Week 10 of Awesomeness

Unlike last week, this week resulted in some awesome meals.

Green leaf lettuce

Romaine Lettuce

Eggplant

Slicing cucumbers

Cherry tomatoes

Green chard

Dill

Zucchini mix

Garlic

Red potatoes

Blackberries

While Christina was still gone for the first half of the week, I decided to make some more delicious foods. 

The green chard went into last week's Swiss Pasta. 

All of the other greens went into salads for the week

Then I decided that we needed some Pesto for the week and so I made a hazelnut/almond basil pesto.

Finding use for the pesto was exciting. Eating pesto on crackers and bread was delicious but we also decided to put some of it onto some farfalle pasta.

Then came the most exciting meal for the meal. The absolute best lasagna we have ever had.

It was an Eggplant/Zucchini Lasagna. We took a found recipe and made it even more awesome.

The additional Dill went into many many many jars of pickles that we canned.

The Summer Squash went onto two pizzas. BBQ/Squash/Onion/Pineapple pizza and also a Alfredo/Squash/Mushroom/Onion pizza.

This week's wonderful ingredients resulted in some absolutely fantastic meals. 

Mostly Solo Salad-Filled Week 9

This was a pretty unexciting week in the CSA world. Christina was out of town for the majority of this week and so it was up to me to make use of our food. This week's box included:

• Little Gem lettuce
• Red Leaf lettuce
• Diva cucumbers
• Carrots
• Walla Walla onions
• Beefsteak tomatoes
• Italian Parsley
• Corn
• Strawberries

Before she left, Christina was able to eat some of our corn made old fashioned style with butter, salt, and pepper.

Other than that, salads and repeat recipes was the way this week went.

First off was daily salads with our wide variety of lettuces, tomatoes and cucumbers. I also used some of the onion and parsley in there as well.

In addition to the salads for lunches, I also ate our carrots bugs bunny style,

I also made an exciting return of the Swiss Pasta. Farfalle with sautéed onions and swiss chard, freshly shredded Gruyere and Jarlsburg cheeses with a variety of seasonings and fresh herbs.

Solo Week. Done!

Box for week 8

This week's box was one of the most colorful ones I've seen yet! It's absolutely gorgeous! 

• Green & Red Romaine lettuce
• Carrots
• Red onions
• Basil
• Garlic
• Loose chard
• Cherry tomatoes
• Beefsteak tomatoes
• German Butterball potatoes

We were getting low on lettuce and garlic so it was great to see both in this week's box. I have to admit, we've been up to our ears in cucumber so I was grateful for a break on that veggie. 

We've got three onions and the newsletter this week suggested cutting them in half, roasting them, and serving them as a side dish. Sounds good to me!

Not sure what the plan is for anything else yet but it looks amazing!!

New recipes!!

Last week's box brought a host of other veggies in addition to the infamous beets. I had some extra time so went searching for a few new recipes to use some of our veggies in! Here's a quick recap of what happened:

Cilantro
I LOVE cilantro. I put it in everything I can. I know for some people, the taste is too over powering but I think it's the best. Last week, our box delivered a whole bunch to us. It started wilting pretty quick so I wanted to use it all as fast as possible. Since we've been eating SO much salad lately I decided to check out cilantro recipes. I choose this quick and easy Creamy Cilantro Lime Dressing from The Garden Grazer. I spiced it up with a bunch of cayenne pepper, went heavy on the garlic (we still had some left over from a previous CSA box) and lime, and added a little pepper to the final product. The result? A delicious dressing that's lasted us over a week!

Fennel

I thought I had big plans for my little fennel but unfortunately it's been wasting away in the fridge. I pulled it out today and it looked so sad and droopy that I wasn't sure it was going to make it another day. I decided I'd make something with it for lunch (along with the 4 chocolate chip cookies I ate) and came up with this Roasted Fennel with Parmesan Cheese recipe. This blew the last fennel recipe out of the water. I can't WAIT to make this again....seriously. One of my most favorite CSA dishes in a while. So simple, so easy, and SO yummy!

Kale
We were excited to see kale in our box again but not entirely sure what to do with it. So I decided to use it as filling for a turnover. This Spinach and Kale Turnover was the base for my creation. I started the process really excited about these. I imagined beautiful looking turnovers with delicious filling. The picture on the recipe made it look so easy! Alas.... sometimes things don't work out.

I put together the filling no problem. I changed some of the sautéing times to deal with our finicky stove but otherwise kept things simple. A quick taste test got a thumbs up.

However, then came the hard part - dough. Originally I was going to do homemade dough but it's been hot and I didn't want to. So there. Sometimes you just gotta cheat. In this case, I went with Pillsbury artisan whole wheat dinner rolls. Seemed like it would be perfect and the whole wheat looked marginally better for you than the white rolls.

However, when it came time to fill the turnovers I got into trouble. I couldn't get the dough to roll out. It  kept trying to fold back in on itself. It was ripping easily as well. Keeping it cold, letting it warm, putting it on a different surface, and using a different rolling method all failed. My little turnovers looked pretty sad. Several of them cracked open in multiple places and I was afraid all the filling would all fall out in the oven.

That's a shot of the turnovers before they hit the oven. It's a good thing they have parmesan cheese on them or you could see what a disaster some of them were. That one in the middle is really just a ball of dough with kale inside it :)

But, luckily, this recipe didn't have to be totally written off. The end result was turnovers that stayed together and taste pretty awesome. So yes, the dough is a little thick in some places and a little thin in others. And no, they aren't nearly as nice looking as the original picture. But they're just for Bearclaw and I and they're pretty healthy! Overall, I'm calling it a success!

We still need to grill up our corn and use up our last couple green onions but that about does it for this box!

Can't beat beet cupcakes!

The above picture may not be the best quality, but the delicious veggies that were delivered to us were top notch! This box included:

• Green Leaf Lettuce
• Cucumber
• Green Onions
• Cilantro
• Fennel
• Wild Red Kale 
• ‘Red Ace’ Beets
• Corn
• Strawberries

As usual, the lettuce, cucumber, and green onions were set aside for lunch salads. A few of the veggies are still in our fridge to be made into great things this weekend. However, my biggest concern was the beets. We've been dreading the arrival of beets because we both recall really disliking them. I think we actually cheered when we read this line in our weekly newsletter, "We grew far fewer beets this year, but wanted to be sure and include them a time or two in the boxes." Hooray!!

However, we're determined to try everything and use as much as possible so I immediately started looking for recipes. I think my Google search was something like, "Delicious beet recipes for people who hate beets". Surprisingly enough I got a myriad of awesome results. Apparently cooking beets into dishes so you can't even taste them is pretty easy. Even better, there are a TON of baked good recipes that feature the lowly beet. Perfect. 

So, with that, I decided to make beet cupcakes. What better way to get a sweet treat fix AND get my veggies in, all in one!?

For fun, I decided to put two recipes up against each other to see which was better. After much searching, I picked this Fudgy Vegan Beet Cupcake recipe and this Chocolate Beet Cupcake recipe.  The process looked something like:

Sad looking beets in the sink

Bright foamy red batter

Absolute mess of bright red beet juice everywhere....

Ready to hit the oven!

Chocolate beet cupcakes, finished, before adding cream cheese frosting

Fudgy vegan cupcakes, finished, with dusting of cocoa powder

It was a pretty great experiment. I stayed close to true on both recipes, though I did substitute unsweetened almond milk in the non-vegan cupcake recipe because it's what I had on hand. I also didn't follow the cream cheese frosting recipe at all because I didn't have it in front of me when I made it the next morning. 

The result? Both were great! I think I actually liked the vegan version better (and, at 160 calories a pop, they're a pretty guilt-free treat!). Bearclaw liked the regular frosted version better. Neither of us could taste the beets!

Note: The beets in both recipes have to be roasted for almost an hour. Make sure to take that into account before you start baking!

After all that, I do have to include one final observation. I feel like this is where someone says, "I told you so" but I have to add that after all this was done, we did both try a little bit of roasted beet. Apparently they aren't so bad. Dare I say we might even like them? That might be going too far but I think next time we'll try to incorporate them into something that doesn't hide their flavor quite so much :) 

Stir Fry to the Rescue

The next week's CSA delivery came at a crazy time in our summer. Bearclaw was swamped at work and I was volunteering for the incredible World Domination Summit. Neither one of us was home very much at all which meant we struggled a little to make sure all our beautiful veggies got used. This week's box brought us:

• Salad mix (it's so nice when it's already all cut and cleaned!!)
• Green Butter lettuce
• Walla walla onions
• Italian kale
• Green zucchini
• Cherry tomatoes
• Green bell pepper
• Blueberries
• Blackberries

The berries we mostly ate by hand, though even those we struggled to keep from going moldy and we lost a couple blackberries. However, we have found that rinsing them in white vinegar (quick and easy) is a really effective way to keep them fresher (and no, you really can't taste the vinegar!). We don't put them through the salad spinner, as that link suggests, but that doesn't seem to matter. Thanks Mom for that great tip!

The salad greens and tomatoes we had no problem munching on. I'm not a big tomato fan but luckily Bearclaw is. He eats them whole and raw which is great - I need them chunked into salsa, mashed into tomato sauce, or finely diced into a pasta salad (sparingly, please). On the flip side, green pepper isn't Bearclaw's favorite so I tend to munch on that and it all works out. 

As the days went on we suddenly found ourselves with a drawer full of veggies looking wilted and sad. I'd been stressed thinking about what to do but too tired coming home each night (often after 10pm) to do anything... It made me upset to think that delicious produce, healthy food (which I'm awful at eating when I'm busy - hello goldfish, sweets, and chips!), and, honestly, money might be thrown away. 

So, we present, the almost always perfect solution to the "too many veggies, not enough time" crisis. The wonderful, easy, and so simple stir fry!

This lovely creation was created with all the onion, kale, some extra pepper and broccoli (Bearclaw is certain that a stir fry needs broccoli to be delicious), and zucchini. It was marinated and sautéed with a Thai BBQ sauce I bought Bearclaw at the Portland Saturday Market for Christmas. It's sold by Cuisine Mentor and HIGHLY recommended (and very reasonably priced!). We enjoyed the veggies with rice for several dinners and voila, no more guilt about uneaten veggies! 

Week Five - Quick and Easy!

This week's box included:

Little Gem Baby Romaine
Sweet Slice Cucumber
Basil
Fresh Garlic
German Butterball potatoes (not pictured)
Red onions
Rainbow Chard
Blueberries

The romaine and cucumber were great in our daily salads. Having a CSA has really helped increased our daily veggie intake greatly. We regularly take salads for lunch or eat them as sides for dinner. The blueberries were included in a yummy 4th of July berry shortcake dessert treat for a friend's bbq.

With the basil we decided to make into good ol' fashioned pesto. No recipe needed - just basil, olive oil, parmesan cheese, pine nuts, garlic, and a touch of salt n pepper. It was a great pre-dinner snack throughout the week.

Bearclaw and I decided to use these potatoes for another cheesy potato dish attempt. This time, we got the potato size perfect, but we lacked proper cheese coverage :) Third try will be the charm, and we'll include a recipe!

Lastly, Bearclaw sauteed the extra garlic, red onion, and chard. He added gruyere and emmentaler cheese to the veggies and tossed it with pasta and spices.

The result? An absolutely delicious cheesy pasta meal that lasted us all week! This was a great box and it was easy to use all our veggies.