Out of the Box, Week 8

Last week, purple peppers; this week, purple garlic! Isn't it beautiful? This must be the garlic that sent off the scapes we got a few weeks ago. I just love this color.

Speaking of color, it's that time of the season when the box is packed with so many different colors (not just green, like we had in June). Of course we are still getting lots of lettuce (curly red stuff, this time), which is good since salads are such a staple in our house. We also got a huge bunch of basil this time as well as a big load of scallions. There's also fennel - another new food for me - and some cucumbers. Beets, carrots, tomatoes, and tender, little summer squashes add punches of color between all the green.



The first thing I tackled was the basil, since we still had some from week 7 and I didn't want any of it to go to waste.

I've heard that the best way to preserve basil is in oil and in the freezer, and pesto is probably the easiest way to do this. I whipped up a few batches of this on Sunday night, some of which went on our pizza. I put the rest in a plastic-wrap-lined ice cube tray so I could freeze it in small blocks, which I later transferred to a freezer bag. Now when we want pesto it will be easy to grab one or two cubes to thaw.

To make pesto, all you need to do is combine fresh basil and pine nuts (about one packed cup of basil and 1/3 c. pine nuts is a pretty good ratio). You can use a blender or a food processor; my mini-Cuisinart works great for this. Once the basil and nuts are well-blended, you need to add a little olive oil. Ideally, you want it to emulsify with the other ingredients, so if possible, pour it in a thin stream while your blender or food processor is running. The MiniCuisinart actually has a small well with a tiny hole built into the lid for exactly this purpose. Once these three ingredients are blended, mix in some grated parmesan or romano cheese (roughly 1/3 c. to 1/2 c., according to your preference). If you are going to freeze the pesto, hold off on the cheese and instead add it to the thawed herb blend right before serving.

We used our pesto on wholegrain pizza dough with some fresh mozzarella and a little feta, served, of course, with a big leafy salad on the side.

two more meals from week 7

We seemed to have a bottomless bowl of confetti salad. It didn't seem like much at first, but I kept serving it and serving it and still there was some left. It was delicious, but after a few days, I started getting antsy for some variety. Here, I served it as a side dish with some spicy Italian turkey sausage that I sauteed with the green pepper from week 7. I was lazy and bought focaccia bread to serve on the side. I always feel bad when I buy focaccia because it only has a few ingredients in it and is one of the simplest breads to make. This night, I just couldn't be bothered to put the time in, so I went store-bought.

Here's where we FINALLY used up the last of the confetti salad! It seemed like a good accompaniment to a hot dog. I don't know what it is with me and hot dogs lately but I have eaten more hot dogs in the past few months that I did in the previous two decades. All of a sudden last April I got a powerful craving for hot dogs. I ignored it for a few days because I don't actually like hot dogs. Or so I thought. When I finally gave in, I was shocked - they were delicious! I think we're now on our third pack since then. These are Hebrew Nationals, which I find to be the tastiest, served on wholegrain buns with sauerkraut and mustard.

The white-ish looking salad in the foreground is my attempt at kohlrabi slaw. Kohlrabi is new for me this year. The two other times we got some in our CSA box, I cut them up and put them in stir fry. This time, I mixed shredded kohlrabi and a shredded Granny Smith apple with scallions, dried cranberries, and an attempt at a sweet-and-sour dressing involving vinegar, lemon juice, and sugar. I wasn't wowed, so I threw in some Bragg's Liquid Aminos, a super-healthy soy sauce alternative. It still didn't do much for me. Luckily Dan thought it was alright so he finished it up and I didn't have to feel bad about wasting food. I know there are a million ways to prepare kohlrabi, so I'll just have to keep trying until I find a way that I like.

Confetti Salad

For my first meal from this week's amazing bounty, I decided to try The New Moosewood Cookbook's raw vegetable salad. Basically, the idea is that any vegetable can be eaten raw if you chop it small enough, so grab whatever you have -- the more different kinds and colors, the better -- and mince or grate them all. I picked squash, zucchini, scallions, and purple pepper from our CSA box, as well as carrots and celery that we had on hand. (A cucumber is pictured, but I didn't end up using it.) The celery was the only thing I minced manually; I used the kitchen shears on the scallions and threw everything else in to my trusty salad shooter. Consequently, this salad took about five minutes to prepare.

See how pretty it looks with all the different colors? Like confetti. Once everything is chopped or grated, just stir it up and add the salad dressing of your choice.

I decided to take another page from Moosewood and use their green salad dressing. It's a slightly odd mix of fresh herbs, spinach (or kale, in my case, since we didn't have spinach), lemon juice, and buttermilk. It was fresh and tangy and worked well with the raw veggies. The overall effect was very light and tasty; there's something about this salad that reminds me of fresh salsa, even though it's not spicy. It would make an incredible burrito filling -- I'm thinking with mashed pink pintos and a little queso blanco in a whole wheat tortilla. Yum!

Out of the Box, Week 7

Aren't these colors glorious? We're clearly at the height of summer. It's really nice to be back home and get another huge box of veggies.

It was recently brought to my attention that some readers might be wondering just how it is we get a nice box of veggies every week. We participate in a CSA (community-supported agriculture) program. It's sort of like a subscription service for produce. We paid in advance for a full year's worth of vegetables. From June to October, we pick up a box once a week; November through May, we'll pick up a somewhat larger assortment once a month.

It's a nice deal for all involved: the farmer gets money in advance to help pay for seeds and planting, and we end up getting fresh, local, organic vegetables and herbs at a lower price than we would pay in stores or at the farmers market. Our share works out to about $10 per week over the course of the year.

Clearly, we're getting more than $10 worth of vegetables here: we've got a large head of romaine, some kale, a bunch of basil, a huge bunch of scallions, summer squash, zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, a green bell pepper, a purple pepper, and two kohlrabi.

We signed up for the CSA at Luna Bleu Farm in South Royalton, Vermont. To find a CSA in your area, go here.

tuna cakes with mystery greens and feta

Tuna is one of those things that I will buy a stack of and then realize that I don't actually like it very much. I just suddenly think "Tuna's a great idea!" and the next thing I know, I have eight cans of tuna sitting in my cupboard for two years. For these tuna cakes, I used the very last can from one such frenzy. I first came across a tuna cake recipe four years ago when we lived in London and were completely skint. I spent hours googling "cheap cooking" and "frugal recipes" and things like that, and tuna cakes was one of the meals I found. That recipe involved crushed up crackers, I think.

For this one, I seasoned the tuna with scallions from our CSA box, dried rosemary, pepper, and a squirt of lemon juice. Then I added a beaten egg and some bread crumbs and formed little patties, which I pan-fried in a little olive oil.

This looks like a pathetic little meal - I should have used smaller plates. It was actually pretty satisfying. I steamed some greens, which I thought were chard, but after eating them, I'm not so sure - they didn't taste quite like the chard I've had in the past. Maybe they were a different variety? I don't know. A little feta sprinkled on top helped counteract the bitterness.

I realized while cutting up the scallions for this recipe that the root end of the scallion looks like a crazy little head. In particular, they remind me of this guy.

Not only is Pepe the coolest by far of the new generation of Muppets, he's also an excellent director.

Out of the Box, Week 2

Clockwise from top left: lettuce, spinach, scallions, unidentified leafy bunch, oregano, kohlrabi.

This week brought a lot of greens, which is to be expected, and a vegetable that I had never tried before: kohlrabi. This is exactly why I signed up for a CSA; I wanted to be forced to try things that I wouldn't normally choose. I've seen kohlrabi in the supermarket before, but I wouldn't have been able to tell you what it was. It looks like a mutant radish from outer space. I'm definitely excited to try it out.

First, however, we still had spinach left over from week 1, and now we have more! This bag of spinach doesn't look that big, but it's tightly packed - about as heavy as a basketball. I couldn't even begin to think what to do with it all, so I used what was left to make a veggie lasagna.

This is kind of a skinny/flat lasagna - I only had the spinach, which I steamed first, and carrots, which I shredded. Normally I like to add mushrooms, too, but I didn't have any on hand. With some low-fat ricotta and mozzarella, leftover jar sauce, and no-boil lasagna sheets, this was a quick and easy meal, rounded out with sliced cucumbers and some homemade garlic bread. It was so satisfying that I decided veggie lasagna would be a good solution to the spinach problem.

I spent most of today steaming a good portion of this week's spinach and layering a huge veggie lasagna (with mushrooms, this time). I didn't have any sauce on hand, so I made some, based loosely on Rebecca Blood's no-cook pizza sauce. I used the oregano from the CSA box, as well as some garlic and dried rosemary, tomato paste, water, and a big can of diced tomatoes.

I froze the entire lasagna (cutting it up and wrapping each piece individually), so that will be nice at some point later on when I just don't feel like cooking.