CSA Meals - Weeks 12 and 13

It's normal to make a big pot of soup when your air conditioning breaks at the end of July, right? The heat of the stove certainly doesn't increase the temperature of the kitchen and surrounding rooms to the point that you just want to leave your house.

I'm not sure making soup in the summer is a good idea even with functioning central air, but I had a significant number of vegetables to work with, and wasn't creative enough to think of another use for them. I chopped potatoes, scraped corn off cobs, cut ribbons of Tex's chard, sliced carrots, and minced garlic in preparation. 

To start, I sauteed the garlic in olive oil in my dutch oven, added the carrots and potatoes to brown them a bit, and then dumped in a mixture of chicken stock, water, and some diced tomatoes that were taking up freezer space. Rosemary, thyme, and a parmesan rind went into the broth to add some flavor, and I let everything simmer for a couple of hours. When I turned off the heat (to Davy's relief), I stirred in a can of rinsed cannellini beans, corn kernels, and the chard. 

The soup rested in the fridge over night, and on Sunday, I made a cross between gremolata and pesto by blending lemon zest, basil, garlic, and olive oil to add a little bit of freshness and citrusy tang.

What I should have made, instead of soup, was something like the Vietnamese chicken salad that we ate earlier in the week. I don't have the source of the recipe, but it includes chicken, napa cabbage, scallions, cilantro, and peanuts. I added grated carrots, and the dressing contains fish sauce, sesame oil, and sugar. It's quick, light, and especially satisfying served over rice noodles.

To go with the salad, we tested out the Padron pepper method I mentioned, and it worked beautifully. 

On average, about one in every ten pepper is supposed to be extremely hot, and the bunch that we got fit that standard. The few that were spicy hit me in a surprising rush of heat and saltiness, which only made me want to eat more.

Luckily, Amy had more Padrons available this week, and Davy and I made another round on Tuesday night. In the interest of not turning our kitchen into a room-sized oven, we ate Hungarian salami, a few cheeses from Caramont, and a makeshift bruschetta with yellow cherry tomatoes and basil marinated in olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

I will admit to making pasta a few times, despite the unofficial stove ban, but all of our tomatoes were practically begging me to make fresh pasta sauces. There may have been a few tomato and feta sandwiches thrown in as well, which only require the brief, contained heat of a toaster oven.

We're leaving for the Outer Banks tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to bringing the rest of our share and using a kitchen to its fullest capacity without worrying about the temperature ramifications. Have a wonderful week!

CSA Meals - Weeks 9 and 10

I'm officially in holycowit'smid-Julywhereisthesummergoing? mode. The last couple of weeks went by in a whirlwind of celebration, relaxation, and travel.

Our house guests were in Richmond through the 4th of July, which meant that the annual party benefited from Lyndsey's extreme chopping talent. She used some of her salvaged cabbage and carrots, and our CSA red onion, to compile a simple, pretty coleslaw. If you don't believe me, the proof is in the photo below; it looks like bagged slaw mix sliced by machine, but it was all done by a skilled hand.

In the meantime, I put together a haphazard pasta salad with roasted summer squash, mozzarella, and several basil leaves (pictured). The rest of the basil was made into pesto the following week.

I believe my contribution was eaten, but it wasn't very noteworthy compared to the slaw and several of the other dishes gracing Tex's air-conditioned kitchen.

We recovered from the holiday in Seabrook, SC, and our first dinner there was a group effort that incorporated components of our share from Week 9. Davy and I steamed the yellow and green beans, and made flank steak with chimichurri sauce, which was decent. Keith and Carrie's dish, however, outshone ours, and the cucumber and cherry tomatoes we brought added a lot to the roasted shrimp and orzo salad. At the end of the meal, we added the remaining steak and beans to the salad to keep it going for lunch the following day.

In an attempt to clean out our fridge a little before the next round of CSA produce, I repeated a Splendid Table recipe from the spring (Spring Vegetables and White Beans Scented with Fresh Bay). Instead of spinach, I used dandelion greens - courtesy of Lyndsey and Travis, chicken stock instead of vegetable broth, and added some freshly made pesto. The "stew," as Lyne Rosetto Kasper and Sally Swift call it, was light and garlicky, and had an earthy flavor from the greens and carrots.

By some miracle, I managed to make caramel for turtle brownies the same night. The bubbling corn syrup and sugar were mesmerizing, and made a delicious sweet topping for the fudgy brownies. 

Davy and I whittled away at our cherry tomato and mesclun salad mix supply with a few green salads throughout the week, adding different ingredients depending on what we had and what was appealing at the time. 

I was visiting family in Harrisburg over the weekend, and we brought a big cucumber and tomato salad over to my grandma's for dinner on Sunday night. There were sungolds, slicing tomatoes, sweet peppers, and cucumbers from my share, and different types of herbs, tomatoes and cucumbers from my parents' CSA and garden. My mom and I worked on the salad together, and dressed it with a little olive oil, red wine vinegar, and sugar.

Despite the fact that it feels like summer is already slipping away, I know that there are many more meals and memories to be made over the next couple of months.

CSA Meals - Week 7

Our house and lot are surrounded by large trees, and we don't have a pet to scare pests away. Squirrels always wreak havoc on my potted plants, but this year I've been fighting them off by sprinkling cayenne pepper over the dirt to keep them from digging holes that ruin plants at all stages. I don't feel the least bit sorry.

Right now, arugula and basil are yielding the most out of everything I planted. The basil pot is elevated on a stand to maximize sunlight, and the arugula seems to like a little more shade. 

Only the arugula and basil came from our garden.
The cucumber and bell pepper are from the share, and
the banana pepper came from Maymont via Caitlin.

I thought my garden and potted plants were finally doing well, thanks to the spicy soil, and then Tex brought some of his homegrown chard over. 

This was taken on the final night of the 
NBA season, in case anyone was curious.

Leafy greens thrive in his beautiful, fenced-in back yard that is almost all garden. The chard, which we sauteed with garlic, olive oil, and red pepper flakes, was incredibly fresh. It was an excellent addition to our meal of grilled striped bass and pasta salad with mozzarella, grilled zucchini and squash, and capers.

Earlier in the week, I managed to utilize some of our plants (see first photo) in a makeshift bruschetta and salad. I mixed our lovely sungold cherry tomatoes, pieces of fresh mozzarella, and torn basil with a little olive oil to enjoy on top of thick slices of toasted Billy Bread rubbed with fresh garlic.

By the end of the weekend, the carrots and dense head of cabbage were still untouched in the bottom produce drawer, and I felt obligated to use them that night. I managed to use about a third of the cabbage, and cut the carrots into matchsticks.

Ginger, garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce, and Szechuan peppercorns (thanks, Evan!) went into the pan for flavor, and the resulting stir fry was light and satiating.

It may not have been completely local, but it was good enough to make me excited for dinner two nights in a row. I'm grateful to have the share, and friends with wonderful plants, to supplement the (sometimes literal) holes in our garden.

CSA Meals - Week 6

I'm not sure how the past few weeks have been so busy and exhilarating, since we haven't gone out of town, but I don't know where the time is going.  


My efforts in Week 6 weren't so wonderful again, but I did manage to try a few new recipes.  


Since we knew we weren't getting anymore green beans, we decided to just eat them in their crunchy, raw state.  Our spicy salad mix was delicious, and it lasted longer than delicate greens in the summer normally do.  I ate it in salad form, as well as in a sophisticated sandwich that Davy made to use some of our nice salami and cheese from our antipasto night.   


The broccoli we got in our share was bright green, as you may have seen from my pictures last week, and didn't have a weird odor, like most of the broccoli I eat usually does.  We made a delicious macaroni and cheese from 101 Cookbooks, which called for broccoli-studded bread crumbs.  If you've eaten roasted broccoli, you know how sweet and nutty the florets turn after being baked on a high temperature.  That flavor definitely carried over into the casserole topping, and the incorporation of basil lifted the dish without overpowering the taste.  

I would wholeheartedly recommend this recipe to any mac and cheese lover, because it was decadent and hearty without that mild guilt that washes over me from eating an unhealthy children's food. I halved the recipe and omitted the squash for Davy, but we had the opportunity to try a more authentic replication of the recipe later in the week, and it was just as satisfying.

It's been so long since I made the food from this week that I've lost track of one of the recipes I tried with the napa cabbage.  It was basically a slaw with a warm dressing.  If I remember correctly, the dressing consisted mainly of pepper flakes, sugar, and vinegar.  The cabbage we got was absolutely beautiful, and I enjoyed this dish, but it didn't hold up well as leftovers, and was a bit too much for those who don't love spicy food.

Every once and awhile I'll notice a food trend that doesn't interest me or that, for some reason, I resist for awhile.  Raw kale fell into that category for several months.  I'm not sure what changed, although it may just have been a kale salad that was posted in the right place at the right time, and the fact that I had all of the ingredients to make it.  It may also have been that like everything we've gotten recently from Fertile Crescent Farm, the kale looked more vibrant than it does in the spring, and thus more appropriate to eat without cooking it. 


A kale salad is definitely worth trying, even if it's very simple, like the one I made.  I didn't bother with the mushrooms, and used pine nuts instead of walnuts, but I enjoyed the dressing, and the basic nature of the salad, which could be used as a base for just about anything.


I'll do my best to get a Portland post up soon, as well as a report about Week 7.  I'm still running behind because of Halloween, and a new addition to my Richmond family (Shannon's sweet baby girl!), but it's still comforting to be handed a bag of vegetables every week.

CSA Meals - Week 5

I'm almost embarrassed to post about last week because it was so uneventful in terms of vegetables, and I didn't take any pictures.  Davy grilled green beans on Tuesday night to go with some of Keith's venison and goose, and we ate the rest raw as snacks. 


There was tons of basil, and I barely made a dent in it.  I put some in a baked pasta dish that I threw together from ratatouille Davy made for my birthday dinner (sans eggplant), linguine, mozzarella, and parmesan.  


On Thursday we ordered pizza and made a salad and used some of the share tomatoes, which still have great flavor even though they're winding down.  We used the remaining tomatoes in another salad that was my attempt to balance out some delicious fried seafood in Chincoteague.  The candy binge that occurred later that night probably undid any good from the salad, but at least I tried, right?


Davy carried on the makeshift dinner trend on Monday when we decided to have a wine and cheese night.  Again, to offset the rest of the meal, I prepared some mustard greens with onion, garlic, chicken stock, and sesame oil.  We both had to add soy sauce to avoid having our sinuses completely cleared out by the spicy greens.  The rush from eating them was comparable to an intense horseradish flavor, or the fiery sensation one gets from wasabi.  


I froze the okra, and still had plenty of basil and mustard greens to experiment with at the end of the week, and hopefully Week 6 won't be quite as boring. 

CSA Meals - Week 14

Looking back over my notes from last week's dinners, I realized that everything I made was (unintentionally) vegetarian.  This occurred partly because Davy went on a fishing excursion that yielded several pounds of mahi mahi, and also because I was on my own for more than one dinner during Week 14.


My solo meal on Tuesday night consisted of a typical pasta dish: whole wheat and regular penne fresh tomato, baby zucchini, garlic, mushrooms, pine nuts, and basil.  

Two nights later, I branched out and experimented with cacik, a Turkish yogurt dip/soup that I saw on Big Girls Small Kitchen.  The cucumber was from my garden, and it was somewhat bitter, but the tomato I used was juicy and sweet.   

I enjoyed the dish until I was about halfway done; I felt full, but not totally satisfied, and the recipe was meant to serve one.  There's a good chance that I didn't water it down correctly, and that I should have cut the cucumber into smaller pieces, but the idea of cacik was more appealing to me than the food itself.


My other new recipe venture was more successful.  I'd almost forgotten how wonderful roasted tomatoes are until a recipe for Roasted Tomato Lentil Salad with Crispy Shallots from Serious Eats reminded me.  The salad hits several different flavor targets (sweet, tangy, savory, etc.) and is extremely healthy. I had to use vinegar instead of lemon, because I forgot to purchase one during my three trips to the grocery store in two days.  I also substituted feta for goat cheese, because I had feta and because Davy doesn't love goat cheese like I do. 

We ate the lentils in whole wheat pita pockets, though I almost think I'd prefer the salad on its own or over some greens.  

On Sunday we defrosted some of the mahi filets to make ceviche.  We used tomatoes and sweet peppers from the share, and caught up on Breaking Bad while scooping the fish out of a big bowl with tortilla chips.  

Before we put the leftovers in the fridge, I drained most of the juice so the fish wouldn't disintegrate into an inedible texture.  We were able to use the rest in fish tacos the following night, and we ate sauteed zucchini on the side. The baby zucchini was incredibly tender and didn't need much time in the pan after I'd thinly sliced it.  I used garlic, chili flakes, toasted pine nuts, and feta to make it a little more interesting, and I couldn't wait to get my fork into the rest of it the next day.

I'm certainly not drifting into vegetarian territory anytime soon, but I have really enjoyed our produce this summer, and it's comforting to know that dinners without meat can taste so good - as long as they're not comprised mainly of yogurt, and they don't include eggplant.

CSA Meals - Week 10

The sun is blasting everything outside, but the plants in my garden haven't given up just yet, and luckily the CSA is still going strong.  Most of week was extremely bearable compared to the excessive temperatures we have now, and I managed to make a few different dishes with our CSA produce and Shannon's monster zucchini.  


When Davy has a band activity and won't be around for dinner, I seize the opportunity and make pasta.  Last Wednesday I ate it with sun gold tomatoes, basil, feta, and garlic, and it was spectacular - simple, sweet, and fresh.  The sun gold tomatoes are so tasty, and for someone who doesn't love tomatoes (I'm getting there!), the perfect variety to eat uncooked.

The next night I realized we had a ton of zucchini to use, and some prosciutto, so I decided to try out a version of this salad from Serious Eats.  We didn't feel like grilling, and I was using the oven for potatoes baked in parchment anyway (with basil instead of mint), so I sliced some zucchini on the mandolin and roasted it instead.

If you need to find another way to get rid of zucchini, the lentil salad is a healthy and delicious way to do so.  The thin pieces almost melted down in the dressing, and the red wine vinegar provided just enough of a bite to keep the flavors interesting.  I chopped my prosciutto and mixed it in instead of serving it on the side, and it contributed to making the dressing taste richer, which is completely worth it when you're eating health food like lentils and zucchini.

My parents came to visit for the weekend, and we welcomed them with takeout from 8 1/2 plus lime and peanut coleslaw on Friday night.  I love this coleslaw recipe from 101 Cookbooks because it's a totally different take on shredded cabbage.  It's tangy from the lime, crisp from the cabbage and peanuts, slightly juicy from the beautiful sun gold tomatoes, and very light because it doesn't have mayo.  The slaw can be eaten for several days after, as long as you don't mind if the peanuts lose some of their crunch, because the cabbage is even better as it softens.

When I made the parchment potatoes, I used every potato we'd gotten in the share because I knew they could be recycled into other meals.  We ate a them a second time in a Sunday morning frittata with zucchini, since both of those vegetables were in abundance.


After all of the glorious weekend eating (another phenomenal meal at Secco!), Davy and I were worn out.  We made a cucumber and tomato salad with feta, and decided to defrost some bread to eat with Idiazabal cheese from Trader Joe's and spicy plum chutney for dinner on Monday.  It's the kind of meal that's perfect in a heat wave, so we probably should have held off until Week 11,  though I don't think either of us would complain if we repeated it the next round of candy-like sun golds.