CSA share – Varying Veggies

Week 4 Box

Where do the summer weeks go?! It’s very challenging to maintain a routine when life is not routine. The kids are out of school and every day’s schedule is different. I love it though. It’s a time to relax and/or do things we don’t have time to do during the school year.

I was able to dedicate this morning to processing the contents of this week’s farm box. Despite a hail storm a week ago and a massive amount of rain this past Saturday (we got 2 inches at home), the contents of the farm box are still coming in strong. There are so many great vegetables this week:

Scallions
Sugar Snap (edible pod) Peas
Lettuce Head
Hakurai (sweet salad) Turnips
Collard Greens (similar to kale)
Zucchini
Arugula
Radishes

Beets

Cilantro

I started with one of my favorite things to have available for our household – a salad bar! I tore up the head lettuces (keeps the edges from browning) and used a salad spinner to wash and dry them. I store the lettuce in a Rubbermaid container. I then sliced the radishes, turnips, scallions, and 2 zucchini and stored them in separate containers. I keep all of these on their own shelf in the fridge. At meal times, all I have to do is put the containers on the counter along with bottles of salad dressing or infused vinegars and we have a salad bar. Everyone can make their own custom salad and there’s something for everyone, even those picky eaters.

Next I made a batch of Grains and Greens using the collards, arugula, and a bag of greens leftover from last week. I’ll post a more detailed recipe later, but basically I cook a bag of Ancient Grains from Trader Joe’s along with some sliced carrots and any greens that I have on hand. I use a slightly adapted version of Happy Herbivore’s Cheater Pad Thai sauce on the grains and greens. I now have 3-4 lunches prepared for the rest of the week. I love having lunches pre-prepared – it saves so much time and stress in the morning when helping to get family members out the door.

Finally I roasted the beets and used a couple to make veggie burgers for dinner tonight. It’s the first time we’ve used this recipe and we absolutely loved it. We’ve already started thinking of all the ways we can adapt it to other beans and vegetables. We wish we had some great Kaiser buns for these tonight, but we had to go with what we had on hand and I’ve been keeping commercial veggie burgers and buns in the freezer for the kids. With the success of this new recipe, hopefully we can move away from the commercial burgers and stock some homemade ones.

I’m looking forward to snacking on the peas and using the cilantro in our Southwestern Quinoa salad (to be posted soon).

More soon…

Kathy

Week 2 Box

We picked up our second box this afternoon! It is so exciting to have such wonderful, fresh, locally grown produce. I also love knowing the farmers who grow our food. We can even go out on Fridays to the farm’s U-Pick area and pick more! They welcome us so warmly and make us feel right at home. The first year we noticed that they have sumac trees on their property. Having wanted to make sumac lemonade for a while, we asked if we could also pick the horns from the sumac trees. They said it would be fine and we made lemonade that weekend.

This week’s box contains a lot of delicious produce:

Broccoli
Broccoli Raab
Green leaf lettuce

Red leaf lettuce
Scallions
Spinach

Another leafy green that I need to identify
Garlic Scapes
Cauliflower
Radishes

I gave the lettuces and radishes to one of my kids to prep a salad for tonight’s dinner. He loves chopping veggies, tearing lettuce leaves, and using the salad spinner. I love having activities in the kitchen that the kids like to do to help with meal preparation. Win-win. If you can get your kids to help you in the kitchen, it is completely worth the time and effort to teach them. It’s quality time side-by-side with your kids, it teaches them a vital life skill (that many kids are not learning today), and it builds their confidence. They are also more likely to eat foods that they prepare.

We already have several ideas for this week’s box:

Salad (thanks to my assistant, we now have a salad bar in the fridge)

Cream of Broccoli Soup (with cauliflower puree as the base)

Sauteed greens with chopped garlic scapes and scallions

Spinach Pesto with garlic scapes

I’ll start posting recipes soon. My husband graciously handled the Borscht and Red Flannel Hash (one of his specialties) and I just got his notes this week. I love it when he comes home from work and has the time to prepare something awesome! I love cooking and the meals that I prepare, but we eat my cooking most of the time. It’s such a treat when he cooks. He’s a wonderful cook and he’s great at taking detailed notes for sharing recipes. That’s my weak point – I cook more like my grandma, throwing in a little of this and a little of that. It makes posting recipes challenging. I vow to get better though.

More soon,

–Kathy