CSA Week 7

In our seventh CSA box we got: 1.5 lb Austrian crescent fingerling potatoes, 2 "red of Tropea" onions, 2 fresh sweet onions, 1 bunch carrots, 3 beets, 1 lb zucchini, 1 patty pan squash, 1 zapalito squash, 1 cucumber, 1 green bell pepper, 2 mild jalapenos, 2 lb fava beans, 2 heads green leaf lettuce, 1 bunch chard, 1 bunch Italian parsley, 1 bunch basil

Yay for summer squash!

So much food it makes me tired to think about preparing (so we went out tonight, ha!), but here's the plan:

Fava beans braised with salt pork (recipe called for pancetta, but have salt pork in the freezer, we'll use some parsley here too); lemon-garlic fingerling potato salad

Grilled chicken; grilled sweet onion and bell pepper; quinoa with garlic, red onion, tomato

Borscht (including beet greens; I'm following this recipe but with my friend's edits) and green salad

Steak; grilled summer squash (zucchini, patty pan, zapalito) with parsley; buttered egg noodles with garlic, parsley, and bread crumbs

Chard-basil-garlic pesto (add juice of half a lemon to this recipe; double or triple this and freeze in dinner portions for a taste of summer in the winter!) with zucchini "pasta", peas, sauteed sweet onion, sausage; green salad with carrots and sweet onions  (Note:  I've got a spiralizer and we got another big zucchini free, so we're going to whirl it into noodles!)

Spicy (jalapeno) shrimp and avocado salad on a bed of lettuce

That's six dinners and we went out the first night, so we'll have to be diligent to make this happen! 

We're also having salads for lunch, I'm making veggie stock with all our snippets and wilted bits (it'll go in the borscht), and I'm making rice vinegar pickled carrots, daikon, and jalapeno for banh mi.

CSA Week 6

In our sixth CSA box, we got: 2 lbs new potatoes, 2 "Red of Tropea" onions, 1 fresh sweet onion, 1 bunch carrots, .75 lb zucchini (three small), .75 lb snap peas, 1 lb shelling peas, 2 lb fava beans, 1 head red leaf lettuce, 1 head green leaf lettuce, 1 bunch kale, 1 head garlic, 1 bunch sage, 1 bunch basil

OMG, so much!

This was a weird week.  We had a dear old friend to dinner on Wednesday, the day we picked up the box, then were at my parents' house Thursday and Friday night (with a plan for Saturday night, though we came back early).  I didn't meal plan, needless to say.  To compensate, I created a elaborate meal for our dinner party using as much of our box as possible.  :D

The big meal consisted of the following: 

Lamb and Fava Bean Stew.  I got the butcher at my local grocery with a decent meat department to cut up a leg of lamb into stew meat chunks.  They gave me the weight I wanted without the bone and changed the same price per lb as the whole leg with the bone in; love those guys!  From the box I used both red onions, garlic, and the fava beans.  I also used the homemade veggie stock in this.  We're saving all the discard bits for stock and it's working out very well!  The lamb stew turned out great.  I totally recommend it.

Hashbrowns made with the potatoes, sweet onion, and sage.  This was okay.  I tried to broil it to make the multi-dish meal easier on me, but I should have fried them.  Just so you know, the key to crispy hashbrowns is to shred, then rinse the starch away, just like you rinse rice before cooking it.  Then drain and throw it in a salad spinner to get it as dry as possible.

Garden salad using red leaf lettuce, sweet onion, carrot, and snap peas from the box and arugula (from our garden!) and tomato.

I dressed the salad with this avocado dressing, to which I added a bunch of basil from the box.  This dressing is good, but THICK, so be careful not to over-dress the salad.  Soooo easy to do.

We ended up taking the most of the remaining produce to my parents house, eating some and leaving the rest there.  In trade we brought home a ton of freshly shelled peas from their garden traded peas in shell for shelled peas, haha), a couple of HUGE daikon radish, and a bunch of garlic scapes.  Tried roasting the scapes, but they were pretty tough, so I think they are past their delicate prime.  I'll probably cut them way down to get rid of the tough stalks and make more pesto out of them and what's left of the basil.

Tonight we had brown butter pan-fried hake, fried sage leaves, and herbed rice and wild rice (with a bit of shredded carrots mixed in) with those roasted scapes.  Let me tell you the hake and sage more than made up for the scape failure (the failed scape?).  It turned out to be brown butter because I put the butter in the pan to melt then forgot about it.  Haha.  Luckily I caught it before it burned.  Anyway, fried the hake in the butter and it tasted like LOBSTER.  Except more tender and juicy.  It tasted like lobster WISHES it tasted.  It was so good!

Doesn't look like lobster, but sure tastes like it.

Tomorrow we're having chicken burgers (purchased from Costco, quite good!) on Dave's Killer Bread buns.  I'm thinking I'll make a lemon-sage aioli, and top it with more arugula from our garden.  Carrots from the box and peas from dad's garden.

What did you eat this week?

CSA Week 5

In our fifth CSA box, we got: 2 lbs new potatoes, 1 bunch carrots, 1 bunch beets, 1.5 lbs snap peas, 1 lb shelling peas, 1 lb fava beans (I picked up an extra lb, seen in picture, because I love favas), .25 lb snow peas, 1 butter lettuce, 1 head green leaf lettuce, bit of beet thinnings (called beetniks by Tolstoy), 1 bunch garlic scapes, 1 bunch chard, 1 head garlic, 1 bunch Italian parsley 

The haul just keeps getting bigger!

Last week I didn't meal plan beyond the a few notes and it was a mistake. So, here's my plan for this week:

Tortilla Española (using half the potatoes, and some of the parsley); a salad of butter lettuce, beetniks, shelling peas, radish sprouts.

Grilled teriyaki salmon; marinated snow peas, baby zucchini, scapes, bean sprouts, green onions.

Beef bulgogi (we'll see if I cheat and pick up some pre-marinated, or go fully homemade); sauteed snap peas; steamed rice.

Nigella's "Back from The Bar Snack." I make this for a meal, not a snack. It's super yummy!

Fava bean, mushroom, and scape Farrotto (risotto with farro, using garlic and parsley, maybe homemade veggie stock, otherwise chicken stock); sauteed chard and beet greens with garlic.

I'll be saving all the pods and other veggie trimmings this week to make stock. Hopefully I'll have my act together and have the stock ready for the farrotto.

Chocolate-beet cake!

If you want to try out some of these recipes, check out the links above!

Updated to add: maybe don't try that Esquire recipe for Tortilla Española; it's not as good as I've had before.  Still looking for a good recipe, I guess.  Have one to share?

Homemade, traditional, whole (etc) foods

So far most of my posts have been about food.  This will probably be a theme because (a) I love food, (b) I love cooking, and now most importantly (c) I want my adorable daughter and beloved family to grow on nourishing and delicious foods.  They deserve it!  That is why we joined a CSA this year.  That is why we started a garden this year.  And that is why, even with all that, we're still going to enjoy veggies from my dad's garden, too!  I'm staying home to raise my daughter the best I can, and that means I get to sneak in some homemade foods and beverages that I might not have time for if I were working.

I'm not very good at getting pictures for the blog, but I'm trying to fix that!

I've done a few things to help me make sure I'm keeping up on providing the kind of food I want for my family on a regular basis.  

This may sound silly, but joining a Facebook group of other people committed to giving their families whole, Real Food, has been very important.  Everyone is such an inspiration and a great resource of information for when I try out something new (homemade bean sprouts!).

I have committed to making all the sliced bread my family eats.  It's 100% whole wheat and pretty good, especially toasted with butter and honey!  I still buy burger buns, but maybe I'll conquer that someday.

Almost all our beverages are homemade.  I make kombucha, almond milk, cold brew [decaf] coffee (we also have a fabulous set up for hot coffee too, upon which Jeremy insisted), and iced chamomile infusion (this is naturally sweet and light and no caffeine so good for PomPom all the time and everyone in the evenings).  My dad makes beer and wine, which we're sometimes privileged to have in our fridge.  Other than that, we're only buying alcohol (yeah, not totally ascetic).  The upshot of making your beverages, which I admit involves a bit of time, but not too much, is that you control the ingredients and their quality. There's no excess sugar, and you can substitute other sweeteners if you want. Hello maple syrup! There's absolutely NO high fructose corn syrup.  No one needs that , HFCS is not your friend. And no shady ingredients like colorings and hydrogenated oils (yeah, those are in store bought beverages all the time!).

Joining the CSA has forced us to integrate more and better quality veggies into our diet.  They just keep coming, so we have to use them!

Meal planning a week at a time not only ensures that we use up the CSA veggies, but also ensures that I'm not  staring into the fridge scratching my head at dinner time, or berating myself for not starting those dry beans yesterday.

We joined a drop for Azure Standard.  It's an online bulk foods company that allows you to get some amazing deals on flours, nuts, seeds, dry fruits, tomato products in GLASS (because cans are lined in BPA, a suspected endochrine disruptor; unless you get Eden Organic, but they don't support the kind of social policies I do within their company, so I'm boycotting them), etc.  You have to check to make sure you're getting a good deal, but what I've found is that if Costco has it, it's cheaper at Costco, otherwise get it from Azure Standard.  

I'm trying to get more fermented foods into our lives.  They are brimming with naturally occurring probiotics and those little bugs keep you healthy!  Kombucha is fermented and that's the only regular so far, but I'm looking forward to making more fermented veggies like sauerkraut, traditional ketchup, and chutneys.  It's mostly condiments, as you can see, so you get a little probiotics in at all your meals. 

I'm sure there are a bunch of other little things that make our whole foods journey possible, but those are the big ones!

CSA Week Four

Last week was the Fourth of July, so I got a little lazy and didn't post; I'm catching up now. In our fourth CSA box, we got: 1 bunch baby carrots, 1 bunch beets (3 last week, 4 this week), 2 pints strawberries (they say this is the last week for these), 1 lb snap peas, 1/4 lb snow peas, 2 head spinach, 2 lettuce, 1 bunch garlic scapes, 1 bunch kale, 1 bunch green onions, 1 bunch dill. Terrible photo, I know; took it with my tablet. Won't make that mistake again. 

Beautiful veggies and fruit!

I didn't meal plan, but made a few notes for a Real Food Facebook group I'm a part of: 

Maybe I saute those baby carrots and toss with some chopped dill (didn't do that). And then maybe make a marinated veg salad with dill and snow peas among other veggies (didn't do this). 

I'll also do garlic scape and spinach pesto pasta salad with snap peas. (I did make this and brought to share at a Fourth of July dinner, and then continued eating all week! We used some pesto on BLTs, and I still have some leftover!)

Homemade Michoacan style carnitas tacos with kale, sweet corn, and green onion slaw. (This was awesome!  I'll definitely post about how to make this recipe that Jeremy perfected.)

Several salads with all the lettuce; probably use up the green onion that way and use the beets in the salad, too; some raw and grated, some roasted, cooked, cubed. (Made a salad of arugula from our garden, roasted beets, chevre; had a few other simple salads, but still have a couple beets and green onions leftover).

We ate those delicious strawberries and snow peas out of hand.

I ended up making those carrots as honey-ginger sauteed carrots, which were delicious.  Had those with some hake grilled and slapped with a little dill at the end (PomPom did not enjoy the dill, she usually loves fish!). Enjoyed the beet and arugula salad with this meal.

Wow, was that a disorganized holiday week.  Can't do that again.  The mixing of tenses in blog posts is kind of distasteful to me (haha), but the quantity of the produce in our box will gradually ramp up and I can't have leftovers from the previous week!