Week 5 Delivery

Welcome to CSA Week 5. It's been a good one so far! Check it out:

Vegetables
garlic scapes
napa cabbage swapped for French breakfast radishes
green romaine lettuce
snow peas
purple kohlrabi
asparagus

Fruit
strawberries
rhubarb

Chicken
whole chicken


After Week 5, things will slow down for a couple of weeks over here, because we're heading out of town for a bit. We have two sets of friends who were interested in taking the two CSA boxes that we're going to miss while we're away, which is great. But as excited as I am for our trip, I'm a little jealous of them because of the great fruits and veggies they'll get, and we'll be missing out on. The week 6 box, for example (which was delivered today), has zucchini, cucumbers, potatoes, and blueberries in it! All new things that sound so fun. Hopefully some of those favorites will still be around when we get home. But first, more to come on what we've been up to in Week 5.

Week 4 Summary

Well, Week 4 came and went, and as I worried, it was not our best in terms of making good use of what we got. Here's a recap:

Bok Choy: we ate about half, and about half of it went to waste. The half we used went into this stir-fry recipe with chicken, and some broccoli and snow peas (which came in our Week 5 box).

Green Leaf Lettuce: we still have it. Didn't use any last week but had some last night and it's still in decent shape.

Cilantro: mostly gone. A bunch went into this dressing recipe, another bunch into some guacamole last night, and now there's just a little bit left.

Purple Mizuna: gone! All of it went into the pineapple rice recipe last week.

Rainbow Chard: Sadly, we let our whole bundle go to waste. Ugh. We had a frittata recipe picked out to try that looked great, but the week just got away from us and we didn't cook as many nights as we'd planned to. Of all the veggies we've gotten so far this year, chard seems to have the shortest life-span in the fridge, so we really need to make a note to use it up in the first few days after it's delivered.

Green Romaine Lettuce: we had to throw it out, totally unused. We cleaned out the fridge on Friday night and it just was not in good shape. Super sad.

French Breakfast Radishes: We didn't use any last week, but ate some last night and have something else in mind this week for what is left.

Young Broccoli: Tonight I have plans to blanch (or steam) and freeze what's left.

Scallions: They got about half-used up, here and there throughout the week. We have some left and they are holding up okay so we'll hang on to them. 

Strawberries: gone! Between salads, snacks, and the strawberry rhubarb crumb cake, we made our way through them easily. Yum.

Applesauce: working our way through it (less of a time-limit on this one, thankfully).

2 Chicken Breasts: ate one in the stir-fry, and the other is still frozen.

4 Chicken Thighs: still frozen

4 Chicken Legs: Steve roasted these with some Old Bay on Sunday night - very good!


Week 4 Links
Pineapple Rice (on a Bed of Mizuna Greens)
Strawberry Rhubarb Crumb Cake


So good, bad, or ugly, that is how the cookie (or the lettuce?) crumbled for Week 4. I feel pretty disappointed and guilty about the stuff that we had to throw out, but part of the problem was that we just got so much stuff in our Week 4 box - more than I think we really could have used, even if we had been more organized.

In any case, once we finally had the chance to stop and take a breath at the end of our busy week, cleaning out the fridge and taking inventory of all our produce was a step in the right direction to getting back on track. By then, we had already gotten a new CSA box, so cutting our losses and making a list of everything we still had (both old and new) was a huge help in making the meal plan for this week. And I feel like we're in much better shape so far this week. More about that coming soon!

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumb Cake

Is anybody getting sick of rhubarb? I am totally not... I had eaten it, but never cooked with it before this season, and I'm having a lot of fun! I also didn't know that the rhubarb window would be open this long. Each week I think, "This is probably the last batch of rhubarb we'll get." and then am pleasantly surprised and ready to accept the challenge with another new recipe the following week. This strawberry-rhubarb crumb cake constitutes the 3rd rhubarb recipe I've made this year and (spoiler alert) there is a 4th one in the works for this week. Just say yes to rhubarb.

My only problem with this cake (or maybe just an observation) is that is really was at its best the day after I baked it. It didn't serve well as a keep-it-around-for-a-week-and nibble-off-it cake; it's more like a make-for-a-party-so-it-all-gets-enjoyed-while-it's-fresh cake. After a couple of days the cake layer got a bit stale and the crumble topping lost its crunch because of the moist fruit layer beneath. So there's my recommendation: make it to share, or just eat a whole bunch of cake by yourself, all at once, while it's still super yummy. Either way.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumb Cake on my baking addiction

This was taken about four days into the cake's existence, so its optimum beauty is not captured here.

Used From Our CSA
rhubarb
strawberries 

Thoughts on the Recipe
I don't have much to say about this recipe, other than I over-baked ours a bit. I wish I had taken it out about 2 minutes before I did. That crumble topping went from perfect to too-brown in a very narrow slice of time. So keep an eye on it, and enjoy the strawberry rhubarb goodness!

Pineapple Rice (on a Bed of Mizuna Greens)

In the interest of full disclosure, let me clarify that pineapples do not grow in the Mid-Atlantic (unfortunately, because how cool would that be?) and the one that this recipe centers around was purchased at the grocery store. The CSA-item that was the star of the meal was the mizuna. All of what we had was used to form the bed of greens for this Hawaiian rice dish.

Mizuna was a completely new green to Steve & I. It's known for having a mild peppery taste, which reminded Steve of horseradish. I'm not sure how it would be on its own; I find the flavor to be pretty strong. But tossed in this pineapple dressing and paired with the rice concoction, it really rounded out the set of flavors and made for a great complete meal. Brown rice is not something I normally get excited about, so I was really pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this dish.

Pineapple Rice Recipe on 101 Cookbooks

Used From Our CSA
purple mizuna
scallions

Thoughts on the Recipe
- We didn't plate up the greens and rice on a big serving platter as the recipe suggests. Since we planned to have leftovers, we kept them separate until serving up an individual portion.
- We skipped the seitan, but agreed this could be good with some chicken in the mix, too!
- We ate the rice hot (vs. at room temperature)

Even though this dinner didn't feature as many CSA vegetables as I might have liked (especially for as many as we have this week!), I think I have to count it a win when we make a meal with a completely new vegetable that we had never even heard of before, and enjoy it this much. If nothing else, it's a starting point. Mizuna and I are no longer strangers.

Week 4 Delivery

Here is what we got last Thursday in our Week 4 delivery. The first week of our fruit share!

Vegetables
bok choy
green leaf lettuce
cilantro
purple mizuna (peeking out from beneath the radishes)
rainbow chard
green romaine lettuce
French breakfast radishes
young broccoli (bag in the middle)
scallions

Fruit
strawberries
jar of applesauce

Chicken
2 breasts
4 thighs
4 legs


Seriously? This box was overflowing with food. We're halfway through the week and I still don't know how we're going to use everything. I wrote last week that I feel less daunted by the box full of produce once I've made a meal plan (which usually happens on Friday night, the day after the delivery). This week though? I planned out our week of meals, and it didn't even account for the broccoli or chicken thighs or legs. Yikes!

The unused chicken is not really a big deal. It comes frozen and can stay that way until we have a use for it, even if that's not until fall or winter. In fact, it will be awesome to have some on hand and already paid for once our CSA is over. So no worries there, provided we have enough room in our little freezer. Maybe we should freeze the broccoli too - I bet it could be good in a soup this fall or winter. Hmm... we'd better clean out our freezer and make some space.

I already have a few recipes to share from this box, but I just have a feeling like this week may be a bit of a flop. I promise to keep it real whatever happens, even it that means we let some of our lovely produce go to waste. It happens, right? Is this a good problem to have, or just a problem?

Week 3 Summary

Here is an overview of how things ended up for Week 3:

Rhubarb: gone! About half of it went into the galette (along with what remained from Week 2). I made another dessert over the weekend that used up most of the rest of it, along with some strawberries that came in our Week 4 box. I'll share that dish as part of Week 4.

Yellow Chard: gone! It all went into this gratin recipe - I halved it. Very tasty (how could it not be after being cooked with milk, butter, and cheese?).

Salanova Lettuce: about half the head is left - this has been great in lunch salads, which I ate pretty much every day this week. I think we'll finish it yet or come close; it's holding up pretty well.

Scallions: between the stock, kale salad, and other random stuff, I think we worked our way through most of them.

Garlic Scapes: gone! One or two went into Steve's stock, and I made the rest into pesto (using the recipe on this site, and I also tossed in a small handful of pine nuts). This was really fun, since we had never cooked with or even heard of scapes before. The pesto has a pretty good, garlic-y bite to it, so the pasta was pretty strong and just okay IMO. On pizza however: SO GOOD. We still have a bunch left in the freezer, and scape peso pizza is on the menu again tonight - yay.

Green Kale: gone! All went into making the kale & quinoa salad.

Red Leaf Lettuce: gone! All used up in side salads throughout the week.

Strawberries: gone! I used several in lunch salads, and Steve made a mini-clafloutis with the rest last Friday (which was apparently Julia Childs' favorite dessert - he got the recipe at a cooking class several months ago).

Whole Heritage Chicken: gone! Roasted for dinner and then used to make a basic stock.

strawberry clafloutis made by Steve

Week 3 Links
Rhubarb Galette
Butter-Roasted Chicken and Stock
Kale & Quinoa Salad

chard gratin and noodles with garlic scape pesto

So that's Week 3 in a nutshell! We're currently in the middle of Week 4 - and have a LOT of veggies to work our way through. My next post will be an overview of what came in this week's box.

Kale & Quinoa Salad

The first time we ever tried a recipe with quinoa in it (to make these tacos, which I highly recommend, btw) Steve came home from that week's grocery store run and said that there were a lot of different flavors of "kwin-o-ah" (emphasis on the "o") and he wasn't quite sure which one he should get. I honestly had no clue what he was saying at first, which quickly became hilarious and adorable when I realized he was talking about quinoa. And that's my funny, if not anti-climactic, story about quinoa. In Steve's defense, I will never run the risk of misspelling it since I say "kwin-o-ah" to myself just about every time I write it out. Thanks, man.

Last night we tried another kale salad recipe. And despite the common denominators of kale and chickpeas, this one is really pretty different from the chopped kale salad we tried during CSA Week 1, which is exciting. Yay for variety! And like the first kale salad, this too was delicious.

Kale & Quinoa Salad on enjoy it

Used From Our CSA
kale
scallions (in place of red onion)

Thoughts on the Recipe
- We halved this, because I did think we would have enough kale for the full version. But as I washed and chopped it, I did start to feel like it was a lot more than I initially guessed we had. So I made the full amount of dressing just to make sure we wouldn't wind up short on that. We had a little dressing leftover in the end, which will be great on any green salad later this week. In fact I would definitely make just the dressing again to have on hand on it's own - simple but it works!
- I saw the note in the instructions to add the dressing early on (to help wilt the kale) a little late in the process of getting everything ready. It's good advice and next time I'll definitely do that first, before cooking the quinoa or chopping the onion. 
- The leftovers today were great. If you plan on having any, I'd just recommend leaving the cashews out and adding them in as you eat it. Cashews get all weird and rubbery after sitting in a dressed salad for a while. Anyone else experienced this?

So there you have it: a delicious kale & quinoa salad. Let me know your thoughts if you get the chance to try it out! I'll post again soon with a Week 3 recap, and some links to other recipes we used this week that I didn't write about in detail.

Butter-Roasted Chicken and Stock

So it's been pretty quiet around these parts this week, huh? I guess I fell off the blogging wagon. But here I am, clambering back on. With or without a post to share, things are chugging right along in the kitchen and in our bellies.

Last Sunday we roasted our first whole chicken, and Steve had the idea to try our hand at a basic chicken stock with the carcass. Both were a relative success, I think. The only downside is that we barely set foot outside of the kitchen all afternoon/evening, but to be fair, I also decided to make some homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream with the leftover mint leaves that we bought for the chicken. You might be thinking: "Woah, overkill." but in that case you probably have never tasted ice cream made with real mint, because it melted all that hard work away with one bite. Well, almost.

Four cups of chicken stock, now hanging out in our freezer.

Butter-Roasted Chicken with Cilantro and Mint on Food & Wine

Used From Our CSA
whole heritage chicken

I had a pretty personal encounter rubbing our bird down with the flavored butter. First time for everything!

Thoughts on the Recipe
Really this was pretty straightforward. Of course we halved the recipe since we were only working with one bird. The flavor was great, really unique, and even more pronounced in the next few days (I wonder if our stock will take any of that on). We ate it for dinner with a green salad on the side. Very satisfying and made for some great leftovers.

The only thing I am coming to loathe about all these non-breast chicken parts we've been working with is the crazy amounts of splatter in our oven, and the resulting smoke-filled kitchen and fire alarms that go off every 90 seconds. I think I am going to try tenting the pan with foil next time we make legs, wings, or a whole chicken in the oven. Do you guys have any other suggestions?

After dinner Steve started work on Phase II of the marathon chicken-cooking day, a basic stock recipe. It felt like a pretty low-risk, marginal-reward experiment, so why the heck not give it a try?

The Gateway Stock on the paupered chef

Used from Our CSA
chicken carcass, uncooked wing-tips, neck, etc. (everything that came with it, minus the liver)
scallions

Thoughts on the Recipe
- In addition to the scallions, Steve also threw in a bunch of other non-CSA stuff that we already had on hand, loosely following the guidelines of the recipe: more onion, bay leaves, ginger, and cilantro (we did just get cilantro in yesterday's box, though, so go figure).
- I totally agree with the one commenter on the recipe site who submitted that it's ridiculous to go out and buy new produce just to make it into a stock - in that case isn't it easier to just buy a can of stock? But there was a great follow-up comment from someone who accumulates their veggie scraps in a bag in the freezer and uses them when the time comes to make a stock, and I think that is so smart.
- I think our finished liquid went straight into the freezer, so we may have missed the "let it refrigerate for a day" step, to let the flavors meld. Ooops - next time.
- As he says in his recipe, this may not make the most highly refined stock, but it will suit great in a lot of the one pot dishes that Steve and I tend to gravitate towards.

In the end we got four cups of stock out of this experiment, which equates to two cans from the store. I'll take it. Have you ever made a stock from scratch before? If so, I'd love to hear your tips and tricks in the comments!

Rhubarb Galette

Yep, I'm back with more rhubarb!

This galette (like a pie without a pan - it's French and therefore classy) was pretty delicious, and almost entirely consumed within about 3 hours of it's conception (thank you, girls' night). I have to say, Martha really knows her stuff. The cornmeal in the crust did me in and gave it a great rustic texture. It took some time, but wasn't too work intensive. If you think of this as apple pie's springy counterpart, and you love a homemade crust like I do, it took far less effort overall. 

Rhubarb Galette on martha stewart

Used From Our CSA
rhubarb (a little from both Weeks 2 and 3)

Thoughts on the Recipe
- Making the dough a day early could help break up the work and clean-up for this recipe
- If you're smarter than me, you'll use a rimmed baking sheet. My crust had one tiny little hole in it (see above), so the juices ran everywhere (luckily I saw what was happening, so I constructed a little aluminum foil trough to put on the lower rack before the puddle went overboard).
- I get a little better & more consistent every time I make a crust. I use a lot of flour to prevent sticking. I honestly think that pie/pastry crust can sense fear. So my best advice is to remain confident and calm, but try to work quickly. Once I start to fall apart, so does the crust. Seriously. I rolled it out right on the counter top, and then sort of scraped and folded it over bit by bit onto the parchment paper, until it was upside-down and completely on the paper in one piece.
- If you have the time (I did not), let it cool completely before transferring it onto a platter, or heck: just eat it hot. Steve & I tried the 3-spatula teamwork approach to move it over, and it completely broke apart. I was pretty ticked, but he did a good job of discreetly piecing it back together while I stood there and said bad words.

Things that make my heart happy, right here.

Two rhubarb recipes under my belt now! I wonder if we'll get any more this season, or if it has run its course? Either way, our fruit share officially starts this Thursday, which I am super pumped for. Rhubarb or no, there are more weekend desserts in our future!

Week 3 Delivery

Here are the items we received in our Week 3 delivery on Thursday:

This box is crazy-full, especially when you look at last week's delivery.

Vegetables
frisee swapped for more rhubarb - yay!
yellow chard
salanova lettuce (that cute round head of lettuce in the middle)
scallions
garlic scapes (the curly shoots at the bottom)
green kale
red leaf lettuce
strawberries (clearly not a vegetable - but we are NOT complaining!)

Chicken
1 whole heritage chicken


It's a good thing that by the time I usually write these delivery posts, we already have a meal plan in place for the coming week. It lets me post with a note of excitement, since the momentary panic of "Omigosh, what are we going to make with all this?!" is already behind me.

I'm looking forward to another week of trying new things: roasting a whole chicken for the first time ever (in an herb butter that I think is going to be awesome!), eating garlic scapes (which I previously didn't even know were a thing; the plan right now is pesto), and a new kale salad recipe to add to the arsenal. More to come after the weekend!

Week 2 Summary

Here is where things stand as we approach the end of Week 2:

Green Leaf Lettuce: partly used as the "wrap" of the Thai lettuce wraps. But we still have some left. Planning to make a side salad tonight with dinner.

Collards: gone! We used the whole pound to make this Indonesian-style curry recipe (halved), with some basmati rice. It was good (and our first time making curry from scratch, which we were super proud of), but at the end of the day I think that collards are just not my favorite green. Their tough and bitter qualities are hard to overcome.

Rhubarb: half was used in the roasted rhubarb jam last weekend. I hope to use the rest to make a rhubarb galette this weekend, but I spied it the other day in the fridge and it was not looking great. In any case, Steve snagged another bundle of this from the week 3 swap box yesterday, so all is not lost.

Dinosaur Kale: one-third to one-half of it has been used, all in green smoothies so far.

Chives: we have not even touched these yet! What should we do with them - any suggestions?

2 Chicken Breasts (it was actually closer to 3): gone! All used in the Thai lettuce wraps.

Bag of Chicken Wings: planning to make Old Bay wings tonight for dinner!

gulai sayur (curry) on Sunday

Week 2 Links 
Roasted Rhubarb Jam
Simple Green Smoothie
Thai Chicken Lettuce Wraps

rhubarb jam and ricotta on toast

I'll be back tomorrow to share what we got yesterday in our Week 3 box. It was quite a bounty!

Thai Chicken Lettuce Wraps

Last night we made these yummy lettuce wraps for dinner. And Steve was only a few bites in when he declared that this is the second best thing we've made so far this year (right after bacon pancakes, a snow day favorite). Bold statement.

But I agree: this made a great dinner. And despite the long-ish list of ingredients, everything came together pretty easily, especially with two of us working together. We also learned to poach and mince a chicken breast, which there is nothing difficult about at all, but still: life skills! It was a little tricky to find a lettuce wraps recipe that looked just right: a lot of them seemed either so simple that they weren't really going to get at the flavors we were hoping for, or so complex that they really couldn't have made a practical weeknight dinner for us. This one seemed like it would strike a happy balance, and we were not disappointed.

Thai-Style Peanut Chicken Lettuce Wraps on the cozy apron 

Used From Our CSA
chicken breast
green leaf lettuce
red scallions (from Week 1)

Thoughts on the Recipe
-There are a handful of semi-unusual oils and sauces required for this recipe, and if you don't have them on hand (which we fortunately did) this meal might start to add up cost-wise. However, most of them have a pretty long shelf-life, so if you like cooking with Asian flavors, they might be worth the investment.
- Along those same lines, we actually skipped the peanuts in this recipe. We didn't have any, don't use them much, and felt like the peanut butter would carry that flavor just fine.
- I also skipped all the garnishes. Wednesday night dinners call for realistic food-prep if you ask me. Apologies if these photos suffer from lack of flair. Oh, wait: here's a picture with a flower in it:

This will also make a great lunch today. I'm looking forward to it!

Steve is bringing home our third CSA box tonight. There are several things on the list this week that I have never even heard of! The challenge continues...

Simple Green Smoothie

Today I actually have a recipe of my own to share - if you can even call it a recipe when you throw a bunch of ingredients into a blender and turn it on.

I'm pretty new to the green smoothie game (born in January out of that lovely post-holiday feeling of: i-am-going-to-punch-myself-if-i-don't-eat-something-that-is-not-a-baked-good-or-piece-of-candy-real-quick) and have only tried a few different recipes. Nothing too fancy yet. Part of the problem is that our "blender" (read: cheap novelty smoothie maker) is really not the best and every time I use it I worry that the little machine is about to take on its last frozen banana. Poor thing even struggles with the ice cubes. Maybe someday we'll front the money for something more legit, but until then I'll probably keep things pretty simple in the smoothie department.

Makes a great on-the-go snack!

Used From Our CSA
dinosaur kale

I really like the chocolatey-peanut taste of this smoothie. It's something a little different, and is a nice go-to if you don't have a ton of other fruit immediately on hand. I find this to be a good snack-size portion for me, but it could easily be doubled to be shared or serve as more of a meal replacement. It's also been a great way this week to work through our CSA kale, which we didn't make any other specific plans for meal-wise.

Ingredients
- 2-3 pieces of kale, stemmed (or 2-3 handfuls of fresh spinach for a milder flavor)
- 1/2 frozen banana
- 1 T natural peanut butter
- 1 T cocoa powder
- 1/2 c. almond milk
- 4 ice cubes

Blend all ingredients together and add more almond milk as needed, to get your desired consistency.

My advice is to cut and peel the banana first and throw it in a plastic container or bag in the freezer. Your future self will thank you when you are not trying to peel a rock hard, ice cold banana. See the above picture and learn from my mistakes, because half the time I forget to do this and it is never pretty.

Do you have a favorite green smoothie recipe? Feel free to share in the comments.

Roasted Rhubarb Jam

I had a revelation this weekend. I feel like there are so many plant foods in the world that are botanically a fruit, but nutritionally, we think of as a vegetable (tomato, cucumber, avocado, squash, etc). On the other hand, I can only come up with one botanical vegetable that we tend to classify, cook, and eat as if it were a fruit: the lowly rhubarb.

So since fruit wont be part of our CSA deliveries for another week yet, I was pretty jazzed that Steve could swap for this fruit-ish vegetable last week. As a great lover of dessert I wanted to spend some time in the kitchen cooking up something sweet! We got roughly a pound of rhubarb, and I found two intriguing recipes that each called for that amount. So I made the obvious choice and decided to make a half-recipe of each of them (totally obvious and not overkill, right?).

Rhubarb recipe #1, this roasted jam, was executed on Saturday. And it was good. Make you wish you didn't half the recipe good. I can happily affirm that this is awesome on vanilla ice cream, and it's awesome on toast (I took a cue from last week's tartines and spread some ricotta first - perfect).

Roasted Rhubarb Jam on Simply Scratch

Used From Our CSA
rhubarb

Thoughts on the Recipe
- This one was pretty straightforward. I didn't have the vanilla sugar (and have actually never made/used it before), so I followed her suggestion and just added in some vanilla bean paste with the sugar.
- After it cooled I put it in our mini food processor to get the sauce consistency.

This is a recipe I would definitely return to (and make a bigger batch of) in a future where I have more rhubarb on hand. I am saving my other half-pound for now because this weekend I have plans to attempt a half-size galette. Wish me luck...

What's your favorite thing to make with rhubarb? My mom sent me a rhubarb sangria recipe yesterday that looked pretty fun! Do you know of any other vegetables that we actually tend to think of as being more fruit-like?