Meeting the Challenges of our CSA

My friends I talk to regularly are probably tired of hearing about our CSA membership.  We purchased a half share from Great Country Farms in Bluemont, VA.  We receive a bin of fresh fruits and vegetables every Wednesday for 20 weeks.  This is our second year with a share and it's been great fun to teach Leah about all the fresh produce as it comes in.

Our empty bin, waiting to be returned.

We've really tried to embrace all the new vegetables that come in from the farm each week.  This of course means trying lots of new recipes.  I love cooking, so this is not really a problem for me, and I drag Jordan and Leah (mostly willingly) into the kitchen with me to help.  I recently signed up for a membership with Eat Your Books, so searching for recipes has gotten a lot easier!

There are a few complicating factors in deciding what to do with our wonderful produce.  First, most nights Jordan and I eat dinner after Leah goes to sleep, so we can't usually make anything that takes hours.  As much as I try to meal plan, it never works out for more than a few days.  Second, Pumpkin has decided I need to be a vegetarian.  Third, I have had problems with vertigo and blurry vision for the past two and a half months (a condition the doctors insist it isn't related to the pregnancy although it started as I hit the second trimester).  Consequently, recipes have to be fairly straightforward so that I can focus my eyes long enough to see what I am doing and not give myself a tremendous headache.  Decorating a cake would not be a good idea right now, for example, unless I went for the Jackson Pollack approach.   Finally, Jordan cannot tolerate dairy, so all of our recipes have to be dairy free.  If there is dairy in the recipe, I usually replace it with a soy substitute.

Thus far we've used 6 bins and we've made some pretty interesting dishes.  We've made quiches with all sorts of great ingredients, my favorite to date being asparagus, spring onion, and garlic scape.  Jordan has grilled many spring onions, some fresh summer squash, and some peaches.  We've had lots of salads with many different types of lettuce.  The kale?  We baked it with soy cheese and a soy bechamel sauce (a so-so Mark Bittman How to Cook Everything recipe, though that might have been because I only had vanilla soy milk available that night), blanched and froze it, made pickled kale salad (lots in the fridge still - tastes similar to coleslaw but has a texture almost like tabouleh without the bulgur), and sauteed it with garlic with pickled red onions on top (thank you NY Times Cookbook; the pickled onions lasted through several weeks worth of kale and other greens).  I made cabbage and mushroom pierogies (tasty, but my dumpling-making skills could use some work) and a thai-style tomato soup where I subbed green cabbage for napa cabbage (needed more seasoning, was too Americanized).  Finally, I made an Asian almond slaw with the last of the cabbage (totally simple, totally awesome - the addition of almond butter made the dish). 

The latest of our challenges has been beets.  Amanda Hesser's  Essential NY Times Cookbook has a great recipe for borscht, but it takes hours, requires beef, and is much too heavy for the hot DC summer.  The beet greens have made it into a couple of the quiches.  (I usually make two and freeze one.)  Last week, the beets got a tartar treatment, also courtesy of the NY Times cookbook.  This was the closest to meat I've gotten without getting sick in months!  This week I made a raw beet-carrot salad from a Mark Bittman How to Cook Everything recipe, one I would use again.  This recipe did require me to get the food processor out on a weekday night, but it was worth it.  Peel the beets (I had 4 small), peel the carrots (1 large did the trick), peel a shallot.  Throw it all in the food processor and pulse until broken up into small pieces.  Mix with the dressing - 1 tbs ginger, 2 tsp brown mustard,  1 tbs peanut oil, 2 tbs lime juice, salt and pepper.  Sprinkle with minced cilantro, and voila, a super-easy and super-colorful side dish for a weekday night.

This is week 7 of our share, and we'll be in more familiar territory with summer squash, corn, peaches, and plums.  Plus, there is some purple basil to plant in our burgeoning herb container garden.  I wouldn't be surprised if you walk by our house and smell grilled corn on the cob at some point this week.

Week 7 Produce - Straight from the Farm