CSA meals: Week 4 (pickup day)

Goodies this week: beets, spinach, green beans, new potatoes, eggplants, plums, peaches, blueberries, bread, and peach butter.

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Green sauce of the week

Butter

Onion

Pattypan

Garlic

Spinach

Beet greens

Melt butter in large pot; add onion, pattypan, garlic, and saute until a bit soft.

Add spinach and beet greens.

Cover and cook on medium until greens have collapsed and everything is nice and soft.

Blend well.

I tried a thai kind of approach to flavoring this time, with ginger, lime, and fish sauce, but none of these flavors ended up particularly identifiable. I added a bit of worcestershire  sauce and some greek yogurt and we spread it on bread.

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Red sauce of the week

Butter

Pattypan

Beet (sliced and microwaved for a minute or two - otherwise it takes forever to cook)

Beet stems

Chard stems

Kohlrabi stems

Melt butter in pot. Add pattypan, beet, chopped beet stems, and any remaining chard stems and kohlrabi stems. Cover pot and cook on medium until everything is soft. Blend well.

 

 

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Colorful veggie salsa

Eggplant

Green beans

Beet stems

Olive oil

Chop all veggies and saute in olive oil. This would be lovely with additional veggies - pattypans, tomatoes, corn.

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Dinner: tilapia topped with lime and green sauce, veggie salsa, and sliced new potato, all sprinkled with kale bits (from previous post). Tilapia is easily microwaveable: 2 minutes, flip, 2 more minutes.

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Plums with ricotta and honey

We had a bunch of milk that needed to be consumed, so I made some ricotta / paneer. It's dead simple: mix milk with acid, heat, drain. 10 minutes in total, counting draining time. 

Mix ricotta with vanilla. Spread vanilla ricotta on sliced plums and drizzle with honey.

 

CSA meals: Week 3, continued

Roasted chard stems

Toss chard stems in olive oil, bake at 415 for 10-20 minutes or until edges begin to brown.

Or just microwave for a minute or two.

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Ground kale From Smitten Kitchen 

Toss kale with olive oil and roast at ~415 for 10-20 minutes or until kale is crispy without being burnt.

Chop kale very finely or use a spice grinder.

Mix with powdered salt (regular salt, run through a spice grinder).

Delicious on popcorn or sprinkled on whatever else, really.

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 Greek yogurt and strawberry "icing"

Puree strawberries, blend with greek yogurt. Pour on everything.

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Green sauce on bread with eggs ...

.. or with raw peas. Mom came to visit and shelled the peas while she was here. Thanks, Mom!
 

Not pictured, but very tasty:

- Linguine with green sauce + greek yogurt, sliced raw pattypan, microwaved chard stems, sausage, and cucumber

- Roasted chard, chopped and tossed with couscous, sausage, and green sauce.

- Peach sauces: peaches heated on the stovetop with vanilla, cointreau, and a hint of lime; we later added greek yogurt. 

CSA Meals: Week 3 (pickup day)

This week:

Pattypans, peas, spinach, mushrooms, cucumbers, blueberries, peaches, a dozen eggs, and Italian bread.  There were beets but I failed to pick them up, and some sort of lettuce that we traded for another share of peaches (one head of lettuce, traded for six peaches!). Recipes this week include some of last week's riches as well.

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 This Week's Green Sauce base:

- butter and/or chicken soup fat

- kohlrabi

- radish

- mushroom

- chard

- beet stems

- pattypan

- onion, pickled onion, or tea onion

- spinach

- Worcestershire sauce

Melt fats in large pot. Add everything but the spinach and worcestershire and cook until beginning to soften. Add spinach and cover pot. Cook until spinach has wilted; stir very well and continue cooking until all vegetables are very soft and spinach is a pathetic pile. Add worcestershire sauce to taste.Blend with wand blender into homogenous spread.

This made a lot of sauce, so I divided it into several jars and will add other ingredients as the inspiration strikes. Such as:

Green Sauce with Greek Yogurt:

Mix green sauce with greek yogurt. Decadent on bread, on pasta (in place of pesto), in potato salad, etc.

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 Roasted green beans:

Wash and trim beans. Toss beans lightly with olive oil and salt. Roast at 400-425 for 10-25 minutes, turning every few minutes and removing when slightly crispy and browned.

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Raw veggie and greek yogurt salad

Finely sliced raw kohlrabi, cucumber, pattypan, onion (raw, pickled, or tea)

Add greek yogurt and mix well.

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Color Changing Vegetable Cake

Medium zucchini, shredded and slightly wrung out

Large beet, chopped

Small sweet potato, chopped

2 eggs

1/2 cup olive oil

1 tsp vanilla

1.5 C white whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

Sprinkling of ground cloves

Chocolate chips

Cook beet and sweet potato in microwave until soft. Blend, mash, or use a food processor to turn it into puree.

Combine zucchini and beet + sweet potato puree. Add eggs, olive oil, vanilla. Mix well.

In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, and cloves.

Mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients. Mix well. Add chocolate chips to taste. It will appear alarmingly pink.

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or until knife inserted in center comes out clean.

Surprisingly not pink after baking.

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Punchy Peaches

Skin and dice peach. Add liqueur of choice (we've been using orange cognac) and lime juice. Eat with a spoon.

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CSA meals: Week 2 (pickup day)

This week's haul:

Red potatoes, green beans, kohlrabi, swiss chard, kale, zucchini, strawberries, a dozen eggs, and italian bread.

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Green (actually pink) spread of the week: kohlrabi greens. This stuff is seriously delicious on toast. None of the bitterness or harshness of any of the raw ingredients, but still a complex flavor.
    - Beet
    - Radish
    - Onion
    - Kohlrabi bulb (IMPORTANT: PEELED (thanks, jill!))
    - Kohlrabi greens
    - Butter
    - Garlic
  
    In a deep pan, melt butter and saute garlic.  Add coarsely chopped beet, radish, onion, kohlrabi bulb. Cook at medium heat for a few minutes, stirring well to coat in butter. Add kohlrabi greens (ripped a bit into pieces for convenience). Cook all until soft.
  
    Add :
    - Cheese, chopped or shredded
    - Mayo
    - Mustard
    - Balsamic
    - Splash of worcestershire
    - Sliced raw pattypan
  
    Stir until cheese has melted. Blend with wand blender. If desired, add olive oil or cream to taste/texture/spreadability.

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Lazy Tea Eggs

    - Cooled hardboiled eggs

    - Black tea teabags (darjeeling)

    - Soy sauce

    - Bit of sugar, bit of salt

Crack shells on eggs by rolling on countertop. Don’t remove any shell, just crack all over, and place eggs in a glass or ceramic container. Boil other ingredients in a pan; allow to cool a little (so the egg-container isn't harmed) and pour over eggs.

You're supposed to simmer the eggs in the mixture, but I was already cooking enough on the stove, so I just let the eggs cool to room temp, then stuck them in the fridge.

I overestimated how much liquid I need, so I had lots left over. Accordingly:

Tea Onions (?!?!) I have no idea how this will turn out. Attempt at your own discretion.

Pour tea mixture over finely chopped raw vidalia onions. Let rest in fridge.

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Pink Potato Salad

 - Potatoes
 - Cucumber
 - Lime
 - Pink/green spread (above), thinned with olive oil, cream, or yogurt
 - Spring onions
 - Pattypan

 - salt to taste

Cook potatoes. Let cool, dice into chunks. 
Dice cucumber and toss with lime juice in a large bowl.
Finely slice spring onions and pattypan (raw), toss with cucumber.

Add potatoes and thinned pink/greens spread, toss well to coat. Refrigerate.

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Strawberry Sauce / Decadent Beverage

Behead strawberries. Blend some portion of the strawberries to liquid, and freeze leftover strawberries.

Pictured: Sauce on orange-sweet potato pie.

For decadent beverage: add lime or orange juice and liquor/liqueur of choice.

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Zucchini chocolate chip bread. This is an experimental modification of my pumpkin bread recipe. It turned out very well! Light and fluffy, albeit green.

 - 2 small zucchinis, finely grated and sitting on paper towels for awhile to drain a bit

 - 1.5 c white whole wheat flour
 - 1 tsp baking soda
 - 1/2 tsp salt
 - 1/4 c brown sugar
 - 1/2 c olive oil
 - 2 eggs
 - 1/2 tsp vanilla
 - spices as desired (cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, etc)
 - Chocolate chips

 Preheat oven to 350. Combine wet ingredients in a large bowl, dry ingredients in a smaller bowl. Add dry ingredients to wet. Mix well to combine and pour into buttered baking dish or muffin tin.

Bake until knife inserted into center comes out clean (very roughly, 18-24 minutes for muffins, 30?? minutes for pan).

(An hour later: we've eaten half of the pan. It's tasty.)

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My cats really like vegetables.

Kohlrabi stem.

Swiss chard

Helping!



CSA meals: week 1, continued

Further adventures in Cooking With Lots Of Vegetables.

Orange and Green Soup

chopped into chunks:

- sweet potato

- radish

- mushrooms

- onion

washed well:

- beet greens (with stems)

- radish greens (with stems)

also:

- garlic, olive oil

- chicken or vegetable stock

- beans (cooked)

- rosemary, thyme, other spices?

1) Saute greens in garlic and olive oil until wilted.

2) Add sweet potato, radish, mushrooms, onion, stock, and spices (sweet potato takes a long time to cook, so i pre-cooked it in the microwave).

3) Cover and simmer until all ingredients are soft; blend with wand blender.

4) Spoon into bowl, add beans and any desired garnishes (blob of greek yogurt?)

This looks kinda gross (about the color of split pea soup - what you rightly deserve mixing deep green and orange), but it's delicious.

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Pickled everything

- pattypans (raw)

- vidalia onions

- cucumbers

- vinegar (apple cider and balsamic; rice or red wine would be lovely as well)
- dill, rosemary, or other spices

Slice vegetables. Combine all ingredients in a dish or jar and let marinate, tasting occasionally until they're pickly to your liking. The onions are great drained and added to other dishes.

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Rasbperry-Strawberry-Currant Vinaigrette

- smash raspberries, strawberries, and red currants in a bowl

- add apple cider vinegar, maybe a splash of balsamic

- depending on your mix of fruits, add a touch of sugar

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Orangey Cheesey Sweet Potato Pie… ish

Filling:

Two medium-small sweet potatoes (or one large?)

1 pkg neufchatel cheese or cream cheese

2 medium oranges

1/2 tsp vanilla

Crust:

~1c oats oats (old fashioned)

1 stick Butter (this was probably way too much)

White whole wheat flour (to texture rather than to taste)

1. Cook sweet potatoes with preferred method (I used microwave) until very soft

2. Peel oranges.

3. Combine cheese, oranges, sweet potatoes, and vanilla in a large bowl and puree using a wand blender or standing blender.

Crust:

1. Toast oats at 325 for 10 minutes or until beginning to brown.

2. Melt butter.

3. Combine butter with oats; mix well. Add flour until mixture is of a cohesive yet spreadable consistency.

4. Spread mixture in pan, patting down with spoon

Okay, it's not really a pie. It's summer and it's dang hot, so I opted not to bake this further than toasting the oats. I'm sure it'd be delicious browned slightly, served hot with ice cream… I'm chilling this and serving it with fruit sauce (or frangelico sauce? Decisions!). Also, note that there is no added sugar in this recipe. I'm not fond of very sweet things, but your taste may require some brown sugar in the filling, or maybe a sweet sauce.

A food photographer, I am not. A food eater right now, I am.

... With Chocolate Sauce

Chocolate chips, butter, and cream; melt in microwave and stir well.

CSA meals: week 1 (pickup day!)

This is our first week of the Summer CSA from the most excellent Breezy Willow Farm. They deliver to a site very nearby, so we can walk to pick up the food. Our haul this week:

Sweet potatoes, cucumbers, beets, radishes, pattypan squash, spinach, lettuce, mushrooms, blueberries, a dozen eggs, and a loaf of bread. I was already hungry when I went to pick it up, and even hungrier after trekking back carrying it all, so dinner tonight maybe went a little overboard. But oh, oh, cooking with fresh delicious ingredients is so good!

Vegetable Medley:
- Slice sweet potatoes and beets, saute in cast-iron pan with butter until soft-ish.
- Add sliced mushrooms, radishes, pattypans.
- Add chopped rosemary and spring onions (conveniently, from the garden).
- Saute over fairly low heat until veggies are cooked to your preferred consistency.

Spinach Spread (fabulous with hard-boiled eggs on toast):
- In large pot, melt butter and add spinach. cover and stir occasionally until spinach is a sad-looking puddle. Blend the spinach well using a wand blender.
- Add chunks of mozzarella, garlic, mustard, mayo, and balsamic vinegar.
- Continue heating on low until mozzarella is completely melted, periodically stirring to help the cheese redistribute throughout the spinach. Spoon out the spinach-cheesey-delicious blobs, and use the leftoever green liquid for the next recipe...

Cucumber-onion-pattypan-yogurt-dill spread:
- Begin with the leftover liquid from the spinach spread, and add finely chopped cucumber, onion, and pattypan (uncooked).
- Add yogurt and more balsamic vinegar.
- Add dill to taste.
- Chill.