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.

Week Four

After a lot of cooking with our week three box we were excited to see our next box, and also hoping for some good salad veggies. We've had a heat wave here so any chance to avoid turning on the oven/stove was appreciated.

Week four box:

Red butter lettuce
Agretti
Cucumber
Green onions
Fingerling potatoes
Broccoli
Red Russian Kale
Blackberries
Cherry tomatoes

Most of this deliciousness has been put to good use in salads including the lettuce, cucumber, green onions, and kale. However, we've also cooked up a couple new dishes! The following is from Bearclaw:

The first of the three delicious dishes created by this lovely bunch of vegetables was an egg scramble which made for an incredible breakfast. It turned out way better than expected. I first chopped up the broccoli, kale, green onions, walla walla onion and orange pepper, seasoned the whole bowl of veg.

Then I tossed it all into a pan and cooked for about 10 minutes and set it aside while I began cooking some eggs. Then after about a minute or two of cooking the eggs, I combined it with the eggs and then the ultimate ingredient to all meals, cheese. Lo and behold a delicious veggie scramble.

The next meal was a simple pasta dinner with Italian Argetti. What better way to use an Italian green than in a meal that breathes Italian. Pasta. I prepared the pasta and sauce while sauteing the argetti. The result was this hearty dinner. Highly recommended use for argetti. 

The final meal produced using these vegetables was a recipe we experienced a few years ago from a friend. It was a bleu cheese potato salad. Can't go wrong with a potato salad with lots of bleu cheese.

Week Three Experiments

Our third week box contained all sorts of goodies to play with. Bearclaw was working late all week so it was up to me to do some cooking. Here's what I came up with!

First up, a kale and red potato gratin:

This was super easy and only took a handful of ingredients (recipe here). It was healthier than your average gratin because it had far less cream and cheese. It used a whole bunch of kale and was absolutely delicious!

Next it was the Italian parsley's turn to shine! Our bunch was looking a little sad and I knew I needed to do something with it quick. I decided to turn it into a wonderful pesto based loosely on this recipe. We already had some toasted almonds which was perfect. I also added some lemon to brighten up the recipe a bit. Absolutely amazing!

From there it was time to do something with the bok choy. I've never actually made bok choy and I wanted something that would highlight its natural flavor. I simply cut the bok choy in half, sprinkled them with a little salt and pepper, and added some olive oil. I broiled them for about 7min and got a delicious snack: 

The second to last veggie that I hadn't used was our turnips. That's because I had no idea what to do with them. They sat in the fridge getting sadder and sadder. I can't actually remember the last time I ate turnips. My biggest childhood memory of them is reading about them in the American Girl Dolls books (Molly's book) and how much she hated eating them.....

Anyway, I finally pulled them out determined to make something. But, of course, I found they had gotten quite soft and squishy. I'm no turnip expert but I knew that couldn't be good. Lo and behold, the internet saved the day. Apparently a quick soak in an ice water bath (pictured below) can restore turnips to their firm and delicious selves. Hooray! 

So, with turnips much firmer, I decided to Google recipes. However, somewhere in the Googling, I got confused and thought I had white radishes. Oops. That's how I ended up loosely basing the following on a recipe called "radish hash browns".

I caramelized our walla walla onion, shredded the remainder of our red potatoes, and shredded the turnips. I added some cheese and cooked it all up! SO GOOD! Who knew?! 

Finally, the fennel! Neither Bearclaw or I like raw fennel (probably because we really dislike black licorice). I went on a hunt to find a recipe that would take away (or at least soften and sweeten) the licorice taste. This recipe promised it would be the "best fennel I'd ever eat" and that it was good for non-fennel lovers. Sold. The result: 

  

I learned how to cut up fennel and I turned into deliciousness! Ok, I know, the end result looks kind of.... well... gross. BUT, I promise, it was awesome! Salt, pepper, lemon juice, and olive oil. All added together and caramelized on the stove top for about 8 minutes. I swear, this was SO much better then we could have imagined. Absolutely delicious on it's own warm as well as cool in our salads the next day. 

Hooray! Week three had a lot going on but it was all super yummy. CSA experiment = success so far!