CSAte

More effective ways of preseving the wonderful produce

2010-08-03T17:56:00.001-05:00

Sometimes in the past the bounty of delicious goods we have gotten from Driftless Organics has been over whelming, and has gone from the box it arrived in straight into the refrigerator. At time I must admit, delicious items were pushed to the back of a low shelf or crisper and not properly taken care of which resulted in heartbreaking spoilage.

My partner JSP and I decided that we were putting a stop to this and have made it our new practice to process each box as it arrives in our home, taking about 20 minutes of time and utilizing reusable resealable Ziploc bags, as well as Tupperware when appropriate. These measures in combination with more prominent placement of these delectable wholesome goodies on top shelves have greatly increased the amount of munching we do on these vegetable. This in turn has resulted in far less heartbreaking produce spoilage.

I recommend taking the time to treat CSA food with the diligence and respect that such well tended food deserves. It may even make you happier.

P.S. My partner and I just ate three cobs of last week's CSA sweet corn and it was DEVINE.

Just the three of us

2009-08-19T20:46:00.004-05:00

Last week we shared our CSA box, minus Patrick who was away on a retreat. The box as usual was full of tasty goodies as you can see below. Morgon Mae brought over some garbanzo beans and we sauted some garlic and wilted the arugula in with the beans for a protein main course. There were six ears of sweet corn that we cooked, and were very buttery sweet. The cherry tomatoes were an orange variety and we popped them in our mouths greedily. We enjoyed some raw beans from our garden too. The small bag of edamame (soy beans) we got in the CSA box was put into boiling water for a few minutes and just a touch of salt was added to them when served.

The Manchurian Candidate (for best use of cauliflower)

2009-08-09T16:05:00.004-05:00

We made this Manchurian-Style Cauliflower the other night from our Driftless cauliflower, and it was really delicious. We used the roasted variation for the sake of time/mess, but deep fried would probably win out. The whole recipe is in the preview for Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" cookbook at Google books, so there is no reason to not try it out.

Plus the book rules, so you should really just buy it when you are done stuffing your face with the cauliflower.

Pickles==good

2009-08-09T15:47:00.005-05:00

After eight long days of waiting, I pulled out the Drifltless pickling cucumbers from the crock today. This is the first cucumber pickling run for my new crock, and I was curious to see how they would turn out.

Delicious is how I would say they turned out. I put in mustard seed, black peppercorns, bay leaves, dried red pepper, cloves, cinnamon stick, and some fresh dill from the back yard. I totally winged the spice amounts, and went a little heavy on the cloves, but all around a good flavor.

The fruits of box seven (and our labors)

2009-07-26T13:19:00.006-05:00

While I don't have a picture of box seven, here are some photos of our creations.

For dinner on Friday I made a grilled dill potato salad. I grilled some Driftless potatoes (plus some extra ones we had lying around, which might have also been Driftless), and then mixed them with the CSA dill and a mustard, olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing. I let it cool for a while before serving.

We also made roasted brassica with last week's red cabbage, and a salad with the Driftless carrots, sunflower oil, and some lettuce from our own garden.

Saturday's CSA inspired dinner was mainly Sichuan in style. Out of the great Land of Plenty cookbook, we made Sichuan fried green beans and a Sichuan cucumber salad. They both heavily featured dried chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns. Along with those two dishes, we made some yellow lentils and grilled shishito peppers with salt and sunflower oil. I had purchased the peppers at Mitsuwa Marketplace while in Chicago last weekend for the Pitchfork music festival. If you are ever in Chicago, I highly recommend paying them a visit.

Boxes four and five

2009-07-26T13:14:00.003-05:00

Late to post, but beautiful to behold, what follows was boxes four and five.

The picture of our sixth is MIA. Perhaps some other kind soul will post a photo of their's.

Beyond Produce

2009-07-01T20:58:00.005-05:00

One sweltering night last week, Patrick and I took a monstrous kohlrabi bulb from our garden, and some asparagus and golden beets from our co-op, and made some delicious grilled vegetables. (Grilling is the best thing that ever happened to kohlrabi, if you ask me. It softened and charred.) So, what does that have to do with our Driftless CSA?

Ta-da! Our farm makes sunflower oil! Although grilling might not be the best way to highlight this delicate oil—Farmer Josh, I promise to use it in a salad next time—I was too pumped about adding something Driftless to our meal to save it for later. So often, when we talk about eating local, staples like dry beans, grains and oils just don't seem to count. I feel we've gone a little further toward regional self-sufficiency when we have local products outside the crisper drawer.

What about you? Do you get something besides produce from local farmers? Has anyone had any luck with meat or egg shares?

Back to this week's veggies: I find the more time I have, the more I fuss with perfectly good food. What better way to turn nutritious broccoli and green garlic into something sinful than a bleu cheese quiche with a butter-black pepper crust? This was Sunday's breakfast. I love how that little garlic slice landed right in the middle.

It's All True

2009-06-30T22:18:00.006-05:00

There's box three: broccoli, spinach, cilantro, peas, red-leaf lettuce, garlic scapes, green onions, green garlic, strawberries, radishes and fennel. The potatoes we had with dinner had been stored from the previous week, as were some of the kohlrabi greens (they stored well in plastic in the fridge), to which we added kohlrabi greens from our garden.

I think the box three meal that Jason just described was the single healthiest meal I've ever eaten. Vegan, high in protein and iron, and abundantly local and fresh. The only components that weren't grown either at Driftless (which I've taken to calling "our farm") or in our home gardens were the garbanzo beans, the olive oil and the pineapple we had for dessert.

Jason's too modest to mention it, but he kicked our asses at Catan.

Dinner is served, compliments of box number three

2009-06-27T17:02:00.004-05:00

Last night, Patrick and Morgon Mae invited us to their house for dinner using some of the produce from the third box from Driftless Organics. The box was nearly overflowing this week, with garlic scapes, strawberries, spinach, potatoes, peas, greens, radishes, broccoli, mint, asparagus and arugula. JB and I brought some bok choy and snow peas from our garden to compliment the meal

Patrick and Morgon Mae fired up the outdoor grill and cooked some of the potatoes. The bok choy was also grilled. Morgon Mae made up a fresh salad with the greens, radishes, broccoli and peas. Additionally she prepared a very tasty garbanzo bean and kolrabi leaf salad.

Together the four of us enjoyed the bountiful meal. The meal was served with chilled white and rose wine. Within a half-hour we were full and content. We talked about our gardens, some politics and recent world events... even a bit of conversation about Michael Jackson.

A bit later the table was cleared and I set up the board game Catan. We played the 'fog island' version described in the Seafarers version of Catan. The game lasted nearly two hours and we all had a pleasant game. During the game a sweet dessert of freshly sliced pineapple and the CSA strawberries were presented to us by Morgon Mae. It was very yummy.

I thank Driftless Organics and our hosts Patrick and Morgon Mae for a very enjoyable evening. I can't wait for next week and box number four.

The second box arrives

2009-06-19T19:01:00.007-05:00

Greetings readers, this is Jason. This year my partner, JB and I split a CSA share from Driftless Organic Farms with our friends and neighbors Patrick and Morgon Mae. Today we obtained our second box of produce. I am processing some of the goods to make up a stir fry right now. I just snapped this photo on my phone.

I neglected to comment last week. The first box as SAMA also wrote, was full of good stuff, including greens, potatoes, kolrabi, green onions and garlic.

This week I am on top of things. Once we returned home from Eastside Co-op, I pulled open the box and spread out some of the goods to take the picture above.

The dish above is the result of stir frying the radishes, green onions, green garlic from the CSA along with the bok choy and snow peas from our own garden. I used Chinese 5 spice, ginger, hot Hungarian paprika with ginger and sunflower seed oil. JB and I are now full and content with this healthy and tasty meal.

First Box 2009!

2009-06-13T17:26:00.002-05:00

As I set down our CSA box on the kitchen table, I heard the rumble of excited footsteps on the stairs. Don appeared in the doorway looking like it might be Christmas. We pulled the arugula out, oohing and ahhing at the fragrance of rosemary, and--oh the purple kohlrabi! Blue potatoes! Green garlic! Not to mention three shades of radishes. A feast for our eyes, even as our tummies rumbled. It was already late for dinner making, so we didn't bother taking a photo. Becky attacked the green leaf lettuce and radishes for a salad, and I prepped kohlrabi leaves and radish tops for a batch of southern greens, referring to the recipe on the newsletter. I didn't even know you could eat these leaves! Don got the rest into green bags and into the fridge. Leftover potroast was sorely upstaged by the delightful produce. We can't wait to roast those potatoes with green garlic and rosemary for brunch on Sunday.

(C)SAlsa

2008-10-30T20:45:00.001-05:00

Aside from clever titles for blog posts, one of the best things in life is fresh salsa, and the tomatillo in our final box just screamed salsa making time. It was actually a little unnerving.

Anyway, in addition to the tomatillo, the final box contained some garlic, a fantastic looking red onion and a nice little jalapeno. I supplemented that with some little sweet peppers, a couple poblano, and some other random peppers that I grabbed from our coop, the lovely Eastside. We had some cilantro hanging out in the crisper from the previous box, so that would find it's way in the salsa as well.

Tomatillo salsa

10 Tomatillo (or whatever you have)
Half an onion
5 cloves garlic
1 T olive oil
Salt to taste
2 T Tequila
2 poblano
2 jalapeno
1 very hot pepper
4-6 random other peppers
5 springs cilantro
1 T lemon juice

I began by broiling the tomatillo and all the peppers except the jalapeno and the other little spicy one, whose name I forgot (sorry). After the skin began to show back spots, about 10 minutes in our too cold oven, I removed them and set aside. I then grabbed five cloves of garlic and chopped those in the food processor. I then put the broiled tomatillo and peppers, onion, cilantro, fresh peppers and oil and processed until I liked the consistency. I then added the salt, tequila and some lemon juice (usually would add lime, but I used what I had on hand).

fin

Squash-tastic

2008-10-26T14:14:00.003-05:00

Beautiful and delicious, baked Driftless squash is the perfect way to stave off the cold fall morning. Simply slice in half, scoop out the seeds, and bake for about 30-45 minutes.

Accompanied by a delicious quiche, and good friends, it was more than easy to ignore the blustery hooplah that mother nature was brewing up outside.

Is there anyone out there?

2008-10-23T21:30:00.003-05:00

Well, I wish I had a really good excuse for abandoning this labor of love, but the sad fact is life just got the better of me for a while.

Anyway, even if I am just posting for my own well being, and no one ends up reading, it is still worth while. The Driftless vegetables have still been fantastic, even without our sharing their bounty for the last weeks, and we still appreciate the care that goes in to each box.

With that in mind, I present the last of the regular season boxes.

A fantastic assortment of fall goodness, including parsnips, carrots, squash (acorn and sweet dumpling), broccoli, onion, carrots, tomatillos (salsa here we come), jalapeno, sweet potatoes, beets, fennel, lettuce, garlic, and of course not forgetting the famous and fabulous Driftless potatoes.

We felt those potatoes deserved something special, and so we concocted a delicious potato soup of potato (duh), garlic, chives, bacon and cheddar cheese. To say it was delicious does not even begin to do it justice. It is with a heavy heart that I realize that we wont have any more weeks of these wonderful revelations (at least until the spring. Can't wait!)

Potato Soup

1/2 bag potatoes, diced
5 cloves garlic, chopped
6 strips bacon, cooked and chopped
bunch of chives, chopped
1 quart broth
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

We lightly sauteed the potato and garlic, then cooked everything but the cheese for a half hour. Sprinkle the cheese on when complete, and voila!

I hope to post some wrap ups of the weeks we have missed. Even though we stopped posting, we sure as heck did not stop eating (or snapping photos). I also hope to snag some of the storage boxes that Driftless provides, and if that works out, there will be more fall food love to spread about these here Internets.

P.S. It was super great to meet farmer Josh at the potluck that Marcos and Jamie graciously hosted. The food was fantastic, and the company even better. :-)

Other blogs...

2008-09-23T16:35:00.003-05:00

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.

Box #14: Keeping it simple

2008-09-14T15:49:00.007-05:00

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.

Just like in a restaurant

2008-09-14T08:41:00.004-05:00

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.

Box #13: Stress and veggies

2008-09-08T22:37:00.006-05:00

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.

Yes, another scramble

2008-09-08T22:34:00.004-05:00

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.

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

2008-09-07T18:01:00.009-05:00

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!

Box #12: Do not attempt to adjust your screen

2008-08-30T11:39:00.006-05:00

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.

Curry and pickles?

2008-08-29T21:12:00.007-05:00

But not together, not this time.

We had a bunch of veggies hogging up our fridge, and decided to show them who was boss. A can of coconut milk was lurking in the back of the cupboard, and some red curry paste was hanging about, so some kind of Thai style curry would be the end for this loafing produce. CSA Yellow squash, zucchini, onion and red bell pepper all joined in to make things simple and delicious. Good job, if I do say so myself. And I do.

Next on the agenda was more pickles. Dill and pickling cukes were in the CSA, and I wanted to see what kind of pickle those would make on short notice. After deciding to do this without any cooking, I again went the simple salt pickle route. Along with the salt, dill and cucumbers, I threw in some dried chili peppers, mustard seed, sliced garlic and peppercorns.

I let that stand in the pickle press for 24 hours, and then switched it to the refrigerator for another 24. They had a nice mild flavor, and were excellent with a little japanese soy sauce (Koikuchi) and rice.

One last thing. Check out how awesome that CSA heirloom tomato is.

And it was even better to eat.

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

2008-08-26T18:06:00.005-05:00

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.

Sweet Pickles!

2008-08-20T22:33:00.012-05:00

No, not those sweet pickles, the delicious kind you use to stuff your face!

Anyway, with the arrival of those cute pickling cucumbers in last week's box, pickles of some sort were in order. I have been experimenting with tsukemono recipes lately, and decided to try out a recipe for sweet pickles from a tsukemono cookbook I picked up.

The recipe called for normal salt pickles to start. Basically, you slice the cucumbers in half, mix them up with 5% of their weight worth of salt, and put pressure on them for about 24 hours. The salt should draw out the water, thereby picking. I also added a little salted water because I had so few cucumbers, and was concerned that there would not be enough liquid to immerse the vegetables. I have a cool little press for the pressure duty, called a tsukemonoki (similar to this one; mine was from United Noodles) but a bowl, plate and weight of some sort should work as well.

After 24 hours, I washed the pickles off, and set them aside to dry.

I then set out to make the marinade to sweeten them up. I mixed

1 1/2 cups rice vinegar
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1 bay leaf
1 dried chili pod
1/2 cinnamon stick
6 pepper corns

and then brought the whole mess to a boil. I set it aside to cool down to room temperature. After it was all set, I put the pickles in a jar and dumped the marinade over the top and shoved them in the fridge. After another 24 hours (all this waiting was making me really want these pickles) they were all nice smelling, and pretty nice tasting to boot.

Take me to the river

2008-08-18T10:13:00.010-05:00

Jamie and I were able to take a long weekend and went down to her parents place in Buffalo City Wisconsin. Buffalo City is a little place on the Mississippi halfway between Wabasha and Winona on the Wisconsin side of the river. We enjoyed a couple days of relaxing and pontooning down the river.

Since we left on Wednesday we knew we would not have our part of box 10 (which was amazing by the way) until we got back on Saturday. Luckily the last few boxes have contained some good storage veggies, and we've put off eating them for just this weekend.
First we chopped up the beets, carrots and potatoes, and then tossed them with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper.

Then we wrapped them up in tinfoil and put them in the fire.

All this was supplemented with Thousand Hills Hot dogs purchased at the Bluff Country Co-op. A nice store in the middle of Winona, Minnesota. Go Co-op!
This fireside feast was washed down with a couple of Wisconsin brews, Leinenkugel and New Glarus. It was great to be able to leave home and still have a local fireside feast.
Speaking of local eating, in case you don't have the fortune of having a lively co-op community where you live, the four week span from August 15- September 15 has been designated as the "Eat Local America!" month. It's rather fun to look at what is on your plate, and realize that one could actually trace everything you are consuming to it's source. And not just a virtual understanding either, but actually get in a vehicle and go see these places today.

Box #10: Wow!

2008-08-17T17:54:00.006-05:00

Here we go: mixed heirloom, red and Roma tomatoes; cured white onions; a chocolate pepper; a gypsy pepper; Yukon gold potatoes; a pint of mini colored peppers; grape tomatoes; lacinato kale; sweet corn; zucchini; summer squash; cucumbers; carrots; and cured garlic!

Look at this beautiful little tomato:

And these peppers like a string of Christmas lights:

Moon Salad
I was craving a cold salad Friday and wanted to include as many fresh veggies as possible into a massive bowl of goodness that we could just graze from over the hot weekend to come. I put a pot of black beans on to cook.

While the beans did their thing, I microwaved our two corn cobs, husks and all, for six minutes, turning once. (This is my favorite quick, low-energy way to cook corn.) Then I set them out to cool a bit.

I washed and sliced the summer squash, zucchini, tomatoes and peppers. Since the beans would take a while to cook, I got ambitious with presentation and decided to preserve the round shape of the cute little peppers by cutting them into rings. To seed them, I cut off their tops and dug in with a little spoon. Slicing those hollow little peppers takes a sharp knife and I almost ended up with fingertip salad.

I shucked the warm corn and shaved the kernels off of the cob. I added half a head of garlic, minced, and the onion, sliced into half-moons. I rinsed and drained the beans and added them to the mix, then created a dressing of about two tablespoons each olive oil and hot sauce. I squeezed the juice of one lime over everything, added salt and pepper and tossed it. Then I chilled it for a couple hours.

I call it moon salad, because everything is a circle or half-circle. Zowie! It has kick.

Saturday night, a treat from my childhood: fried zucchini! Slice it, dip it in egg, dredge it in cornmeal and fry it in hot oil, turning once to brown both sides.

I must admit, I wasn't really looking forward to another round of roasted carrots. So I used butter and olive oil this time. This combined with the flavorful Yukon golds and a few halved garlic cloves, roasted in a cast-iron skillet in a hot oven for 45 min, was enough of a change to make the carrots crustier, creamier and tastier than I expected. Dang, those potatoes were good. I ate the leftover veggies for breakfast the next morning.

Friends share food

2008-08-16T18:44:00.003-05:00

David Sedaris tells this great story about being a drug addict, and how when your life revolves around drugs, you start to realize that all your friends are addicts and dealers.

I'm glad to say that our best friends have been around since before we became hard-core foodies. But seeing how much food permeates every conversation and event, you'd think it was the glue. This is true on both sides of the family—that is, with groups of friends I met through Patrick as well as those he met through me.

So when our close friends Don and Sarah hosted a potluck picnic to celebrate their return as newlyweds from three years in Boston, Pat and I had to make something special. Food as a gift, you know? What better gift than the food we value most: our CSA stash. We knew our boxmates, Marcos and Jamie, were thinking the same thing and starting with exactly the same resources. Our two households' results could not have been more different.

Pat and I were inspired by Marcos and Jamie's summer slaw, a slaw without mayo that's perfect for warm days at the park. We transfered that concept to a potato salad, expanded to include all the delicious, colorful roots we recieved in last week's box. I cut the roots into chunks, barely boiled them and added a big fistfull of fresh herbs from Marcos and Jamie's garden, Driftless garlic and onions, plus balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. I couldn't resist the local theme and added great northern beans as a little food pun, even though they were canned beans from who-knows-where. I call it welcome home salad, and it needs more dressing. (If you make about a six-serving bowl, make like half a cup of dressing.)

Marcos and Jamie went a completely different direction with this gem from the Joy of Cooking: zucchini-carrot cupcakes with ginger-cream cheese frosting.

Check out the fluffy centers. If it were a contest, they cupcakes would have won.

Box #9: Impromptu pizza party!

2008-08-10T11:18:00.003-05:00

Marcos picked up the box this time—he usually works Thursday evenings, so he'd never been to our awesome pickup site and was itchin' to go. Here's box nine in all its August glory:

Green-top and purple-top beets, yellow onions, red-leaf lettuce, blackberries, mixed tomatoes, huge zucchinis, cucumbers, new red potatoes, carrots, green beans and mint. Marcos had prepped and refrigerated an herb-y pizza crust that morning (that's just the kind of food hero he is), so we decided to have an impromptu pizza party. Here's Marcos rolling out the dough and explaining what makes it good:

He's not messing around. Here's the salad Pat and I made in the meantime:

Marcos sauteed the zucchini and put it on the pizza along with sausage, Jamie's homemade tomato sauce and cheese.

That's what I call veggies.

Box-eight wrap up

2008-08-10T08:11:00.002-05:00

What a whirlwind week! We're well into box nine and I've yet to report on box eight, our first totally waste-free share in (I'm ashamed to say) three or four weeks.

We were glad to have radishes again for our salad. The onion, yellow summer squash and gypsy frying peppers went into Patrick's spectacular fajitas. What a festive way to put a variety of vegetables to use. Fajitas—like breakfast scrambles, stir fry and vegetable tempura—are like gold to CSA members because they tolerate a lot of substitutions. Any other favorites in this category?

Speaking of scrambles, here's last weekend's:

Broccoli and zucchini, served with whole wheat basil biscuits. We love biscuits, but the two of us can only eat so many. We usually stuff ourselves to avoid wasting them—not the healthiest thing. Does anyone have a use for leftover biscuits? I can't imagine they freeze well.

Here's a gorgeous, crunchy salad we made with the iceberg, arugula, radish greens, carrots and purple beans. Did you know you can eat radish greens? They're a little bit spicy.

To our half of the cabbage, Patrick and I added Brussels sprouts for a big batch of roasted brassica. Between our roasted brassica and Marcos and Jamie's summer slaw, the humble cabbage is turning out to be one of our favorite CSA items.

What's left? Oh, yeah, the green beans and the parsley we ate raw. If you don't believe parsley can be a snack item, ask my mom. She says that, as a little kid, I used to get down on all fours in her herb garden and graze just like a cow on parsley. I still eat it on its own by the mouthful. Or ask Sassy, our cat, who launched an attack against an irresistible sprig of parsley on our counter. Maybe someone told her it's a natural breath-freshener.

Mmmm...Cabbage

2008-08-06T09:40:00.005-05:00

I have to admit that cabbage has always been one of those vegetables I know I'm supposed to like, but have never quite enjoyed. In my world it has always been a side dish, generally boiled to a pale green mush and slapped alongside some meat, or mixed with ridiculous amounts of mayo and sugar and once again slapped alongside some meat. Boy how things have changed.
While Jamie was preparing this mayo free slaw recipe my hand kept reaching in and grabbing handfuls of delicious raw cabbage. Once more, CSA membership has re-introduced me to my food. The crunch and depth of flavor contained in each bite of the cabbage was phenomenal and invigorating, a sharp pop as the flavor of summer greens was released then followed by a subtle buttery aftertaste. Thank you Driftless! I think there is a new candidate for my vegetable garden next year.
Here is the recipe we made from such good food stock (the peppers came from our garden, everything else from Driftless), a wonderful summer slaw perfectly suited to life as a man course. Plus it has no mayo so it is great for vegans and summer potlucks. Next time I might add some mustard seeds.

Summer Slaw
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup distilled white vinegar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
8 cups coarsely shredded green cabbage (about 1/2 large head)
1 cup thinly sliced red bell pepper
1 cup thinly sliced green bell pepper
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 carrot, coarsely shredded
3 scallions, chopped
3 radishes (radishii?), thinly sliced

Whisk sugar, vinegar, and oil to blend in large bowl. Add remaining ingredients and toss to combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cover tightly and refrigerate at least 4 hours, tossing occasionally. Keep refrigerated.

Box #8: Our friendly neighborhood pickup site

2008-08-03T10:37:00.004-05:00

We pick up our CSA veggies from a neighborhood home that acts as a pickup site. Sometimes a food co-op is a pickup site, and I've even heard of CSAs that deliver right to individual households for a fee. You and your box mates should consider the pickup procedure when you're choosing a farm.

When we first were considering CSAs, I was bummed that the co-op we frequent doesn't host any CSA pickups. It would be really convenient to grab our farm's veggies along with all our other food, and we'd know exactly what to buy to compliment the box.

As it turns out, visiting our pickup site has become one of our favorite parts of the week. Picking up the CSA reminds me a little of Election Day, because it's one of the few times you interact with a gathering of neighbors. Julie and Sean offer their quirky, welcoming backyard (with chalkboard, picnic table, garden, U.S. Constitution and antique reference books) as a distribution hub for dozens of households.

Everyone you meet there has at least one thing in common with you, so you talk about the veggies and trade recipes. Smart members bring their own bags so they don't have to schlep the box home and back. Sean taught us how to collapse the boxes with a "gouge the eyes" technique on the bottom flaps.

According to our farm's Web site, pickup site hosts get deeply discounted boxes. Becoming a host might help defray the daunting upfront payment for a CSA. I think hosts also might end up with extra veggies when members flake out on picking up their boxes.

Here's what we got: iceberg lettuce, green savoy cabbage, carrots, Italian flat-leaf parsley, broccoli, yellow summer squash, zucchini, arugula, gypsy frying peppers, the last of the delicious fresh garlic, radishes, green and purple beans, sweet onion and basil.

This is one of those boxes that made me sure we should get a whole share next year. I'd really like to roast that whole cabbage, slice that whole zucchini and fry it with corn meal, and not split up that adorable family of radishes or that cute pair of peppers.

But, so it goes. Each week we get out the scale and the knife and carefully form two equal piles, even if it means cutting a head of garlic in half. This takes a little patience, but it results in each household getting a lot of variety. I've known other box mates who divide veggies based on preference and avoid cutting things up. That's something you'll have to work out with your box mates if you share a share. Here's how our table looks every Thursday night:

Box-seven wrap up

2008-08-03T10:11:00.002-05:00

I love the crunchy-sweet green bean. It's one of the few vegetables I'm used to eating fresh off the vine, because my grandma used to grow them. I know they're tasty stir-fried, but they usually don't make it into the pan. What a treat to see them with wacky purple skins:

Patrick kept an open mind about the iceberg lettuce. It's not my favorite, but it does add some crunch. What better way to dress it up than with bacon, tomato, sourdough and mayo?

When Patrick picked up box seven, pickup-site coordinator Julie was like, "What cocktail are you going to make this week?" Here it is: CSA raspberries, vodka and Izze sparkling clementine juice.

Now for my favorite part: fennel-fruit stew. I used the rest of the raspberries, the fennel bulb, stems and leaves, all the not-so fresh fruit I could find in the kitchen (a pear, a peach that was abused in the grocery bag, and an orange), and some frozen strawberries and blueberries. I seasoned it with a cinnamon stick, a few cloves secured in a tea ball, and honey.

I let it stew for like 30 minutes on low heat, then spooned it over cooked wheat berries and added yogurt. It wasn't pretty, but it sure tasted great.

Quick waste update: We can't be trusted

2008-07-31T20:01:00.002-05:00

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.

Chard!

2008-07-31T19:33:00.004-05:00

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.

Faith in our farmers

2008-07-27T21:32:00.005-05:00

"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.

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

2008-07-26T18:56:00.007-05:00

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.

The polyester of greens

2008-07-25T22:30:00.000-05:00

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.

New tricks for an old dog

2008-07-25T09:40:00.001-05:00

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.

Roasted roots

2008-07-23T07:15:00.000-05:00

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.

Box #6: The roots have arrived

2008-07-19T11:18:00.000-05:00

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.

Could we have avoided this?

2008-07-17T21:39:00.001-05:00

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.

Box-five wrap up

2008-07-16T19:23:00.000-05:00

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.

Box #5: The way summer used to feel

2008-07-13T21:42:00.000-05:00

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

Using what we have

2008-07-12T00:23:00.000-05:00

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.

Box #4: A busy week

2008-07-09T20:18:00.001-05:00

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.

Garlic Scape, Meet Bacon

2008-07-07T22:05:00.000-05:00

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.

Independence Day

2008-07-04T16:55:00.001-05:00

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.

A really complicated way to eat berries

2008-07-02T20:36:00.000-05:00

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.

Cost analysis

2008-07-01T23:00:00.000-05:00

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.

Garbage, breakfast and dogs

2008-06-29T20:39:00.000-05:00

We found a limp, nine-day-old sprig of green garlic at the bottom of the crisper drawer Saturday morning. Hrrrmm. The bulb was still pretty firm, so Patrick chopped it up for our pepper-garlic scape tofu scramble. Then he threw the stalk and leaves in the garbage. I got kind of sentimental about our first bit of CSA waste, so I dug it out of the trash, photographed it, weighed it and threw it away again. It was too light for our crappy plastic kitchen scale to accurately measure, but the wildly divergent readings averaged about an ounce.

By the way, here's the scramble.

Everyone keeps telling me how great garlic scapes are (that they have a mild, fresh, subtle garlic flavor), but I honestly haven't really tasted them in the dishes we've made. I'm the type of cook who puts five cloves of garlic in a dish meant for two servings--I absolutely love it, but I'm starting to think I have some sort of debilitating tolerance for its taste.

Patrick's in the kitchen right now making a garlic scape pasta salad. I'm going to grab a stalk and just eat some of it.

...

Wow. I don't know how I missed that. The tip tastes like garlic. The thick end, I'd call garsparagus. Nice. I wonder if my coworkers would be offended if I snacked on this at my desk like carrots. We'll see who's laughing when the vampires come.

And now for the least photogenic meal ever: pepper-red scallion hot dogs!

I recently started (rarely) eating meat again after seven years of pescatarianism. "The Omnivore's Dilemma" made me change my tack. We're members at the Wedge food coop in Minneapolis. Most of their meat is clean by my standards (local, sustainably raised), so we got these Thousand Hills hot dogs there. Let me tell you, when you're about to eat your first hot dog in seven years, you don't waste time with presentation. How satisfying!

Friends from near and far (plus some tasty vegetables)

2008-06-28T15:59:00.000-05:00

We were very excited to cook from this week's box, as our friends Sarah and Don, who have just arrived back in Minnesota from their sojourn out to Boston, were dining with us on Thursday. They had decided to move back to the Twin Cities, and we were happy to be able to share our CSA with them for a welcome home meal. Our friends Jason and JB were attending as well, so we were all going to crowd around the table for a delicious meal, and even better company.

With all our guests to think of, we were excited to see what this week's box had to offer. The first appearance of the fantastic looking, and equally delicious tasting, garlic scapes, as well as asparagus, red scallions, kohlrabi, lacinto kale, lettuce, oregeno, snap peas and strawberries all made the task of crafting something worthy of this group seem slightly less daunting.

After inspecting the box, we decided to steam the asparagus, kale and kohlrabi greens, along with some mustard greens we had on hand already.

We also constructed a salad of lettuce, garlic scapes, red scallions, kohlrabi bulb, snap peas, tomato and cucumber.

We prepared salmon to accompany our CSA vegetables, and the recipe was taken from the excellent book, "Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art." I am not sure I can agree with the simple part of that title, but it is a fantastic book if you are interested in Japanese cooking. The salmon itself came from the great Coastal Seafoods.

I thought it came together really well, and if the empty plates and bowls can attest, so did everyone else.

For desert, we had some fresh strawberries, some of which Jason and JB brought from their garden. These were strawberries even Plato might have held up as ideal.

As good as the food (and drink, go Surly) were, our friends made the night. I hope to cook even more elaborate, and delicious, meals for them very soon.

My solo weekend

2008-06-24T22:49:00.000-05:00

Patrick was out of town over the weekend, so I was saddled with consuming all the produce (twist my arm) except the kohlrabi bulb, which I promised to save because neither of us had ever tried it. Refrigerated, kohlrabi keeps like two weeks.

Saturday morning, I cored the remainder of the berries and placed them on a bed of cooked wheat berries, which I had handy in the fridge. I topped that with a little almond milk for breakfast.

It seemed too healthy, so I added peanut butter toast.

Saturday's dinner was a huge success. (I was the judge.) I fried the red potatoes to a crisp in our cast-iron skillet with oil, salt and pepper. For the last maybe 90 seconds, I threw in chopped green garlic stalks and leaves. Their color intensified. Meanwhile, the kohlrabi greens were steaming away. I tried to eat the lovely purple steamed stalks, but they were way too fibrous. For protein, I added a big glop of cooked black-eyed peas from the fridge, which I microwaved and buttered.

Can I just take a moment here to share my deep appreciation for Mark Bittman? Before we bought "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian," we never stocked our fridge with home-cooked granola, whole grains and beans—we never even used to buy dried beans, and certainly not grains besides rice. This is huge when it comes to the CSA, because no matter what fruit or vegetable the farmers throw at us, we can put it on a plate with beans and grains for an honest meal. Come to think of it, owning "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian," which Patrick picked up after he heard Terry Gross interview Bittman, gave us the confidence to join the CSA in the first place. There's practical information and simple, adaptable recipes for plant life common and obscure. How do you think I know kohlrabi keeps so long in the fridge? I always tell my friends that that cookbook has changed our life.

Anyway, the leftover garlicky potatoes became an egg scramble for Sunday's breakfast. Fried potatoes are one of those comfort foods of which I have strong, fond childhood memories—especially from the cast-iron skillet.

Box #2: farm-fresh cocktails!

2008-06-21T08:13:00.000-05:00

Our haul this time included kohlrabi, red potatoes, broccoli, green garlic, asparagus, lettuce, radishes, spearmint (yeah, I know!) and two pints of strawberries.

Patrick and I bought into this CSA along with our good friends Marcos and Jamie. Each couple gets half the share. (The photo above is a whole share.) At this point in our growing season, we're wishing we could keep all of it. I think when most people hear about CSAs, their first question is: How do you use up all that produce? With four adults (and the farm still recovering from a flood), that has been no problem. If I had to decide about next year right now, I'd put my money down on a whole share for our two-person household.

But it's only June. In August, when we're calling my mom with a canning emergency because we're up to our bellies in tomatoes and zucchini in an apartment with a small fridge and no chest freezer, we'll laugh at the notion of a whole share.

For now, we're being very precious with the produce and making sure every dish we make casts Driftless produce in a starring role, right up until we chew the last leaf.

Thursday and Friday night, that meant cocktails! Fresh mint is one of those things that I eat so seldom, it's always a great surprise when I do. It's a flavor that's so ubiquitously mimicked, it's weird that it really grows out of the dirt. Tasting it is like what I imagine it would be to see the real Elvis after suffering through scores of impersonators.

In the weekly newsletter that came with our box, the farm included a recipe for mojitos, but we didn't have any rum. So we came up with the strawberry mint lemonade you see up top.

For each cocktail, I cored about five small strawberries, put them in the bottom of a glass with a little vodka and mashed them with a fork. Then I added a few torn spearmint leaves, ice and more vodka. I filled the glass with lemonade and created the fussy garnish.

I swear almost every berry in or box was as pornographically perfect as the one I put on my drink. They'd be a shame to mash if they weren't so tasty. Unfortunately, the only vodka we had on hand was strawberry flavored vodka, which was totally unnecessary.

On to dinner. Salad, of course. There's no shortage of lettuce these days, even besides the head we got from the CSA. Marcos, a talented gardener, will probably end up using some of his lettuce as mulch, there's so much. He brought us a gift of "some kind of romaine" that we mixed with Driftless green leaf and some baby greens we short-sightedly bought from the co-op. This time, I cut the radishes thick to provide some crunch. Can you tell I'm being lazy when that passes for a new kind of salad?

Patrick improvised a main course by parboiling and shocking the broccoli, adding the asparagus and roasting it with green garlic and olive oil.

He squeezed a lemon over it, added shredded gruyere and roasted it a little more. So tasty!

One of our main reasons for not buying into a CSA in the past was the fear that we'd spend a month eating nothing but cantaloupe. So far, Driftless has been obsessed with variety, so we're very pleased.

Green garlic rules days two and four

2008-06-16T21:53:00.000-05:00

We managed to make use of the rest of our box on the second and fourth days after the pickup. Green garlic, an early stage in the development of the garlic, was to be present in most of our remaining dishes. Morgon Mae brought some of the lettuce to work for lunch, and that evening we set to work on creating a lovely salad, along with some roasted potatoes.

The potatoes were done with the green garlic stems, as well as some rosemary and olive oil. The salad was made from our remaining lettuce, green garlic ends, and some tomatoes we had purchased at the Wedge coop. Our friend Kristin stopped by and helped us finish off both of these dishes.

For breakfast on the fourth day (that sounded a bit biblical), we used the remaining green garlic ends and stems, as well as the Tatsoi in a fresh tasting scramble. Sour dough toast and homemade cold press were the perfect addition.

Our first box

2008-06-12T22:22:00.000-05:00

We weren't expecting much after hearing that a flood wiped out 40 percent of Driftless' crops, so I was excited to come home to a bit of broccoli, two bunches of tatsoi, several sprigs of green garlic, a gorgeous blossom-like head of Boston bib lettuce, one kohlrabi, a little pile of small yellow and purple potatoes, and a handful of radishes.

Marcos came for his and Jamie's half of the share, and we divvied everything evenly except the kohlrabi, which Marcos was pumped about and therefore traded their share of the lettuce and broccoli for.

I was excited to eat really fresh lettuce--I've heard it has vitamin E or something. Anyway, we made a salad with about half the lettuce, all our radishes and the broccoli. The radishes were spicy, but it was the broccoli that really blew me away. I hope we get more of this.

I threw my usual fixings on the salad: Annie's shittaki and sesame vinaigerette, sunflower seeds, salt and pepper, but it didn't need all that, and I felt I wasn't really tasting the veggies. Next time, I'm just going to use a little olive oil and a little salt and pepper.