Box #12: Do not attempt to adjust your screen

I couldn't resist arranging these veggies into a nerdy color wheel. A variety of tomatoes including several heirlooms, carrots, sweet onion, cured garlic, yellow squash, broccoli, green beans, zucchini, cucumbers, jalepeno peppers, basil, a watermelon, red-leaf lettuce and mixed sweet peppers. Yay!



Ha, ha! I'm half a pepper!

Seriously, though, our good friends Don and Sarah are on a three-week cleanse. Sarah's doctor recommended the modified elimination diet, one version of which you can find here. No sugar, no dairy, no gluten, no alcohol, no peanuts, no fatty meats, no over-processed junk. When Patrick and I made dinner for them, we found out that what Don and Sarah have been saying is true: There's nothing like dietary restrictions to make you a more creative cook. Let's be positive: Fresh veggies and fruits are in! Lamb chops are in!

So we had them over the night of our CSA pickup. Adapting this recipe from Epicurious, Patrick roasted some eggplant and red peppers, then chopped them up with Italian parsley for the relish, adding a little brown rice syrup. The relish alone was great—I'd like to think of other things to use it on. Sandwiches?

To make the dinner decadent without gluten or dairy, we went a little bonkers on the meat. Pat prepared four huge, rare lamb chops from Hutchinson, Minn.'s The Lamb Shoppe via The Wedge. While that was happening, I washed, chopped and divided most of the CSA haul into veggies for salad and veggies to roast.



The salad group got a pureed dressing made from cashew butter, ginger, garlic, olive oil and curry powder, thinned with water. That was tasty and spicy. The roasted group got olive oil, dried rosemary and about 30 minutes at 375.

Sarah's original dessert didn't contain any CSA items, but I have to mention it because it was a wonder of ingenuity that could only come from a long-denied craving for ice cream: coconut milk, agave nectar and egg whites, frozen, with chopped nuts and baked apples on top. Delicious.