Quick waste update: We can't be trusted

I could probably spell "shame" with the veggies we've neglected lately.



It was with great dismay that I discovered these two formerly crisp and nutritious little carrots, flaccid and defeated in the crisper. And here's a week-old picture of some lettuce from two weeks ago.



What sad excuses for stewards of the earth we've turned out to be. We do much, much worse things than waste a couple ounces of veggies. But we don't feel that bad about the driving we do each week. We don't feel that bad if we're too lazy to rinse gross empty cat-food cans for recycling. Wasting CSA veggies really gets to us. And in that way it's probably making us better people. That or whiny pseudo-ascetic progressives.

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Chard!

Ah, chard. Having shamefully never tasted of the the chard before, I was not really sure how to use it. A safe bet seemed to be a Saturday morning scramble, always a favorite around these parts. I had read that the stems can be bitter if not cooked, so I sauteed them with olive oil, some of the CSA fresh garlic, and a few dried chili peppers.



After the stems looked sufficiently tender, I added the chopped leaves sauteed them for a few minutes. Finishing it off with four organic eggs from the Wedge coop, scrambled all together, looking and smelling pretty darn good. Ah, chard.

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Faith in our farmers

"Eating is an agricultural act."
—Wendell Berry

Almost everyone relies on some sort of farmer for almost all of their food. But the degree to which eaters trust farmers varies. Making a grocery list without regard to region or season and fulfilling it at a grocery store requires faith only that farmers grew, packed and shipped something edible. As we've seen recently, even that amount of trust can be misplaced.

When we committed to a CSA, Jamie, Marcos, Patrick and I put a little more on the line, not the least of which was our investment of $500 for a full share to split between our two households. We trusted the folks at Driftless to use it well. So far, I think they have.

Next came the leap of faith that Driftless would stock our crispers with something useful each week. Satisfied with that, this week Pat and I decided to stretch our faith to the next level: We'd let them determine how we prepared the food.

We're pretty picky about recipes, usually working from just a few tried and true cookbooks or putting the onus on ourselves to invent something that will honor its ingredients. Saturday, we tried a recipe for fish tacos that Farmer Mike included in our CSA newsletter.



We set aside all the required veggies. We bought the tortillas, limes, yogurt and jalapeno. We bought the fish—we though a pound would be too much for us, so we used .6 pounds. That was plenty. The tortillas we like are small, so a pound would have overwhelmed us.



Pat loves his multi-pot deep fryer thing. He gets all professional and sets up little stations.

This was a spectacular dinner that could have served four. We wrapped the leftovers in tin foil and they were gone the next day. We still have a little sauce left over, the best part. We're going to try it on portobello sandwiches.

Fish Tacos With Arugula and Carrots (from Driftless Organics' July 24 newsletter)
1 lb. white, flaky fish like cod, mahi mahi, walleye or tilapia, cut into long strips [we used .6 lbs.]
Corn tortillas [we used 12]
2 carrots, grated
2 cups arugula, washed, dried and shredded [we laid the pile on the cutting board and sliced it with a chef's knife]
1/2 sweet onion, thinly sliced [yum.]
Lime wedges for garnish

Sauce:
2/3 cup plain yogurt or sour cream [we used Cultural Revolution yogurt, which is quite tart]
3 Tbsp. mayonnaise
Juice of one lime
1 jalapeno pepper, minced or 1 Tbsp hot sauce
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1/4 tsp. chipotle powder (optional)
3 Tbsp. cilantro (optional)

For fish:
Lime juice and salt [because of a typo in the recipe here, we only bought 2 limes and therefore had no garnish]

Squeeze lime juice over fish and salt it.

Whisk sauce ingredients together and set aside.

Either grill or bread and deep fry fish. (Mix 1 cup flour, 2 Tbsp. cornstarch, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. salt and quickly mix in an egg beaten with some light beer. Roll each piece of fish in flour then dip in breading and slide into a couple inches of 375-degree oil until golden brown. Drain on paper towel)

Warm each tortilla on a hot pan and serve topped with fish, veggies, sauce and lime wedges.

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Box #7: Where basil is red, green beans are purple and onions are sweet

OK, we got a little ahead of ourselves. Here's the box we got Thursday that contained the mind-expanding iceberg lettuce (center, prettier than Cub Foods iceberg). We also have arugula, chard, fennel, raspberries, purple and green beans, red opal basil, fresh garlic, broccoli, sweet onion and green-top carrots.

I was starving and in no mood to cook when I finally got home Thursday night. The first thing I did was inhale a carrot. What a gift fresh vegetables are at the end of a long day! That fortified me long enough to take advantage of the cooked lentils and wheat berries we had in the fridge. I'm so proud of this improvised recipe—it tasted great:

Pesto Lentil Salad
2 cups cooked, chilled lentils, drained and rinsed (I used French green)
1 cup cooked, chilled wheat berries
1/2 cup pine nuts
A handfulla basil
2 cloves fresh garlic
A drizzle of olive oil
salt and pepper

Toast the pine nuts in a pan over medium heat, shaking often, until light brown and fragrant. Chop the basil and garlic. Throw all ingredients into a bowl, drizzle with oil, liberally sprinkle with salt and pepper, toss and eat.

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The polyester of greens

So John Waters is on record as calling iceberg lettuce "the polyester of greens," and I have to admit that I myself am something of a broken record when it comes to expounding on the iceberg hate. So it is with this most extreme prejudice that I approached the iceberg lettuce in this weeks CSA, and I have to say that I must relent from my hard line. While not as flavorful as some greens, it was light and crisp, meshing well with some of the arugula and raw broccoli we received. I drizzled olive oil and balsamic vinegar, added some salt and pepper, and it was perfect for a hot summer evening. I don't think I will be buying any iceberg from the co-op in the near future (I am still with my lingering doubts), but I think if done right, iceberg can be a fine thing.

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New tricks for an old dog

Last Tuesday Jamie and I found ourselves with a happy problem, after a busy weekend we had too much produce left! Neither of us could come up with an idea of what to do with our remaining and diverse group of veggies, until Jamie found this fantastic recipe on epicurious.com, our favorite online recipe index. We both approached it with some trepidation, it seemed an odd combination to us, but it was a recipe that used exactly what we had on hand on how can one ignore an opportunity like that. It turned out to taste great and was a reminder that when eating seasonaly and localy, not only can there be an introduction to new foods, there is also an exploration of new ways to put familiar foods together.

Lesson learned: Cook veggies in butter, add fresh herbs and vinegar, it's probably going to taste really good.

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Roasted roots

Once again, I was solo for the weekend but had no problems devouring most of the veggies. Sunday's dinner was perhaps the healthiest meal I've ever eaten: beets, carrots and fresh garlic roasted in olive oil with rosemary, and a red-leaf lettuce salad with cold lentils, wheat berries and sesame dressing.



I did my best to record the color of the beets—they were even richer purple-red than this:



One of then had dramatic stripes:



Let me tell you how I feel about peeling carrots: I'm against it! It means more work for less food, so I don't do it. Here's how the roasted roots turned out after about 40 minutes at 350:



I didn't mince the garlic, just cut each clove in half lengthwise and ate them like veggies. I learned that roasted fresh garlic is mild and sweet with a creamy texture.

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Box #6: The roots have arrived

Look at all these gorgeous, colorful veggies. Fennel, green beans, red-leaf lettuce, broccoli, green-top carrots, basil, peas, beets, uncured garlic and sweet onion. Our share was a little heavier this week, and the Driftless newsletter that came with it confirmed that the farmers have shifted their focus from planting and weeding to harvesting.

The newsletter also detailed the physical labor that farmers put into garlic to get it to your table—digging it, bunching it, washing it and hanging it up to cure for a couple of months in the curing shed. Curing is what makes garlic last so long on your counter. This fresh garlic that came in our share is great—the peel just slips right off. But without curing, we'd have to go most of the year without garlic, and who'd want to live in a world without garlic?

When you're weighing whether to participate in a CSA or choosing which farm to buy into, consider whether the farm produces a newsletter. Ours gives us instructions on how to store each vegetable, tells which parts of the vegetables are edible (beet greens, anyone?), offers one or two recipes each week that use several vegetables from the box, and gives us a personal perspective of what's going on at the farm. A lot of work goes into it and there's a ton of information in there. I think the underlying lesson here is that we've benefitted from growers who are willing to be communicators as well as producers and sellers.

There was a lot of talk at our pickup site about fennel. I guess it's novel to many CSA members, not just me. People were asking each other, "How do you eat it?" Some people said they grill it or saute it or use it in stir-fry. My answer is "Put it in my mouth and chew." It's a little tough, but the flavor is so great. Here's the fennel snack I had right after we got the box home:



Saturday morning's breakfast consisted almost entirely of CSA veggies. I chopped our half onion, two cloves of fresh garlic, the broccoli head and stem (sliced thin) and all of the basil. I sauteed the veggies in oil, then added a couple of beaten eggs to make a scramble. Most of the time I was talking on the phone and not paying attention, so it wasn't pretty, but it was a wholesome meal. I seasoned it with sriracha.

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Could we have avoided this?

My failed attempt at storing fresh fennel leaves resulted in our second ounce of CSA waste. I washed these leaves while they were still on the bulb, then cut them off, shook the excess water off and put them in a zip bag in the fridge for like five days. I don't normally wash herbs—should I?

I'm not sure if this fennel fell victim to too much moisture, our algae-ridden tap water, the sealed bag or just too much time in the fridge, but it smelled all musty when I opened it and I had to throw it out. Luckily, I have lots of dried fennel and more on the rack.

Two ounces of waste in five weeks—not bad. This is partly what I mean by CSA veggies being some of the most emotionally valuable food you'll ever have. It breaks your heart to waste it. That causes you to treat food the way humans should, and have through most of history—as valuable.

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Box-five wrap up

When we got our box last week I knew the romaine lettuce would become a salad and that I, at least, would want to eat the fennel raw. Besides that, I saw two meals taking shape: The peas and scallions could become a stir fry, and I would finally be able to make my absolute favorite dish, a liberal take on Bittman's Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Garlic that I've been calling roasted brassica.

First up, the second round of Use What You Have Stir Fry, cooked up quick and very late on a night when Patrick and I each had other stuff to do.



This time we added carrots, which I will slice more thinly or shred next time, because they don't absorb the sauce very well. Wow, those peas add crunch to a stir fry.

Saturday morning's breakfast included biscuits. While I was making them, I remembered some Driftless oregano from Box #3 that I'd dried. I minced it along with some dried rosemary and added it to the dough.



It's nice to have a little bit of the CSA preserved. It's like a little treat from yourself.

I used some of this week's fresh fennel leaves in sangria. It turned out super tasty. I took this picture before I poured the wine in:



Here's a recipe for a quart:

Fennel Sangria
Half a can of frozen apple juice concentrate
Some frozen peach slices
Half a pear, sliced
A lemon, sliced
Some fennel leaves, minced (I should have used more than what you see in the photo--like half the leaves from one bulb)
Most of a bottle of cheap white wine (You can add the rest as you drink it down, or make it in a bigger container)

Put it all in a quart jar and shake it. Chill it for a couple hours, at least. Shake it some more and serve it over ice, with some of the boozy fruit in each glass.

Finally, the best part: roasted brassica! This is amazing with Brussels sprouts as Bittman intended, and he also suggests radiccio and purple cabbage, which are delicious. But I've done it with regular cabbage and now broccoli and it really hits the spot. I eat some version of this dish almost every week with store-bought veggies, so I was thrilled to have enough CSA veggies to make it.



Cut like a pound of cabbage (or broccoli or whatever) thick. Preheat the oven to 450. Heat olive oil on the stovetop in an oven-safe pan and lay the veggies in there. Put in like five garlic cloves. (This is the fresh garlic from Driftless.) Sprinkle it with a bunch of salt and pepper.



Leave it alone until the bottom is pretty brown. Be patient; it takes like five minutes. Bittman says "cook undisturbed." Then shake it a little and stick it in the oven.

Shake it a few times during the next half hour. Let it get nice and brown, then a little browner, so some spots are crispy. Now, here's the part that makes it taste really, really good: Toss it with a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Yum!



We ate it with salad. I know--greens with a side of greens. I could blame the viridescence of last week's box, but the fact is we failed to take our own advice and were caught without cooked beans or really any other protein to serve with this. So we made the salad and put some cheese on the table.

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Box #5: The way summer used to feel

I used to read Postsecret religiously--every Sunday morning. I've seen many moving postcards there, but the one I most identified with had a faded image of wildflowers next to the same image with fully saturated, vibrant colors. It said, "I miss the way summertime used to feel."

Somewhere in my 20s, I realized I'd been waiting years for summer to really start. For me, something about growing up made it less ... saturated. This is going to sound corny, but I think I got a little of that back Thursday in our box:



Romaine lettuce, scallions, a hoard of peas, uncured garlic, mint, broccoli, fennel and this gorgeous cabbage.



That's evening sun glowing through the outer leaves. I'll ache for this in the winter.

By the time we all got together to divvy up the share, we were feeling pretty lazy. So we ordered a pizza, and the only thing that got eaten that first night was the mint, in cocktails. You can see it in this picture of our boxmates:



Here's a recipe for a cocktail that tastes just like bubblegum:

strawberry vodka
fizzy grapefruit juice
fresh mint leaves

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Using what we have

We really tested the fridge-life of last week's veggies, and they held up admirably. We were so busy, we didn't use them up until the night before our next box was due. Here's how it all went down:

The collard greens, we steamed with some store-bought kale, then dressed them with oil, minced garlic scapes and a bit of vinegar. They were OK--we think they suffered because of the nasty water that's been issuing forth from our tap.

The scallions became hot dog fixin's, again.

Here's what remained Wednesday: the last scapes of the season, a bunch of peas and some Italian parsley. Exhausted after a long day at work, I reached for the wok and a can of mock duck. I was ready to settle for a healthy, simple, good-enough stir fry.



Patrick was like, "What kind of sauce are you going to put on it?"

And I was all, "You can squirt some sriracha on it at the table or whatever—I don't care."

But he intercepted with an awesome, improvised Szechuan sauce. It was so good, I've already made it again. Here's the recipe:

Use-What-You-Have Stir Fry
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 teaspoons corn starch
1 tablespoon sriracha
1 tablespoon cooking sherry
1 teaspoon sesame oil
Like 1/4 cup oil for the wok
A 10-ounce can of mock duck, drained and sliced (or whatever protein you have around)
About 8 dried red peppers
1 tablespoon Szechuan peppercorns
2 cups random vegetables, chopped

Make the sauce in a small bowl by first dissolving the starch in the soy sauce, then adding the sriracha, sherry and sesame oil. Set the sauce aside. Heat the 1/4 cup oil in the wok. Brown the mock duck with the peppers and peppercorns. Add the veggies. Keep stirring and frying. Once it looks good enough to eat, pour the sauce in and stir it some more. Yum!



What are Szechuan peppercorns? Here's a picture.



We searched high and low for them when we first got into Chinese cooking. People told us stuff like, "They're illegal in the U.S." and "Black peppercorns are a good substitute." Lies. Lies! They're fragrant, subtly floral, mouth-numbing, spicy fruit pods. We finally found them at United Noodle, so you should just go straight there. The flavor is like nothing else.

On the menu at Chiang Mai Tai in Uptown, it says "Spice is the spice of life!" I've always loved that. If you keep enough interesting non-perishables in your kitchen, it's a lot easier to stay excited about vegetables.

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Box #4: A busy week

Often, people who decide to buy into a CSA share a portion with another household. It's a good way to try out the system without committing to a lot of scary spontaneous vegetable consumption.

Here's another lesson we've learned the lucky way—by doing it right, then realizing later how important it was to a good outcome: Share your box with someone you trust. Your CSA vegetables will be some of the most emotionally valuable food you'll ever have, second only to what you grow or hunt for yourself, and you have to divvy this stuff up with another household.

Patrick and I were out of town from Thursday morning until Sunday evening, so Marcos and Jamie picked up the box we all share. We didn't expect much when we got back--maybe one or two hardy morsels. Instead I had a phone message from Jamie, saying our half of the share was safely preserved and waiting for us. She even offered us some basil from their garden to make up for the herb that didn't survive the weekend. Can you believe these friends? Thanks, Marcos and Jamie!

One disadvantage to CSAs is that you pay in advance for the season, and if you can't pick up your box at the prescribed place and time, you forfiet your veggies. Because we have four adults sharing our box, there's a good chance one of us can claim our stash.

Here's what awaited us: garlic scapes, Italian parsley, strawberries, yellow and purple scallions, collard greens, fennel and peas.



This photo shows our half of the share. Previous box photos show the whole shares before we divided them.

The first thing we did was eat the fennel bulb and stems raw. I can't believe I'd never tried this before. It's like candy! I can't believe it's a vegetable. Why isn't this stuff more popular? It should be in every kid's lunch box. It tastes the way fennel seed smells, maybe a bit sweeter. Yes, like anise or licorice, but I don't like black licorice and I really liked this.

I dried the leaves using paper towels and wire racks. It took about 36 hours.



The next morning, I needed a snack that I could prepare quickly and bring to work. We had the Driftless strawberries and some peaches that were threatening to pass their peak. Time to macerate! I cleaned the fruit and cut up the peaches. I put them in a container with 6 Tbsp (?) lemon juice, some half-dried fennel and 2 Tbsp. (?) sugar.



To macerate, I left the covered container on my desk all morning while I worked, shaking it like once an hour. I ate about half of the fruit with my lunch, then refrigerated it and brought the rest home. Here's how it looked when it was done:



If I do this again, I'll chop up the fennel first so it looks more like herbs and less like spindly spider legs. Maybe that's just me.

That night, Patrick made what's becoming his signature dish: delicious pan-broiled salmon. He used the purple scallions.



We never used to buy radishes, but after incorporating them into our salads for a couple weeks because of the CSA, we didn't want to go without. So we got some from our co-op.

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Garlic Scape, Meet Bacon

Garlic scapes were crowding the crisper, so we wanted to find a good way to put them to use. I had a recipe for an orzo salad that originally called for garlic and green onions. Seemed to me that the garlic scapes would fill in nicely. I was also lacking some arugula and radicchio, so I made use of mustard greens, and a few pieces of bacon we had bought for BLTs. There was some parmesan cheese in the recipe, and I made do with gruyere from the fridge. There were also some toasted pine nuts to finish it off (which we picked up after we had the idea for this salad).


It worked out pretty well, and was good tasting, but I would make a couple of changes in the future. With three cups of orzo, one half cup of olive oil was called for in the original recipe. The bacon, plus the gruyere, made it just too oily. I would cut the olive oil at least in half. The gruyere was also just too mild for the combination. I couldn't really taste it at all.

Using an existing recipe as a guide, and our vegetables to lead us, we have been able to make some good dishes without worrying about exact recipes. I think this will be a common trend in how we work with our CSA.

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Independence Day

This is a guest posting from Marcos, while Patrick and Morgon Mae are out of town for the weekend Jamie and I are blog sitting (as well as getting the entire box of food this week). This week the box contains 1 bunch of collards, red spring onions, scads more scapes, a delicious looking head of lettuce, parsley, basil, more fantastic peas, and two pints of strawberries (although there were more like a pint and a half before they made it to the fridge).
In honor of the holiday we are celebrating in the most American of ways; grilling, drinking and watching things blow up! Of course all of this is happening in the company of friends, we the people after all. We are grilling Thousand Hills Acres hot dogs, eating a salad made from our box and our garden pickings, and drinking my attempt at a Red White & Blue Sangria, made with white wine strawberries and blueberries. Unfortunately the blueberries bled and now it's a Blue Red & Blue Sangria, luckily it tastes just as good.

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A really complicated way to eat berries

Last week's strawberries made me want to do something spectacular. Four hours later, standing in a messy kitchen with a counter full of dirty mixing bowls and measuring cups on one of the hottest days yet, I was less inspired. Why couldn't we just eat the berries plain, the way nature intended?

Because then we wouldn't have an olive-oil cake with honey buttercream frosting, blueberry mousse filling and big juicy romantic strawberries on top.



Marcos was kind enough to take these photos last Friday at his and Jamie's place, where they hosted dinner for eight close friends. Aren't we all lucky to have eight close friends?



The mousse filling was too fluffy to support the top layer, so some of it squished out while I was frosting this monster. Next time I fill a cake with mousse, I'll leave time to chill it for a few hours in the fridge between layering and frosting. Once it was cold, this cake was much more architecturally sound.

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Cost analysis

It's a little early in the season to be thinking about whether a CSA membership is cost-effective, especially when Wisconsin floods have made the CSA risk factor very real this year. But I was curious about what the vegetables we're getting would cost us if we bought them at the co-op, which is were we do about 85 percent of our non-CSA food shopping. (Specialty items at Asian markets and last-minute runs to the Lunds across the street make up the rest.) So I went to the store with a list of what we'd gotten and jotted down the prices.

What we've invested: A share at the farm where we participate cost $500 last spring. We split a share with another couple, so each household contributed $250 to the share price, and each week Patrick and I get half of the spread. The picture above is an example of a whole box. With our CSA, this will go on for 20 weeks, so the price per full box is $25.

What we got this week: I found that the veggies in our box would have set us back $34.88. But we wouldn't have gotten the kohlrabi and the red scallions would have been green and would have come from 2,000 miles away. Plus, the strawberries, by far the largest investment, would have been conventional. That means even early in the season, and while recovering from the second "hundred-year flood" in two years, the farm is giving us more abundant, better-quality food at a 40-percent savings. [UPDATE: My math is rusty, and I was tired when I wrote this. It's a 28-percent savings on the veggies through the CSA or a 40-percent markup on the veggies through the co-op, depending on how you look at it. Right? Math folks?]

And our co-op is nothing to sneeze at! It has the best selection of any co-op I've ever visited—that's why we've been members for four years.

Of course, saving money on healthy food isn't going to clinch it for everyone. You need a fairly high tolerance for spontaneity if you're going to like a CSA. But I'm glad to report that, at least here and now, it's by no means a luxury.

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