Box #11: OK, OK, we're a little stressed

You know how some weeks you don't make time to go grocery shopping and instead just live off of Chinese takeout? Yeah. No matter how busy you are, you just can't do that with a CSA. The veggies come each week, and if you don't want to be the irresponsible schlubb who forfeits a box, you squeeze in time to hit the pickup site. Now you have ten pounds of fresh vegetables to wash, prep, drag to work or wherever you're running to and eat. The up side is, it forces you to stop and smell the watermelon and to get your RDA of five fruits and vegetables. The down side is, sometimes you just want to eat ramen by the glow of a DVD.

Some produce you can forget about in the crisper, but this week's box was another amazing haul. Because we had to split up the share before we brought it home, this picture is of a HALF SHARE:



Dill, red-leaf lettuce, basil, green kale, sungold tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, red and gypsy frying peppers, corn, zucchini, green beans, cucumber, yellow squash, onion, garlic, pickling cucumbers, watermelon (!) and cilantro. This is a little more than a half share, actually, because Marcos and Jamie are up to their ears in garden tomatoes and gave us their part, plus I nabbed some extra pickling cukes and dill from the bonus box at the pickup site.

Take another look at that gorgeous melon:



Friday afternoon we headed up to the North Shore of Lake Superior for a glorious weekend at a friend's cabin. The first thing I did when we got there was combine the green kale with the garlic, last week's lacinato kale and two small heads of radiccio for a delicious batch of my favorite meal: roasted brassica. Yes, as Tanya pointed out, I'm a total nerd for pushing burnt cabbage while everyone else is enjoying wine and pizza. But one or two others enjoyed it.

The watermelon also ended up at the cabin, as did the cilantro, which we used in a sixfold batch of urad dal from "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian."

My breakfast monday morning was a huge, gold heirloom, sliced and mixed with basil, olive oil, salt and pepper. This unfocused photo of my half-eaten breakfast is a pretty good representation of a Monday morning after a weekend at the cabin:



It was tastier than it looks.