Week 3

Week three brought us

rainbow beets

raspberries

cabbage

 rhubarb

squash

onions

peas

 

Kale Two Ways

This is Tuscan Kale.  I think I've seen that it can be called Dinosaur Kale, too.  I kinda prefer to call it Dinosaur Kale.  

The Dinosaur Kale gets sliced thinly.

Then tossed with a viniagrette made with lemon juice, pecorino cheese, olive oil, salt and pepper, and topped with Macadamia nuts.  Then it goes in my belly.

The curly kale that Phil's mom brought us was put in a pot with homemade chicken broth, some CSA turnips, a can of beans, and a carrot.  

Shrooms and Raspberries

My first instinct with all this fruit I'm getting is to freeze it all.  A few hours after I put a tray of raspberries in the freezer, I decided to make these muffins with some of the freshly-frozen raspberries and a handful of blueberries that were left over from blueberry pancakes last week. It's a super simple recipe from a Pillsbury cookbook filled with recipes for muffins and quick breads.

One of us loooooves mushrooms and the other can barely tolerate mushrooms.  The one of us who orders the CSA veggies thought her husband would really appreciate some local portabellos.  If you haven't guessed, I'm the mushroom-intolerant person.  I found a pretty delicious mushroom stuffing on foodtv.com.  Phil and I are unfortunately very into the stupid show called "Next Food Network Star" or somthing, so I combined recipes from two of the Famous Celebrity Chefs from that show.  Giada's contribution to this meal was the stuffing: equal parts bread crumbs and pecorino-romano cheese, a bit of fresh parsley, a clove of garlic, some salt and pepper, then add olive oil till it's all moistened.  Bobby Flay provided the cooking time for a stuffed portabello- grill 10 minutes on medium heat.  Alton didn't directly contribute to this meal, but I wouldn't take Giada's advice if she wasn't on a show with him, so he was indirectly involved, I guess.

Even as a mushroom skeptic, I have to say these grilled portabellos were very, very good.  We had some grilled kohlrabi for this dinner, too.  This meal put Phil into a total food high.

Weeks 1 and 2, 2012

CSA season is upon us once again, and this year things are working a little differently with our farm.  We had the option this year to get fruit with our share, so that's something we're looking forward to this summer.  Also, our farm has started an online ordering system.  They have a recommended dollar amount for each week, and they fill a virtual grocery cart with veggies to reach that amount.  The awesome thing- I can go to the online store and remove items or add items to the cart as the mood strikes.  It's pretty incredible.  So far I've edited my online cart several times each week, because as more veggies become ready to pick, they get added to the store.  I made a last minute switch the first week for some Tuscan kale and kohlrabi.  It's been fun.  

The other thing we're loving about this year is the pick up location.  We no longer have to go to the busy, crowded Broad Ripple Farmers Market each Saturday morning.  They offer an alternate pick up in the Broad Ripple area, so we get to go to this cute little coffee shop on the Monon Trail, then walk over to our favorite European-style bakery to get breakfast.  Today we had scones.

I didn't photograph the food we prepared the first week, but I'll try to start up with that this week.  An added surprise to last week's share- Phil's mom and stepdad came to visit from Georgia and brought a bunch of fresh veggies they'd grown in their garden, so in addition to our CSA  haul of two lettuces, Tuscan kale, sorrel, strawberries, kohlrabi, and white salad turnips we had homegrown curly kale, a HUGE zucchini, broccoli, spinach and salad mix.  It was good eatin' in our house last week!

I'd say one of the most interesting things we've ever made was sorrel soup.  Sorrel kinda looks like arugula, but it tastes like sour strawberries, mostly.  It's a strong taste that made me shout, 'oh my god!' the first time I tasted it.  We used a recipe from the New Basics cookbook, and wow, is that one flavorful soup!

Our veggies this week: arugula, broccoli, portobellos, spinach, red leaf lettuce, onions, and a big thing of raspberries.  We're very stoked about the raspberries.

Plans include grilling mushrooms and broccoli (grilled broccoli is one of the best things in the world), saag paneer, and raspberries in muffins, on yogurt, and everywhere possible.

Two recipes to remember

Radicchio Pasta in Gorgonzola Sauce

melt 5 oz cubed dolce gorgonzola with 1 T butter over low heat. Set aside, keeping warm.

saute one chopped radicchio with a couple cloves of garlic in 2-3 T olive oil for several minutes, till radicchio wilts and browns.

Boil 2 servings (about 8 oz) short pasta. As soon as pasta is done, use a wire-mesh skimmer to remove pasta and place in skillet with radicchio. Add a bit of S and P, also 1-2 t dried thyme, stir. Add cheese sauce, stir, serve.


Dijon Brussel Sprouts

bring to boil: 1/2 c water, 2-3 T butter, 1/2 t salt, 1 lb halved brussel sprouts.
reduce heat to medium, cover, and steam the sprouts for 5-10 minutes.
remove the lid and let some steam escape for a few minutes, then remove sprouts to a serving bowl.
Add 2 T dijon mustard to cooking liquid, stir to combine, then combine dijon sauce with sprouts to serve.

Week eleven- I'm down with O.P.V.

I did get beans this week, but I also made a trip up to Fort Wayne. My CSA beans were parboiled then pickled in the quick pickle recipe I posted earlier this summer. The beans I got from my mom's paired wonderfully with the fresh corn I got from my blog buddy MSG. I love green beans prepared pretty much any way, but this is a really, really good way.

Make some bacon, parboil some beans, dice a couple of potatoes. Cook the potatoes in some of the bacon grease, when they are almost done add the beans. Put a lid on it, let it steam and cook, add the bacon back in and use whatever seasoning you like. I used to use part of a packet of Good Seasoning Italian salad dressing mix, I've used Greek seasoning, but this time I think I just used salt and pepper.

Week eleven- pizza

I walked into my Dad's house one evening and an incredible aroma threw it's arms around me. My step-mom was making pizza sauce, and I refused to leave that night without the recipe. Like a year and a half passed, and I finally made the sauce.

The sauce works best with roma tomatoes... I've made it a couple times lately and had to add a little tomato paste at the end when I used other-than-roma tomatoes.

Combine 2 lbs quartered tomatoes with 1/2 c. chopped onion (in this case CSA shallots), 2-3 cloves garlic, 1 t. salt, 1/2 t. crushed red pepper, 1/2 t. sugar. Mix it up with 1/4 c. olive oil and bake at 450 for 40 minutes.

This smells a-mazing! Add 1/4 c. fresh basil and puree using a stick blender or old-fashioned blender, and it smells even better.

Put it on a pizza and freeze the leftovers.

We use a 450 degree oven, Trader Joe's pizza crust, and a pizza stone. In about 15 minutes, we have dinner!

Week Eleven

It's getting to be autumn!

Tomatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, beans, and acorn squash!

Week ten- roasted peppers

It's hard to use all this fresh stuff sometimes, so I look to my mom for advice on how to store veggies for the winter. I've seen her roast peppers and have done it once myself, but this time I was trying to be careful and keep track of the steps.

First I set the oven to broil, placed the peppers on a cookie sheet, and turned them so all sides got nice and black. Then I put them in a bowl, covered the bowl with a towel, and let the whole thing sit for 20 mintues or so, till the skin was loosened and the peppers were cool enough to handle.

The skins peel or rub off easily, then I used a spoon and my fingers to clean out all the seeds. This is what they looked like then:

Packed them nicely in freezer bags, and I have roasted red peppers for the winter!

Week ten- tri-colore pasta

Is this kind of a rut? I dunno, but I really love to just cook tomatoes with olive oil and have it with pasta. Look how pretty this variety of tomatoes is.

And after cooking for a little bit, this is what it looks like. Look at all the garlic!

And this is what it looks like in the bowl. Fresh pasta from the local fresh pasta place, sprinkled with flat leaf parsley from the share. I'm running out of things to say about cooked tomatoes with pasta. It's good!

Week Ten

Week ten is a beautiful week. Various heirloom tomatoes, bright red peppers, vibrant flat leaf parsley, coppery little shallots.

The little yellow tomatoes are kinda fuzzy, like a peach. As soon as we got them we had to slice one up and marvel at it's uniqueness.



Phil declared them wonderful.

Week nine- tomatos two ways

We've had lots of tomatoes in the house all summer, and with these little cherries Phil and I each got to have tomatoes our favorite ways.

His favorite way is raw, so I cut up several cherries, diced a cucumber, halved some pitted olives, and mixed it up with a little Italian dressing and fresh dill. Phil says it's the dill that made this quick salad out of this world. Oh, he also said a little feta cheese on top made it out of this galaxy.


My favorite way is cooked, so one night I got home way late, so I did the old sautee of olive oil-garlic-smashed tomatoes that I so love. Used the rest of my orzo which I'd boiled a day or two before, then added some shaved hard cheese-- something from Trader Joe's, of course. This dinner was the best of the week, if you ask me.

Week nine- zucchini bread revisited

I posted a zucchini bread recipe earlier this summer. It's a recipe I totally love, but have been experimenting with throughout the summer to see if there was any way to health it up. Mostly I was interested in seeing if I could reduce the amount of oil and/or white flour. I tried to substitute half the white flour with whole wheat flour, but the bread was too chewy. I made a batch with 1.5 c. white flour and .5 c. whole wheat, but I don't know if it was worth the trouble. What did work out well was subbing apple sauce for the oil. There's 1/2 c. oil in the recipe, so I did an even switch with apple sauce and it resulted in a great tasting, way healthier bread.

So, if you tried the zucchini bread from a few weeks ago, try it with the apple sauce substitution. And if you haven't tried it, try it. It's so good.

http://imacsablogger.blogspot.com/2011/07/week-five-zucchini-bread.html

Week nine- beets with orzo

I've been looking forward to this experiment all summer! I love roasted beets, and have been thinking about orzo-beet salad for weeks, but could never find a recipe that sounded great to me, so I just kinda winged this, and was pretty happy with the results.

First off I roasted the beets. These were medium-sized beets, and I rubbed them with olive oil, wrapped them in foil, and roasted them at like 375 for about an hour. After that, the skins just slip off, and the knife (and your hand) get very red.


I diced the beets and tossed them with some orzo pasta, which is awesome (it's also awesome how it got beet-stained). I really like orzo. I made a citrus vinaigrette and chopped up some dill and tossed it all together. Topped it off with some great Vermont-made goat cheese that I got at Fresh Market. I loved this salad; it was different and beautiful.

Week Nine

Week nine!

Zucchini (yay, 'cause I'm working on changing up that zucchini bread recipe I have)

Summer squash

Beets

Cantaloupe

Cherry maters

Various sweet peppers

Week eight- sausage with peppers and onions

As soon as I saw the peppers and onions in this week's share, I knew we had a bad a** batch of sausage with peppers and onions in our near future. I like to have a package or two of Trader Joe's chicken sausages in the freezer... they keep in there a long time, and there are lots of different flavors. For this dish I used the Zesty Italian (or something like that) sausages. I sauteed a sliced onion in olive oil for a few minutes, then added the sliced and seeded peppers. Stirred that around for a few minutes, till the veggies started to soften, then added the cut-up sausages. Poured in a little beer, put a lid on it, then let the whole thing steam for a few minutes. Took the lid off and stirred occasionally till the liquid evaporated. These peppers and onions were so sweet with just a hint of zing... we were surprised at how great this meal was.

As good as the dinner was, I was really excited to use the leftovers for an eggy weekend brunch. Chopped up the sausage and veg, diced a mozzarella cheese stick (ok, it was a thing of string cheese), and scrambled it all up with a few eggs.

Week eight- dragon tongue beans

Somehow, these beauties were left out of the group picture for week eight. These are dragon tongue beans.

We very much love the beans with tomatoes and Greek seasoning around here, but I wanted to do something different with the beans this week. We'd just eaten at St. Elmo's, where they have very garlic-y green beans, so I wanted to try to get my beans to taste like theirs.

I steamed the beans for just a few minutes. While the beans were steaming, I put a tablespoon or two of butter in a fry pan and added some finely diced garlic-- about 3 cloves. Stirred the garlic around in the butter while the beans steamed, then added the beans. Sprinkled some salt and pepper onto the beans, stirred it all around for a moment, and voila! Beans that are just as good as the ones at the fancy steakhouse.

Of course, like many fancifully striated veggies, once cooked the beans lost their stripes.

Week eight- freezing tomatoes

Between what we're getting from the share and what we're getting from our (former) backyard, we've had lots of tomatoes this summer. My mom also has lots of tomatoes, and a couple of weeks ago I was talking to her while she was prepping tomatoes for freezing. What a great idea!

I brought a large pot of water to boiling. While waiting for the pot to boil, I filled a large mixing bowl with ice and water. Once the water boiled, I spooned in whole tomatoes. After about 40 seconds, I removed the tomatoes and placed them in the ice bath, so they didn't get totally cooked.

After ice-bathing the tomatoes, I put them in my colander over the sink. I took a whole tomato, quartered it, slid the skin off (the quick-boil process helps loosen the skin so it's easily removable), then scooped out the gooshy innards.

Packed the quartered tomatoes up in a freezer bag, got as much air as possible out of the bag, and now they're way in the back of the freezer, waiting for soups and stews and pasta dishes this winter.

Week Eight

Week eight. The first week in our new house! Peppers, onions, cherry tomatoes, basil, and regular tomatoes (which did not make it onto the counter for the picture)

Week seven- pesto

I was very excited to get the bunch of basil this week, because what better use of my new food processor than making pesto! My mom has a recipe she likes that uses walnuts instead of pine nuts which is great if you have a pine nut allergy like my friend Matt. Also it's great because walnuts are cheaper than pine nuts. Anyway, this pesto is wonderful, and everyone I know who's tried it cannot tell there's been a nut substitution.

I like to put pesto on grilled cheese or with eggs, but my favorite way is just tossed with some pasta. Little cherry tomatoes add great color.

Mix in the food processor till they are finely chopped:

1/2 c. walnuts

3 garlic cloves

Add in:

2 c. or 2 ounces basil leaves

and a pinch of salt

Then add:

1/2 c. parmesan (I used a parm-romano blend, because it's what I had)

While continuing to blend, drizzle in:

1/3 c. olive oil

That's it!