CSA Meals: Week 21 (pickup)

Carrots, sweet potatoes, spinach, brussels sprouts, turban squash, mushrooms, apples, bread, eggs, and we bought some of their delicious colby cheese.

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Turnip Cauliflower Curry Soup
turnip, sliced
cauliflower, floretted
olive oil
butter
onion, sliced
garlic, minced
white potato, chopped
sweet potato, chopped
water or stock

- Toss cauliflower florets in olive oil and roast (375 for half hour ish, maybe longer depending on your floret size)
- Saute turnip, onion and garlic in butter and/or olive oil
- Add chopped potato (white and sweet), cauliflower, ginger, curry powder / cumin / similar spices to taste.
- Add water or stock. Cook until potatoes are all soft and turnip is not bitter. Blend to smooth consistency and check spice levels, adding as need be.

This is a gently flavored soup, v. tasty with bread and apples and cheese.

I completely failed to add some of the new goodies. Were I to make this again, I would add:
carrots, chopped
mushrooms, sliced
apple??

CSA Meals: Week 20 (continued)

Maple Rum Pumpkin Pie adapted from http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Maple-Pumpkin-Pie-104200
Pumpkin puree (1.5c)
Maple syrup (roughly 1/6 c)
Honey (roughly 1/6 c)
Rum (a nice big splash)
Brown sugar (2-4 T)
Evaporated milk (3/4c)
Eggs (2)
Cloves, allspice, nutmeg (two shakes of each)
Salt (a little less than 1 t)
All purpose flour (3.5 t)

Mix all well and pour into pie crust (I used a graham cracker crust). Bake at 350 for an hour.

The aroma of this is just heavenly. The rum mixed with maple and the notes of pumpkin...ahhhh.


CSA Soup
Part 1:
1 knob butter
Stew beef
Onion, chopped finely-ish
Garlic, minced
Tomatoes, chopped fine
Potato, chopped
Sweet potato, chopped
Rosemary
Barley
Water

Part 2:
Green beans, cut into 1cm sections
Corn, we used frozen from previous weeks
Cabbage, sliced into small bits
Salt to taste


Melt butter in large stock pot. Add stew beef and saute until browned. Add remaining ingredients in part 1 and enough water to cover by a couple of inches. Simmer until beef and potatoes are starting to soften. Add ingredients in part 2 and simmer until green beans and cabbage are at your preferred doneness.

I love this general recipe because it produces a huge pot of soup, it's delicious, it's open to a variety of additional ingredients and seasonings, and uses a ton of CSA stuff. Probably could have snuck turnips in at the very beginning as well.

CSA Meals: Week 20 (pickup)

Spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, red delicious apples, golden delicious apples, turnips, turban squash, bread, and apple cider.

Two notes on this week's haul:

First, I love these red delicious apple. They're actually delicious, instead of all bland and mealy like the storebought kind.

Second, nobody loves turnips. The trade-in box, where you can trade one of your items for somebody else's rejected items, was filled with turnips.

:(

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Spinach-turnip sauce

Butter

Spinach, washed
Turnip, sliced
Mushrooms, sliced
Garlic, minced
Olive oil, lots
Mayo
Mustard

Melt a knob of butter in a large stockpot. On mediumish heat, add turnips and scoot around a little. Add mushrooms, garlic, and spinach. Cover and let cook, stirring occasionally, until spinach collapses into a miserable little heap. Add olive oil and stir. When turnips are soft, blend all to a sauce-like consistency.  Add mayo and mustard to taste.

TASTY. When gently but thoroughly cooked, the turnips lose their bitterness

Meal: tricolor pasta with spinach-turnip sauce, chickpeas, and shredded cheese.

CSA Meals: Week 19 (pickup)

Sweet potatoes, onions, Granny Smith apples, Jonagold apples, carnival squash, brussels sprouts, mushrooms, broccoli, eggs, rosemary-lavender bread.

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Bacon-simmered Brussels Sprouts

Cook bacon, rendering lots of fat. Slice brussels sprouts into quarters (or eighths, if they're really big) and fry in the bacon fat. Add a wee bit of water, cover, and let steam until done.

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Veggie pasta salad
Pasta
Chickpeas
Tomato sauce (from previous weeks)
Corn
Bacon-simmered brussels sprouts





Toss all in large pot.

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Squash chocolate chip bread
Make zucchini bread recipe with carnival squash. It's very sweet squash, so the combo works nicely.

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Yellow Hash
Chopped potato
quartered brussels sprouts
olive oil
frozen corn

Cook the potato and brussels sprouts in the olive oil until soft. Add corn and continue cooking until corn is heated through. Add sausage or beans for more protein.

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Shockingly decadent roasted broccoli

Cut broccoli into small florets, and toss in olive oil. Sprinkle with salt. Roast at 375-400 for 10-25 minutes or until broccoli is slightly soft and carmelizing around the edges.

This stuff is basically dessert.

CSA Meals: Week 18 (pickup)

Corn, brussels sprouts, potatoes, turnips, tomatoes, red delicious apples, golden delicious apples, acorn squash, eggs, bread.

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Bacon-Ginger Root Veggie Soup
Corn cob stock
Garlic, minced
Onion, chopped
Sweet potato, chopped
Turnip, chopped
Chunk of ginger root
Strip of bacon
Other spices (salt, rosemary? Rosemary would be great) to taste

Simmer everything together until turnip is no longer bitter and sweet potato is soft. Puree with wand blender.

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Beer bread with mozzarella and mustard: beer bread from http://www.food.com/recipe/beer-bread-73440
3 c flour: (2 bread, 1 wwh)
1 tsp salt
Couple tsps sugar
3 t baking powder
Bottle of Old Rasputin

Brushed surface with cream, bake ~1hr at 360. Let cool for 15 min before slicing.
Top with mustard and a slab of mozzarella. We ate this entire loaf in a day.

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Granola:
Oats, ~2 c
Flax meal, ~1/4 c
Walnuts, ~1/3 c
Almonds ~1/3 c
Salt, 1 tsp

Honey, bit less than a 1/4 c
Olive oil, ~1/4c
Water, ~1/4 c
Vanilla, couple of blobs - 1/2 tsp? 1 tsp?

Mix dry ingredients in largeish bowl, wet ingredients in small bowl. Add wet to dry and mix with a large whisk until moisture is evenly distributed. Spread onto aluminum-foiled pans in thin layers. Bake at 300, stirring around every 10min or so. My oven has a bad hot spot, so I rotated the pans a lot. Granola is done when dry and golden.

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Bacon Carnival:
Carnival squash, roasted
Bacon
Savoy caggage

Cook bacon in pan until there's plenty of rendered fat. Remove bacon and chop into bits. In remaining bacon fat, add sliced cabbage with a little water, sugar, and salt. Remove cabbage, add squash to pan. Stir around squash until heated through, then re-add cabbage and bacon.