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Having been up to our eyeballs in house buying related shenanigans for the past week, we have not posted a darn thing for far too long. This isn't much better, but I created a Related Blogs section and invite anyone to post a link to your food related blog in the comments, which I will duly add to our list. Share the wealth! I already posted a link to one of our fellow Driftless member's blog, who was kind enough to link to us first.

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Box #14: Keeping it simple

I love tomatoes, so I love this box. It's like half tomatoes, plus some quirky favorites.

Heirloom tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, red slicer tomatoes, Sungold tomatoes, cured garlic, zucchini, delicata squash, eggplant, red cabbage, red onion, red potatoes, cilantro, collard greens, a giant pimento, a chocolate sweet pepper, carrots, edamame and sage! What should we do with the sage?

Look at this beautiful onion:



Not only were tomatoes abundant in our share this week, but our boxmates Marcos and Jamie have some in their garden, so Jamie was pretty generous with them when we split up the share.

Pat likes to cook with tomatoes but won't really eat them raw.

We're moving this week, so food prep is at a minimum.

These factors add up to a huge bowl of tomatoes on our counter that I'm chipping away at by eating them raw like apples. This is awesome for me because I get a quick break between taping up cardboard boxes and dusting behind bookcases, and I get to judge the varieties of tomatoes. The oblong gold ones have a gorgous smooth, fleshy flesh and are somewhat sweet, tart and sunny tasting. The small green heirlooms are a little more earthy tasting, and if you pop a sweet, flavorful Sungold into your mouth after eating a green one, it tastes like a strawberry by comparison.

All geared up for BLTs, we had bacon on hand when we picked up this box. No lettuce? I think this is the first box that didn't have some kind of lettuce! So we made BCTs by peeling off a couple outer leaves of the red cabbage. It's a little chewy raw, so we cut it into long shreds. It sure added more flavor to our sandwiches than lettuce does.

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Just like in a restaurant

Patrick prepared the edamame by salting it, letting it sit for 15 minutes, boiling it and salting again. It tasted just like what you get at a sushi place, only the skins were a little fuzzier.



Here are the green beans I mentioned in my last post. I just sauteed them in olive oil with some minced garlic, salt and pepper. The garlic got all fried and crisp—that added a pleasant textural surprise. Here's what I mean about keeping beans and grains on hand: There's no excuse for not eating a square meal. Here the beans are over whole oat groats and a side of a black-eyed pea/mayo mashup inspired by egg salad.

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Box #13: Stress and veggies

First off, I have to offer a big bad-blogger apology for how sporadic our posts have been lately. I can't promise it will get a lot better just yet. Patrick and I are working on getting a new fridge to store all these great veggies in—and the kitchen, bedrooms and yard that go with it! The rest of our month will be filled with paperwork, boxes and hernias. We're so excited!

We are also stressed, and that has affected our CSA consumption in two ways:

• We've wasted some veggies and tested the shelf life of others. (Looking at the photo above, I just realized the green beans I ate for dinner were from the box before our latest one, making them 12 days old. They were delicious! Last week, we neglected a half-head of red-leaf lettuce for 7 days. To our surprise, only the core was starting to brown. We cut it out, crisped up the leaves in cold water and used them in a salad.) This is in some ways defeating the purpose of farm-fresh produce; on the other hand, I doubt grocery-store fare would be so hearty.
  
• We're opting for simple preparation as often as possible. The other day I ate a half cantaloupe for breakfast. Spoon, mellon, mouth. Over the sink. I brought the sungold tomatoes you see above to work for a snack. Boy, am I glad to have eaten those babies whole and unadulterated by dressing or heat. Amazing. My favorite thing since fennel. I shared exactly two with co-workers, mostly because I wanted someone to confirm what I was tasting. I hope these simple, raw, fresh snacks are counteracting the convenience food I've been eating otherwise.

But, I'm ahead of myself. Here's the spectacular meal we made right out of the box when we stopped at Don and Sarah's after picking up our share:



We all chopped and chopped, grabbing veggies from our CSA box and from Don and Sarah's kitchen. Sarah and I made a salad.



Don roasted the potatoes for a side dish and created dinner scramble from the veggies and some Schlangen Organic Farm eggs. Don says not to overcook your scramble—that way you get crunchy vegetables and softish eggs.



Then came the best part: These raspberries had such a great life growing up on an organic farm. Now, after a short road trip, here they are suspended in Don's dairy-free tapioca, which he made with coconut milk and agave nectar. I have to say, when our friends first went on their no-dairy, no-chocolate, no-gluten cleanse, I thought a good dessert would be impossible. Turns out, the challenge has made them into dessert magicians. This was a little bowl of heaven.

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Yes, another scramble

My BFF Tanya says we should either come up with something different to eat for breakfast or publish a scramble cookbook. In a perfect world, we'd greet the weekend with nothing to do besides roll out crust for a quiche or beat some just-laid eggs for a souffle, but our CSA reality has been this: lots of scrambles. We like them! It's a hot breakfast with protein, veggies and flavor. It's even better if you remember to put the coffee on before you go to work chopping garlic. If you're feeling ambitious, you can make some fresh biscuits or muffins to go with it--or just toast. This scramble was Pat's creation of sweet peppers, jalapeno, purple pepper, garlic and tomato with chipotle powder.

Late that night, we finished off the week's tomatoes in a stewed vegetable dish that looked a lot like our lamb stew. In a deep cast-iron skillet, I sauteed an onion, some chopped garlic and a handful of okra from Tanya's garden in olive oil, then added four chopped tomatoes and salt and pepper and let it stew for like a half hour. The okra thickened the whole affair and gave it a nice texture.

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You know, just two adults getting a stew on, man

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75bDmEugcxk

Even though the lamb chops were to die for, we could not quite cram all that meat down our greedy gullets. Morgon Mae and Sarah had left a bit of mutton on a couple of bones, which as any discriminating connoisseur knows, means we had ourselves the makings of a stew.



We chopped up a ton of Driftless tomatoes, an onion, some Driftless garlic, and a little ginger, and added it to the leftover lamb in the multipot with coriander, cumin, chili powder, a bay leaf and about two cups of water, heated it to high and then turned it down to simmer for three hours with the lid on. Dang, the house smelled good!

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