Week 5 Summary

So our vacation to Alaska came and went, and we had a fabulous time. What a great break from the normal pace of life! Needless to say, the Week 5 entries I had planned to write and post while we were away were pretty far from my mind most of the time, and I just decided to let them go, and live up the vacation lifestyle while I could. Also, the cost of internet on the ship was $0.79/minute, so do that math. Yeesh.

We are already cooking and eating our way through Week 8 (Weeks 6 & 7 went to friends while we were away), but before I jump into it I thought I'd jot down a quick recap of how the week before our trip went, since we ate some really good and interesting stuff. So here it is: my overview of Week 5.

Garlic Scapes: gone! We tried a second garlic scape pesto recipe, and it actually had basil in it too, so it wasn't as strong of a garlicky flavor as the recipe we used during Week 3. It was great. The ricotta on top of the pasta was a nice addition as well.

French Breakfast Radishes: gone! We repeated the Tortellini and Spring Vegetable Salad from Week 1, but with the majority of the radishes, we tried this butter-braised radish recipe. They were not bad, but I think I liked them more than Steve did. Our friends joined us for dinner the night we made them, and their daughter absolutely LOVED them. She kept saying "radishes....radishes..." in this swoon-y lovestruck voice while she munched them. The best.

Green Romaine Lettuce: gone! We made chicken Caesar salad wraps the day before leaving on vacation, a long-time favorite recipe of ours. There may have been a few lunch salads in the mix too during the week.

Snow Peas: these are still sitting, 95% unused, in our crisper drawer. They look okay, but after three weeks I'm not sure what kind of shape they are really in. My main problem is that I just don't love snow peas - what do you like to do with them?

Purple Kohlrabi: of the three kohlrabi bulbs (bulbs? heads?) we had, two went into this kohlrabi carrot fritters recipe (the third one, sadly, went unused). They were enjoyable with some Old Bay chicken legs one night for dinner. I especially liked the avocado cream sauce that went with them and ate the rest it for lunch the next day with some baby carrots.

Asparagus: gone! Some of it was used in the tortellini spring vegetable salad and the rest was roasted on another night for dinner. It was such a good batch, but I bet that's the last asparagus we'll see this season - until next year, my beloved green shoots!

Strawberries: gone! I made this recipe for strawberry rhubarb sorbet mid-week. It was pretty tasty, but really confirmed my true identity as an ice-cream girl at heart. (In other words, next time I will just make strawberry rhubarb ice-cream, ha!) I liked it with chocolate chips as well as plain.

Rhubarb: gone! It was all used in the sorbet (along with a few extra stalks from the grocery store to supplement for what I needed).

Whole Chicken: it hasn't been used yet, but it's in our freezer and not going anywhere. 


Also, I wanted to mention that I did take a couple of hours during Week 5 to blanch and freeze the broccoli that we had leftover from Week 4. I pretty explicitly followed the instructions that I found here and even though I haven't tasted them yet (obviously), the process went really smoothly. Now I can look forward to using them this fall in a soup or other warm & cozy dish. And it feels great to know that it did not go to waste, when it otherwise would have.

So that's week 5. Believe it or not, we still have over 20 weeks left in our CSA! More to come, of course.