CSA Meals - Week 5

With Evan visiting and the 4th of July falling right in the middle of the share week, it wasn't difficult to consume everything we received last Tuesday.

For a quick meal on kickball night, I combined some leftover rice with the dark green kale leaves. I sauteed garlic, a couple spring onions, the rice, chopped kale, and salsa. When all of it was warm I topped it with a fried egg and ate everything mixed in together. The rest of the rice was the perfect amount for lunch with another egg later in the week.

Wednesday night we had a delicious meal at Mamma Zu (including the elusive white pizza for the first time, which was amazing) and on Thursday ate grilled yellow squash and zucchini, mahi and roasted potatoes. Some of the potatoes were the size of a marble, so I chopped all of them to about that size - 1/2-3/4 of an inch - and tossed them with salt, pepper and olive oil. The mahi was prepared to be grilled in a foil pack with onion, leeks and sweet pepper. All of the sweetness from the vegetables sauteed in white wine balanced the meatiness of the fish. A pat of butter in each foil pack brought everything together with a hint of rich flavor.

Lately I've been craving feta a lot, so I decided to make pasta salad with chickpeas, feta, tomatoes, cucumber, lemon juice and basil for our cookout. The two different kinds of cucumbers, a standard variety and the lemon cucumber, which is spherical, contributed different degrees of crunchiness. I added more lemon juice and olive oil later when I ate the pasta salad for lunch with chicken the next day, and all of the flavors and textures held up until we ate the last of it on Monday.

Brunch on Sunday was a delicious zucchini frittata (pictured) with the remaining three eggs, garlic, spring onions, Canadian bacon and basil. I wish we could get eggs every week.

For dinner on Monday, we incorporated the rest of the basil with my homegrown basil into a baked penne dish with meat sauce. More of the tomatoes went into a warm salad with steamed green beans and feta. There is one beautifully ripe tomato sitting on the counter, and I am going to wait to see what we get this week before I decide what to do with it. I have a feeling we're going to be seeing more everything in the next few weeks - I hope I can keep up!