind that the woman who makes the cheese was going to retire. I sampled a little of my brother's plate and I have to say...I agree. Madison is practically synonymous with cheese, so I guess I should stop being so surprised by the quality of the cheese every time I visit.
The highlight of the meal for me was the amuse bouche, which was a lovely creme fraiche preparation with roasted asparagus, pepitas, and a drizzling of some sort of savory reduction, topped with a little tiny edible viola. I was so excited by the amuse bouche because that morning, I had stopped at a booth in the farmer's market, completely taken in by the little boxes of fingernail-sized edible violas that were on display. I gazed wistfully at them, snapped a photo, and grabbed a bunch of salad turnips instead. I thought they'd be fun to sprinkle over a salad for a whimsical summery touch, but I didn't know how my family would react to eating flowers for dinner. I was already pushing the envelope by picking up several greens they'd never seen before and I didn't want to scare them with too many new things all at once. So I gently closed the door on the idea of seeing those violas appear in my food...and then like magic, they reappeared as a delicate little garnish in the amuse bouche! L'Etoile is literally right in front of the farmer's market and I could identify so many items on my plate that I had seen just that morning, just one block away, which was all sorts of awesome. Fun times! Added bonus - my parents are now fans of farmer's markets and have decided they'd like to go every Saturday morning! I'd be jealous if I wasn't so happy :)
Thursday, March 28, 2013
chickening out of eating chicken
kay so one definite downside of educating yourself about what you eat is that you actually notice what you're eating and you know what's probably in it (or not in it, as it were).
In the past, I've ordered chicken from a number of restaurants with no problems at all. Recently, I've noticed that food from my old standbys just doesn't seem as good anymore. I highly doubt that the food from all these places radically worsened at the same time, so the problem is probably me. But seriously, it's a problem. The chicken is weird. It tastes funny. It sometimes crumbles (yeah, I know right? that is not something meat should do, ever, except maybe ground meat but that's a totally different story and we won't go there today.) The chicken doesn't hold up to close inspection and it generally does not appeal to me. There are exceptions, of course, and I've started taking notice of which places serve food I actually want to eat.
Bored and curious, I googled these exceptions and discovered that interestingly enough, the places serving food I like tend to source free-range, hormone and antibiotic free, and sometimes organic chicken. It could be that a place willing to buy quality chicken probably invests in other high quality ingredients, generally leading to higher quality dishes. It could also be that they put in more effort to cook the chicken well. Whatever the reason, I've become more picky about what meat I choose to eat. Being picky is usually seen as a bad thing, but I think this time, the offense is forgivable.
(It's not just chicken, by the way, but inferior chicken has been the most obnoxious offender to my newly vigilant tastebuds.)
Alsoooo...it's still freezing. Spring, hurry up!
In the past, I've ordered chicken from a number of restaurants with no problems at all. Recently, I've noticed that food from my old standbys just doesn't seem as good anymore. I highly doubt that the food from all these places radically worsened at the same time, so the problem is probably me. But seriously, it's a problem. The chicken is weird. It tastes funny. It sometimes crumbles (yeah, I know right? that is not something meat should do, ever, except maybe ground meat but that's a totally different story and we won't go there today.) The chicken doesn't hold up to close inspection and it generally does not appeal to me. There are exceptions, of course, and I've started taking notice of which places serve food I actually want to eat.
Bored and curious, I googled these exceptions and discovered that interestingly enough, the places serving food I like tend to source free-range, hormone and antibiotic free, and sometimes organic chicken. It could be that a place willing to buy quality chicken probably invests in other high quality ingredients, generally leading to higher quality dishes. It could also be that they put in more effort to cook the chicken well. Whatever the reason, I've become more picky about what meat I choose to eat. Being picky is usually seen as a bad thing, but I think this time, the offense is forgivable.
(It's not just chicken, by the way, but inferior chicken has been the most obnoxious offender to my newly vigilant tastebuds.)
Alsoooo...it's still freezing. Spring, hurry up!
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
eenteresting...
From Fast Company's website. I truly believe America could use an attitude readjustment towards how and what it eats. I was going to ramble about it some, but this basically sums up exactly how I feel plus pretty pictures.
A few reflections from me:
A few reflections from me:
It's human nature to be afraid of not having enough food. I get that. But in our quest to eradicate hunger, we've taken a blunt force approach, focusing our efforts primarily on making as much food as possible, as cheap as possible. Nowhere is this more evident that here, in the resource-rich U.S.
I liken our approach to heating a freezing house by lighting a bonfire in each room. Effective? Yes. But goodness, is that the best solution we can come up with? Central heating or even radiators would be far more efficient. Plus, there's the whole burning the whole house down on accident thing to consider. Even a fireplace would be an improvement over open bonfires. Besides the house burning down, other, more insidious problems like soot and smoke are byproducts of the blunt-force heating approach. Similarly, it's not just obesity we're fighting; it's also lethargy, attention problems, loss of the collective pool of farming knowledge, loss of topsoil, pollution of the environment, waste of resources (e.g. burning corn instead of a eating it or dumping milk down the drains because it's cheaper than selling it), etc.
I liken our approach to heating a freezing house by lighting a bonfire in each room. Effective? Yes. But goodness, is that the best solution we can come up with? Central heating or even radiators would be far more efficient. Plus, there's the whole burning the whole house down on accident thing to consider. Even a fireplace would be an improvement over open bonfires. Besides the house burning down, other, more insidious problems like soot and smoke are byproducts of the blunt-force heating approach. Similarly, it's not just obesity we're fighting; it's also lethargy, attention problems, loss of the collective pool of farming knowledge, loss of topsoil, pollution of the environment, waste of resources (e.g. burning corn instead of a eating it or dumping milk down the drains because it's cheaper than selling it), etc.
My point is, we have proven capable of producing enough food for ourselves, which is a great step in the right direction for our country. Now that we've managed to heat the house, let's figure out how to do it better. After all, penny-wise, pound foolish never made anyone wealthy.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
2013 CSA Season
I signed up last night! I know, I know. It's already mid-March. Hey, at least I eventually got around to doing it right?
I signed up for a partial vegetable share, a poultry share, and a farm visit. I'll be splitting part of the vegetables and poultry with my friend and roommate. I plan on eating the bulk of the produce and I'll be doing the volunteer shift and picking up the produce, which is perfectly fine with me if it means more people are exploring the CSA experience. The whole concept of a CSA is fantastic, but I honestly don't think it's for everyone. I would rather see someone have a fulfilling CSA experience by piggybacking and "just trying it out" instead of seeing a dissatisfied customer walk out of a CSA from a clash in expectations and what can sometimes be an overwhelming amount of produce (remember the deathbylettuce episode last summer?)
I'd like to get more involved in my CSA this summer, but I'm not quite sure how. Perhaps I'll email Cara and see if there's something I can do to help out the team.
Also, I've been doing a lot of reading and research on topics like sustainable agriculture, small to mid-size family farms in the U.S., programs that focus on supporting agriculture, soil enrichment and care, methane pollution (especially from dairy farms), monoculture crops, permaculture, biodiversity, conservation of the environment, fertilizer runoff, pesticide/hormone/antibiotic use, the involvement of government and large corporations in next-step R&D, technology in agriculture, the trend towards local eating, and American attitudes towards food and the consumption/production of food. It has been fascinating to see the different opinions and views people have across the country in regards to all of these topics. I don't know that anyone is wrong, exactly, but there'a lot of people who see the world through opposite lens, and that is making the discussion of America's food supply awfully polarizing.
I brought up the whole idea of local, sustainable agriculture to my dad last night and my goodness. I realized we see it completely differently. He's an engineering professor and believes wholeheartedly in scale and efficiency. For him, concepts like organic or local sound warm and fuzzy and make people happy. But it's only a matter of time before it scales into mass production, which is the most sensible and cost-effective way to feed people. My dad is not at all a romantic idealist and believes very much in the pragmatic, the quantifiable, and the efficiency of science and research.
I inherited my practical side from dad, no doubt about it. But between my day to day job, which affords me the opportunity to examine myriad businesses and their structures and modus operandi; my years in college; and my experience as a young consumer living in New York (one of the most food forward environments I've come across)...
I see a very different picture. While I do not believe that small family farms are the ONLY solution to feeding America, I do think they should play an important role in the food ecosytem. There's nothing wrong with having multiple ways of growing, processing, and distributing food to Americans. What I do believe is that the ecosystem has room for improvement. I do believe that America should pay closer attention to how it eats and where its food comes from. I do believe that consumers, farms, conservationists, shareholders/investors, corporations, and restaurants all have different responsibilities to each other. And I do think we all need to do our part to ensure we have a competitive, cooperative, secure, and healthy food ecosystem in the U.S.
The part of this equation I'm most interested in right now is increasing awareness of and advocating for programs like CSA's, farm-to-table, sustainable agriculture, and paying closer attention to what we put in our bodies. So in my own way, I try to do my part. I educate myself and do my own research, I spread the word, I sign up for a CSA, and I continue to look for ways to help balance the equation. I've helped introduce the concept of a CSA to a few of my friends and I'm fully prepared to hold their hand through their first season with a CSA to ensure they have a wonderful and enjoyable experience. It may not be much, but I like to think every drop in the bucket counts.
More than anything, I think awareness is key. As we were signing up for a share last night, my roommate turned to me and said, "You know, they should market this better. I never heard of this until I saw you with your shares and neither did my friends until you told them about it." The inherent problem with a local CSA is that it's local and it's small. Marketing is obviously going to be less polished than a company like Whole Foods or Gristedes. CSA's rely more on word of mouth from farmers' markets and happy customers than anything else. Feeding America cannot be solved through a one-size-fits-all approach and I think people should be free to decide what they want to eat when they want to eat it. Having said that, I do think people cannot be expected to make a good decision if they are uninformed or can't see all the pieces of the puzzle (or don't even have all the puzzle pieces to begin with!) If we educate people, market various approaches to eating, help adjust attitudes towards food, I rather suspect interest in CSA's would skyrocket.
I signed up for a partial vegetable share, a poultry share, and a farm visit. I'll be splitting part of the vegetables and poultry with my friend and roommate. I plan on eating the bulk of the produce and I'll be doing the volunteer shift and picking up the produce, which is perfectly fine with me if it means more people are exploring the CSA experience. The whole concept of a CSA is fantastic, but I honestly don't think it's for everyone. I would rather see someone have a fulfilling CSA experience by piggybacking and "just trying it out" instead of seeing a dissatisfied customer walk out of a CSA from a clash in expectations and what can sometimes be an overwhelming amount of produce (remember the deathbylettuce episode last summer?)
I'd like to get more involved in my CSA this summer, but I'm not quite sure how. Perhaps I'll email Cara and see if there's something I can do to help out the team.
Also, I've been doing a lot of reading and research on topics like sustainable agriculture, small to mid-size family farms in the U.S., programs that focus on supporting agriculture, soil enrichment and care, methane pollution (especially from dairy farms), monoculture crops, permaculture, biodiversity, conservation of the environment, fertilizer runoff, pesticide/hormone/antibiotic use, the involvement of government and large corporations in next-step R&D, technology in agriculture, the trend towards local eating, and American attitudes towards food and the consumption/production of food. It has been fascinating to see the different opinions and views people have across the country in regards to all of these topics. I don't know that anyone is wrong, exactly, but there'a lot of people who see the world through opposite lens, and that is making the discussion of America's food supply awfully polarizing.
I brought up the whole idea of local, sustainable agriculture to my dad last night and my goodness. I realized we see it completely differently. He's an engineering professor and believes wholeheartedly in scale and efficiency. For him, concepts like organic or local sound warm and fuzzy and make people happy. But it's only a matter of time before it scales into mass production, which is the most sensible and cost-effective way to feed people. My dad is not at all a romantic idealist and believes very much in the pragmatic, the quantifiable, and the efficiency of science and research.
I inherited my practical side from dad, no doubt about it. But between my day to day job, which affords me the opportunity to examine myriad businesses and their structures and modus operandi; my years in college; and my experience as a young consumer living in New York (one of the most food forward environments I've come across)...
I see a very different picture. While I do not believe that small family farms are the ONLY solution to feeding America, I do think they should play an important role in the food ecosytem. There's nothing wrong with having multiple ways of growing, processing, and distributing food to Americans. What I do believe is that the ecosystem has room for improvement. I do believe that America should pay closer attention to how it eats and where its food comes from. I do believe that consumers, farms, conservationists, shareholders/investors, corporations, and restaurants all have different responsibilities to each other. And I do think we all need to do our part to ensure we have a competitive, cooperative, secure, and healthy food ecosystem in the U.S.
The part of this equation I'm most interested in right now is increasing awareness of and advocating for programs like CSA's, farm-to-table, sustainable agriculture, and paying closer attention to what we put in our bodies. So in my own way, I try to do my part. I educate myself and do my own research, I spread the word, I sign up for a CSA, and I continue to look for ways to help balance the equation. I've helped introduce the concept of a CSA to a few of my friends and I'm fully prepared to hold their hand through their first season with a CSA to ensure they have a wonderful and enjoyable experience. It may not be much, but I like to think every drop in the bucket counts.
More than anything, I think awareness is key. As we were signing up for a share last night, my roommate turned to me and said, "You know, they should market this better. I never heard of this until I saw you with your shares and neither did my friends until you told them about it." The inherent problem with a local CSA is that it's local and it's small. Marketing is obviously going to be less polished than a company like Whole Foods or Gristedes. CSA's rely more on word of mouth from farmers' markets and happy customers than anything else. Feeding America cannot be solved through a one-size-fits-all approach and I think people should be free to decide what they want to eat when they want to eat it. Having said that, I do think people cannot be expected to make a good decision if they are uninformed or can't see all the pieces of the puzzle (or don't even have all the puzzle pieces to begin with!) If we educate people, market various approaches to eating, help adjust attitudes towards food, I rather suspect interest in CSA's would skyrocket.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Forgetting to do shit
I still haven't signed up for my CSA share. I know, I know.
I would complain that life is too hard and how the fuck are you supposed to remember all the little things that adults are supposed to do every day, but now I sound like every other whiny 20-some year old in NY.
Anyways, I suck and all my reminders and notes on scraps of paper and in my notebooks and on my phone and scribbled in the margins of random earnings releases are clearly not doing the job. So maybe venting about my own inability to remember to do one small thing on a blog would help? Yes, not logical. Sometimes the illogical solution is actually what ends up working. Couldn't hurt right?
Unrelated note: I am so obsessed with Ailee's OST for Yawang (Ice Flower, roughly translated). I do really hope she becomes the first KA to make it big as a singer (Psy does NOT count).
I would complain that life is too hard and how the fuck are you supposed to remember all the little things that adults are supposed to do every day, but now I sound like every other whiny 20-some year old in NY.
Anyways, I suck and all my reminders and notes on scraps of paper and in my notebooks and on my phone and scribbled in the margins of random earnings releases are clearly not doing the job. So maybe venting about my own inability to remember to do one small thing on a blog would help? Yes, not logical. Sometimes the illogical solution is actually what ends up working. Couldn't hurt right?
Unrelated note: I am so obsessed with Ailee's OST for Yawang (Ice Flower, roughly translated). I do really hope she becomes the first KA to make it big as a singer (Psy does NOT count).
Thursday, February 14, 2013
FRIENDS! and chickens and eggs
I can now claim to have convinced not one, but TWO people to sign up for a CSA because of me! One in California and one here in New York. I am so pleased, I'm grinning like a Cheshire cat.
I'm worried, of course, that they won't like it. That I've been hyping it up to everyone. But honestly, I'll just let the produce do the talking, and I'm sure it'll be fine.
I was hoping to pull my roommate into sharing my CSA with me this year, but it looks like my roommate may or may not be with us this summer. So...I've decided that instead of being overly ambitious, I'm going to sign up for just one partial share ($375 for 22 weeks of a larger-than-half-of-a-regular-share) of vegetables. I wanted to try the eggs, fruit, or chicken because it looks so good and I want to support Free Bird Farms. But I didn't know what the best option would be and I was scared being overwhelmed by Foodmageddon again.
I can polish off fruit quite happily and easily on my own, but I like the idea of free range, organic (not certified, but raised organically) chickens and eggs, and I wanted to give it a go at home, rather than relying on super duper expensive fancy places that I like to think about eating at because heaven knows I'd never be able to take myself there without feeling awfully guilty about how I'm prioritizing my spending. T_T
I digress. I ended up deciding on the chicken share. Why? Eggs are perishable but these chickens are frozen. Plus, they seemed like a slightly better deal. $90 for a dozen eggs a week comes out to a whopping $4.09 per dozen eggs. That's a lot and I am not quite sure the difference in taste and quality would be worth it. I snooped around and the prices for free range, organic eggs are anywhere from $3.50 to $5.50 per dozen in NYC. Regular eggs are $$2.00 - $3.00 a dozen. While it would be nice to have eggs with beautiful, rich, nutritious orange yolks, I just don't want to commit to a full season right now. I guess the humane treatment of chickens is another factor, but on this point, I'm indifferent, since chickens raised for meat also face the same issue of humane treatment. The deciding factor for me was just that I don't eat a lot of eggs to begin with and they are fairly perishable.
On the other hand, I can get 12 chickens for $180, which comes out to about $15 a chicken, or $3.75 a pound. Although pricey, I did some investigating online and in stores, and this is actually fairly reasonable for a free-range, organic chicken. Normal chickens go for a lot less - something like $4 to $8 per whole 4lb chicken. The price markup for free range and organic chicken is a lot higher than it is for eggs. Why do I bother buying free range and organic then? It freaks me out that I'm eating chicken meat laced with antibiotics and hormones. I don't know. I don't like it. Plus, I've seen the chickens being raised for meat and eggs at Free Bird Farm and I can definitively say these chickens were raised happily. I can't say the same for the chickens I buy at the store, free range and organic or not. Finally, chickens can be frozen. They will keep for up to a year in my freezer. This gives them a significant advantage over eggs.
And I know $15 per chicken is a lot, but I know how to stretch my chickens. I can easily, easily, make at least 5 or 6 meals out of one chicken. Roast chicken for two meals with a side of veg, chicken over rice or chicken with pasta or even chicken salad sandwiches can make another two meals, and the leftover chicken bits and bones makes for at least two meals of chicken soup. I can add noodles, rice, or potatoes to the soup to instantly make it more filling. The price breakdown comes to about $2 to $3 per meal for the chicken. Rice, vegetables, noodles, potatoes, and pasta are super cheap, so the total cost of a full meal would break down to less than $5. That's a price I'm willing to live with, especially since I don't actually eat meat that much anymore, meaning my other meals are much cheaper than that. And I can rest easy, knowing what I'm putting into my body, how the chickens were raised, and who I'm supporting with my $. This makes me happy.
*Caveat: I don't know how "green" or local my chicken is, since I presume Free Bird Farm had to take the birds to be processed and frozen at a butcher plant, and I have no idea how far away that plant is, but I'm okay with that. This is a better option to me than what I can find in my supermarkets.
Why didn't I opt for both chickens and eggs? Quite simply: I can't eat that much. I think it's better to buy only what you need than to oversupply and waste food. Less food, more quality. In fact, I think 12 chickens is more than I can handle, so I convinced my friend to share some of the chickens with me. In exchange for buying 3-6 chickens off of me, I've agreed to teach him how to cook the chickens and pass along any excess produce, which I'm more than happy to do. Community building with CSA food! :)
All this thinking about local, organic, free-range, etc. made me wonder about all the other food I eat. I want to live better and I am considering kicking off a month of clean eating, where I restrict myself to only eating sustainably produced/harvested food, with an emphasis on organic produce, free range and hormone/antibiotic free meats, and wild-caught fish. And, of course, trying to support local farmers where and when I can.
Surprisingly, there are a lot of restaurants and grocery stores that are quietly (or not so quietly) sourcing local, free-range, sustainable foods. I think it would be fairly easy to pull off a month of clean eating in the city. I'll chew on this idea a little longer, but it's definitely something I want to pursue.
I'm worried, of course, that they won't like it. That I've been hyping it up to everyone. But honestly, I'll just let the produce do the talking, and I'm sure it'll be fine.
I was hoping to pull my roommate into sharing my CSA with me this year, but it looks like my roommate may or may not be with us this summer. So...I've decided that instead of being overly ambitious, I'm going to sign up for just one partial share ($375 for 22 weeks of a larger-than-half-of-a-regular-share) of vegetables. I wanted to try the eggs, fruit, or chicken because it looks so good and I want to support Free Bird Farms. But I didn't know what the best option would be and I was scared being overwhelmed by Foodmageddon again.
I can polish off fruit quite happily and easily on my own, but I like the idea of free range, organic (not certified, but raised organically) chickens and eggs, and I wanted to give it a go at home, rather than relying on super duper expensive fancy places that I like to think about eating at because heaven knows I'd never be able to take myself there without feeling awfully guilty about how I'm prioritizing my spending. T_T
I digress. I ended up deciding on the chicken share. Why? Eggs are perishable but these chickens are frozen. Plus, they seemed like a slightly better deal. $90 for a dozen eggs a week comes out to a whopping $4.09 per dozen eggs. That's a lot and I am not quite sure the difference in taste and quality would be worth it. I snooped around and the prices for free range, organic eggs are anywhere from $3.50 to $5.50 per dozen in NYC. Regular eggs are $$2.00 - $3.00 a dozen. While it would be nice to have eggs with beautiful, rich, nutritious orange yolks, I just don't want to commit to a full season right now. I guess the humane treatment of chickens is another factor, but on this point, I'm indifferent, since chickens raised for meat also face the same issue of humane treatment. The deciding factor for me was just that I don't eat a lot of eggs to begin with and they are fairly perishable.
On the other hand, I can get 12 chickens for $180, which comes out to about $15 a chicken, or $3.75 a pound. Although pricey, I did some investigating online and in stores, and this is actually fairly reasonable for a free-range, organic chicken. Normal chickens go for a lot less - something like $4 to $8 per whole 4lb chicken. The price markup for free range and organic chicken is a lot higher than it is for eggs. Why do I bother buying free range and organic then? It freaks me out that I'm eating chicken meat laced with antibiotics and hormones. I don't know. I don't like it. Plus, I've seen the chickens being raised for meat and eggs at Free Bird Farm and I can definitively say these chickens were raised happily. I can't say the same for the chickens I buy at the store, free range and organic or not. Finally, chickens can be frozen. They will keep for up to a year in my freezer. This gives them a significant advantage over eggs.
And I know $15 per chicken is a lot, but I know how to stretch my chickens. I can easily, easily, make at least 5 or 6 meals out of one chicken. Roast chicken for two meals with a side of veg, chicken over rice or chicken with pasta or even chicken salad sandwiches can make another two meals, and the leftover chicken bits and bones makes for at least two meals of chicken soup. I can add noodles, rice, or potatoes to the soup to instantly make it more filling. The price breakdown comes to about $2 to $3 per meal for the chicken. Rice, vegetables, noodles, potatoes, and pasta are super cheap, so the total cost of a full meal would break down to less than $5. That's a price I'm willing to live with, especially since I don't actually eat meat that much anymore, meaning my other meals are much cheaper than that. And I can rest easy, knowing what I'm putting into my body, how the chickens were raised, and who I'm supporting with my $. This makes me happy.
*Caveat: I don't know how "green" or local my chicken is, since I presume Free Bird Farm had to take the birds to be processed and frozen at a butcher plant, and I have no idea how far away that plant is, but I'm okay with that. This is a better option to me than what I can find in my supermarkets.
Why didn't I opt for both chickens and eggs? Quite simply: I can't eat that much. I think it's better to buy only what you need than to oversupply and waste food. Less food, more quality. In fact, I think 12 chickens is more than I can handle, so I convinced my friend to share some of the chickens with me. In exchange for buying 3-6 chickens off of me, I've agreed to teach him how to cook the chickens and pass along any excess produce, which I'm more than happy to do. Community building with CSA food! :)
All this thinking about local, organic, free-range, etc. made me wonder about all the other food I eat. I want to live better and I am considering kicking off a month of clean eating, where I restrict myself to only eating sustainably produced/harvested food, with an emphasis on organic produce, free range and hormone/antibiotic free meats, and wild-caught fish. And, of course, trying to support local farmers where and when I can.
Surprisingly, there are a lot of restaurants and grocery stores that are quietly (or not so quietly) sourcing local, free-range, sustainable foods. I think it would be fairly easy to pull off a month of clean eating in the city. I'll chew on this idea a little longer, but it's definitely something I want to pursue.
Friday, January 18, 2013
CSA Share #21
Good thing CSA's are seasonal up here in the Northeast. I truly have no idea how regular bloggers can maintain their steady stream of output for our enjoyment and consumption.
Hurricane Sandy hit NYC right after my last post and in the flurry of trying to regain some sense of normalcy after the storm, I fell out of the habit of posting CSA updates. We lost power and steam in my neighborhood for about 4-5 days, which meant pitch-black darkness after the sun set, no hot water, and freezing temperatures inside. Fortunately, our gas was still working, so we were able to use a lighter to start the stove and boil a bit of hot water for washing our faces or for some tea, to keep us warm and lift our spirits a bit. It was like urban camping. Eerie and not something I want to experience again, if I can help it. Lower Manhattan looked like a post-apocalyptic world. Bizarre.
Grateful that I did not have to endure anything worse than this though. Truly a tragedy that people are still struggling to recover from. My heart goes out to all those who were affected and I hope the communities that were hardest hit will continue to draw strength from each other and lean on the rest of us as they rebuild their lives.
Anyways, it's well into winter here in NY and we've been hopping on and off the weather rollercoaster for the last week. One day it's 50 degrees and positively balmy and the next day, it's back to freezing temperatures. While I anxiously wait for the CSA season to start again, I'll catch up on my backlog of CSA posts.
CSA Share #21
1 bunch Tuscan kale
1 acorn squash
1lb yellow onions
1 bunch beets
6.5 oz spinach
5 oz salad mix
1 bunch cilantro
To be honest, because I picked up the share in the middle of the blackout, I straight up just told the coordinator for that week that I had no refrigeration, and could I please swap out the perishables for the hardier vegetables in the share? A lot of people hadn't showed up to retrieve their shares that week, so there was quite a bit of surplus. The coordinator took one look at my sad little face and the mountains of unclaimed vegetables and graciously encouraged me to swap out as much of my greens for squash and onions as I could manage.
So...no weekly roundup for this share, but a very heartfelt thank you to the wonderful lady who let me swap out my vegetables :)
Side note: The subways were still down, so I had to walk home with my cache of produce. On top of the other minor indignities I'd endured, this was just one more, but it made me truly grateful for the progress we've made in the last century or two. I have no idea how the Pilgrims or pioneers or even the Koreans after the war managed to eke out a daily existence. Much respect, and I am very aware that if the zombie apocalypse ever happened, I'd probably die of starvation before the zombies even got a chance to reach me. Ha.
Extra side note: We lost all our perishables in the freezer and fridge :/ But on the bright side, we didn't have much in there to begin with. And even better yet, that disgusting carrot top soup? Yup. It was one of the casualties of Hurricane Sandy. I don't have to eat carrot tops until next summer yay!!! :D
Hurricane Sandy hit NYC right after my last post and in the flurry of trying to regain some sense of normalcy after the storm, I fell out of the habit of posting CSA updates. We lost power and steam in my neighborhood for about 4-5 days, which meant pitch-black darkness after the sun set, no hot water, and freezing temperatures inside. Fortunately, our gas was still working, so we were able to use a lighter to start the stove and boil a bit of hot water for washing our faces or for some tea, to keep us warm and lift our spirits a bit. It was like urban camping. Eerie and not something I want to experience again, if I can help it. Lower Manhattan looked like a post-apocalyptic world. Bizarre.
Grateful that I did not have to endure anything worse than this though. Truly a tragedy that people are still struggling to recover from. My heart goes out to all those who were affected and I hope the communities that were hardest hit will continue to draw strength from each other and lean on the rest of us as they rebuild their lives.
Anyways, it's well into winter here in NY and we've been hopping on and off the weather rollercoaster for the last week. One day it's 50 degrees and positively balmy and the next day, it's back to freezing temperatures. While I anxiously wait for the CSA season to start again, I'll catch up on my backlog of CSA posts.
CSA Share #21
1 bunch Tuscan kale
1 acorn squash
1lb yellow onions
1 bunch beets
6.5 oz spinach
5 oz salad mix
1 bunch cilantro
To be honest, because I picked up the share in the middle of the blackout, I straight up just told the coordinator for that week that I had no refrigeration, and could I please swap out the perishables for the hardier vegetables in the share? A lot of people hadn't showed up to retrieve their shares that week, so there was quite a bit of surplus. The coordinator took one look at my sad little face and the mountains of unclaimed vegetables and graciously encouraged me to swap out as much of my greens for squash and onions as I could manage.
So...no weekly roundup for this share, but a very heartfelt thank you to the wonderful lady who let me swap out my vegetables :)
Side note: The subways were still down, so I had to walk home with my cache of produce. On top of the other minor indignities I'd endured, this was just one more, but it made me truly grateful for the progress we've made in the last century or two. I have no idea how the Pilgrims or pioneers or even the Koreans after the war managed to eke out a daily existence. Much respect, and I am very aware that if the zombie apocalypse ever happened, I'd probably die of starvation before the zombies even got a chance to reach me. Ha.
Extra side note: We lost all our perishables in the freezer and fridge :/ But on the bright side, we didn't have much in there to begin with. And even better yet, that disgusting carrot top soup? Yup. It was one of the casualties of Hurricane Sandy. I don't have to eat carrot tops until next summer yay!!! :D
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