CSA Meals - Week 6

Do you ever come to sudden realizations about your food tastes?

Although I've been turning the idea over in my mind for the past six months, this week's share confirmed that I am not really a melon person. I love watermelon in the summer, and I've been known to eat good cantaloupe, but honeydew and any other varieties will always be left on my plate or picked out of fruit salad.

I was curious about the half of an Asian melon that came with our produce this week, but I only managed to eat four or five bites before I had to push it away. The color was a pretty light green, except it was crunchy like under ripe cantaloupe, but the taste resembled overripe honeydew (according to Shannon and Davy, since I don't eat honeydew). It was disappointing, but not overly so.

Another minor setback with this week's share was the cucumber and tomato salad (shown above) I made on Tuesday night. Davy and I both had bites that were extremely bitter, and then we realized that the cucumber skin was to blame. Luckily it was easy to fix, and when I cut off the skin it tasted normal and delicious.

Wednesday we steamed the green beans and mixed them with tomatoes, feta, basil and lemon juice. They were the standout in a meal of mediocre leftovers from the weekend cookout.

Six days of rain last week yielded several basil and parsley leaves, so I was able to make pesto on Friday night with a combination of herbs from the farm and my own plants. I sauteed the onion, zucchini, squash, and tomato from the share in olive oil with chicken, white wine and basil. We ate it with boiled new potatoes garnished with parsley and a little butter. The onion was very fragrant and melted down nicely to flavor the other ingredients. I was able to get a snack and a lunch out of the leftovers.

A large portion of the pesto I made went into a pasta salad with yellow, red, and green tomatoes and feta. The only items left from the share are a small spring onion, some of a head of garlic, and part of a large tomato. I'm looking forward to Tuesday and more fresh eggs.