Winter CSA, Month 1

I have been remiss in posting pictures of our winter share. This is a shot of the first winter share, which we picked up in early November:


Pretty incredible, isn't it? And yes, those are my pink-stockinged feet in the corner. I had to stand on a chair in order to get far enough away to get everything in frame. And this isn't actually everything: we also had a huge bag of onions, shallots, and garlic bulbs (to last throughout the winter), a bunch of dried rattlesnake beans, still in the pods, and as much basil as we could pick.

The basil was turned into pesto and frozen in cubes; likewise, I roasted most of the squash and steamed all of the kale to freeze for future use. I have a few pictures of meals made from this harvest, which I will post eventually. A lot of my pictures from this time did not turn out very well. The days were getting shorter and the light more elusive, and by mid-November, it was usually dark out before I even started cooking dinner.

What about month 2, which we picked up in early December? Well, I never photographed it. As I mentioned, I kept getting sick, and I was very busy, and frankly, what we got in month 2 was just not as pretty. Think parsnips. Lots and lots of parsnips. Plus carrots, potatoes, and more cabbage than I will ever know what to do with. We still have some cabbage in the fridge, and we're going to pick up month 3 tomorrow!

Check back Monday for a picture of tomorrow's haul, and have a wonderful weekend.

Out of the Box, Week 14

I'm back! I apologize for the posting drought. After a frustrating month of borrowed cameras, I finally got a new camera and will resume regular posting. These tomatillos came in the box on week 14 (September 19th). I've always been intrigued by tomatillos - their brilliant color! the contrast between smooth skin and papery husk! - but I've never actually tried them. Once again, this CSA has expanded my boundaries.

The weekend the tomatillos arrived, Dan and I went back to Maine for our niece's birthday party. We got in late after picking up my little brother Zach and his girlfriend Maria from the bus station. As I unpacked the CSA box, we all stood around the kitchen chatting. When I pulled out the tomatillos, Maria, who's from Texas, got very excited. She described the flavor as like a tomato, but more tangy and sour - as though infused with lime. This description fueled my excitement, as lime is one of my all-time favorite flavors. If the acid weren't so bad for my teeth, I would eat a whole lime every single day.


I took Maria's advice and decided to use the tomatillos for a green salsa. I was surprised to find the tomatillos were much more firm than tomatoes, but it gave the salsa a nice, chunky texture without too much juice. I husked and sliced three tomatillos and threw them in the mini-Cuisinart with an onion, a jalapeno, a few cloves of garlic, and a squirt of lemon juice. The result was delicious, but way too hot! My mistake was throwing in the whole jalapeno (and some seeds) without testing it first. I've made salsa before with the same kind of jalapeno and found it too mild; I forgot that every pepper can be different.

I first served the tomatillo salsa with burritos filled with brown rice, black beans, and chopped heirloom tomatoes, covered with some cheese and baked in the oven. Because the salsa was so hot, we could only use a little bit at a time. However, we had plenty of leftover beans and rice, so we ate that for lunch a few times with the green salsa mixed in.

While the tomatillo salsa was great, and I would definitely like to experiment more with tomatillos in the future, there was another surprise benefit to this experience. As I went to throw away the waste - tomatillo husks, garlic peels, onion skin, and jalapeno seeds - I suddenly saw a beautiful combination of colors and textures in my hands, and decided a photo shoot detour was necessary before heading to the trash can. Here's a few examples. Now am I crazy, or is this beautiful?





More husk photos here.

catching up

There are always a few meals that, for whatever reason, don't make it on the blog during the week I make them. They linger in the corners of my memory, haunting my "to blog" list, and are borne ever farther back by the waves of new photos in my Flickr photostream. They are perfectly good meals, decently photographed, so there's no reason not to post about them. So now, when I don't have regular access to a camera, is actually a perfect time to sweep the corners and post the pieces that I've missed.

This was a fantastic and satisfying veggie-only dinner from week 10. I made a simple red sauce from mushrooms, onions, fresh tomatoes, olive oil, and rosemary, and I served it over faux-fried eggplant. Tasty as it is, I don't fry eggplant (or much of anything, really) - most of the time, fried foods just aren't worth the calories to me. I'd rather have ice cream. So my favorite way to prepare eggplant (and zucchini) is to fake-fry it: I dip the sliced veggies in milk or plain yogurt, then in bread crumbs (seasoned with herbs and sometimes parmesan cheese) and bake them in the oven at 375 for 20-30 minutes. The result is unbeatable - all of the crispiness of fried eggplant (or zucchini) with none of the grease. In this case, I also served corn on the cob and sliced cucumbers.

One of my favorite vegetables this summer is yellow squash. It's a new favorite for me; while I liked it alright before, for some reason this summer I just can't get enough of it. I especially love the teeny, tiny baby squashes we've received so often in our CSA box; they are awesome raw - crunchy yet tender. The larger ones usually end up grilled, with peanut sauce and other grilled veggies, or sometimes very lightly steamed. Several weeks back, I decided to experiment with the squash and use up several pantry items at the same time.

I ended up with this tasty, if a little strange, concotion: sliced squash, sauteed and sprinkled with balsamic vinaigrette, tossed with Wacky Mac and feta cheese. I was inspired in part by recipe that I stumbled across for pan-seared balsamic squash; since my squash was only lightly cooked and not seared, I'm not sure it quite stood up to the balsamic. Maybe it's just me, since I'm actually not a big fan of balsamic vinegar in general. But the feta worked nicely with both the squash and the balsamic, and Dan enjoyed the dish. Luckily, he's pretty easy to please.

Out of the Box, Week 10

Just popping in to post a picture of this week's spectacular haul.
It's almost too much to fit in the frame!
Okay, let's pull out and see it all:

The quantity of vegetables this week is mind-boggling. We have:
--two small heads of lettuce
--two small bunches of bitter field greens
--two heads of bok choy
--assorted potatoes
--half a dozen onions
--SEVENTEEN tomatoes!
--a pint of assorted baby tomatoes
--three cucumbers
--two small yellow squash
--one delicata squash
--green beans
--six ears of corn

We already had an eggplant, four ears of corn, hot peppers, and garlic left over from last week, as well as a big bag of cucumbers from Dan's boss. I should have no problem sticking to just vegetables this weekend. In fact, I think I'll have to in order to get through all of this.

(By the way, these photos were taken with a borrowed camera - mine's almost certainly beyond repair.)

Out of the Box, Week 4

We were in such a rush last Thursday to catch the last bus down to Boston that I didn't photograph the produce before we split it up. We took some zucchini, garlic scapes, parsley, and lettuce to Boston for Zach and Maria, and left some zucchini, a summer squash, garlic scapes, turnip greens, and kohlrabi here. I know Maria made zucchini bread with her zucchini. We used our zucchini, along with some sugar snap peas left over from week 3, to make a green risotto.

Last night, we had a friend over for dinner, but we also faced the challenge of trying to use up everything in our fridge, since we're leaving today on a ten-day trip. I sauteed the turnip greens with the garlic scapes in a little olive oil and steamed the remaining zucchini and summer squash. For the main course, I made lentils and brown rice, using Rebecca Blood's recipe, but I added a generous amount of garam masala spice mix. I also served the lentils with thinly sliced onions fried in a little butter and a scoop of plain nonfat yogurt. It might sound strange but the addition of those two condiments takes the meal from something simple, solid, and hearty to a complex and irresistible treat. The sweetness of the onions and the tang of the yogurt against the earthiness of the lentils makes for a surprising luxurious flavor.

For weeks five and six, we'll be out of town, so we've offered our box of veggies to the house that we belonged to in college. I've asked them to let me know what they used them for and to take pictures if possible, so hopefully I'll have an update when I get back. In the meantime, I'm spending the next ten days in New York, North Carolina, and Cape Cod, for a family reunion bookended by two weddings!

I won't be doing much cooking, although at the family reunion, I will be cooking one night. Hopefully that will be preceded by a visit to a coastal North Carolina farmer's market. I'm hoping for peaches. I will also be eating out a lot, so I'll post pictures and reviews in the last week of July, once I'm back here.