Week 9 Summary

Here is an overview of how our CSA went last week (Week 9):

Agretti: gone! It all went into the yummy lemon-y fettuccine recipe I posted about last week. Loved.

Chinese Purple Garlic: still hanging on to both heads. Thankfully, garlic lasts for ages so it's not going anywhere.

Green Kale: not quite gone, but it's all been used. I was happy to have the chance to repeat the Kale & Quinoa Salad that we tried back in Week 3, and it was great have along for a picnic with friends last Friday night. We're still working through the leftovers.

8-Ball Zucchini: of the six squash we received last week, 2 went into this favorite blueberry zucchini bread recipe. The other four have been worked into our Week 10 meal plan (finished them off last night!), so I'll try to mention how we used them sometime in the coming week. Bottom line: I love zucchini and am working to make up for years of avoiding it as a kid.

Red Cherry Tomatoes: like the zucchini, these have all become a part of our Week 10 meal plan, so more to come on how they got used.

Red Beets: these are sitting untouched in the fridge (sheepish grin) ... Part of the problem is that right now we are consistently getting more produce than we can reasonably consume in a week. When that's the case it is easy to focus on the stuff we're excited about, like kale and blueberries, and ignore the produce that we find daunting. Hence, our beet situation. I'll let you know if anything changes.

Bicolor Sweet Corn: gone! We used two ears last week to make the Zucchini Corn pancakes. The rest has gone into our Week 10 meal plan, so I'll get to that info later in the week.

Peaches: gone! I had one or two by themselves last week. The rest went into the Tomato Peach Salad we made last week, which was perfect: since they weren't in the best shape from the start, we could cut out the rough spots and use what was left in that dish.

Pint of Blueberries: gone! Those that weren't munched by Steve for breakfasts went into the blueberry zucchini bread (link to recipe above).

Jar of Blueberry Jam: we haven't cracked it open yet, but I'm eager to. I think a good loaf of fresh bread needs to be obtained first. 

Chicken Breasts and Whole Leg: I am making my poor husband crazy with our growing chicken problem. At this point in time, our freezer is almost full with various cuts of chicken. And we didn't use any of it this week! It's a meal planning challenge right now: we're getting so much produce and it always feels more urgent to me that we use what we can of that before it goes bad. So when I can write out a week's worth of meals and still not manage to include all the fruits and veggies we got, it feels even less economical to be using chicken in place of some of those other dishes, when it can just stay frozen until we have use for it. If we had a second freezer I wouldn't be worried about this at all. But as it stands, we're working on it.


Week 9 Links
Zucchini Corn Pancakes
Fettuccine with Agretti
Tomato Peach Salad


The CSA stops for no woman, so I'll of course be back tomorrow with our Week 10 delivery list. Onward!

Fettuccine with Agretti & Tomato Peach Salad

Today I have two dishes to share that we made on Wednesday night. Along with some burgundy beans, these two things made for an awesome mid-week dinner (albeit time-intensive).

Our main dish was this lemon fettuccine with agretti. For the most part we do not tend to be big pasta people, but since we had no earthly idea what to do with the agretti or previous context for how to eat it, pasta seemed like a reasonable place to start. And man oh man, what a treat; who knew that lemon and bacon could compliment each other so well? Add in the agretti, and we had the perfect triumvirate of winning at pasta. We ended up dumbing down the recipe quite a bit; and I'll elaborate more on that below. But even with our cheats it was totally worthwhile. 

Lemon Fettuccine with Agretti, Bacon, and Roasted Garlic on Round the Table

On the side we had this tomato, peach & burrata salad. It's basically a fun variation on the caprese salad theme: heirloom tomato, peach, burrata cheese, and a balsamic reduction with some basil. A total win and, in contrast to the pasta, quick and easy to put together. As she says in the recipe, fresh mozzarella can substitute for the burrata if needed. It was more steeply priced, but we decided to spring for it because we were curious. It's basically a cream-infused fresh mozzarella, so ... yeah; we obviously wanted to give that a whirl. And since we only needed half of it, we should be able to repeat this recipe again soon. Woohoo!

Tomato, Peach & Burrata Salad on two peas & their pod 

Used From Our CSA
agretti
peaches
burgundy beans (eaten on the side)

Thoughts on the (Pasta) Recipe
- We had several ingredient substitutions in this: regular fettuccine instead of lemon fettuccine (couldn't even find it at our run-of-the-mill grocery store), raw garlic instead of roasted (didn't want to take the time to roast it ourselves for just two cloves' worth), and Parmesan cheese instead of Romano (because it's what we keep on hand). I'm sure it had the potential to be even more awesome had we used some of those swankier things, but the good news is that it was still great without them.
- I'm not sure if this is always the case, but we realized, once we had served up our finished pasta, that the agretti stems were pretty woody and tough to eat. So we went through it all after the fact to cut the softer leaves from their stems, which clearly would have been much easier before it was all cooked and cheesy. Next time we'll get that right, but still: no real harm done. Once that was taken care of I really enjoyed the taste of this interesting Mediterranean vegetable.


Has anyone else ever cooked with agretti? Did you have to remove the stems? What did you make? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Zucchini Corn Pancakes

Before finding this recipe last week, I don't think it would have occurred to me to make a non-breakfast pancake. Don't confuse this with the concept of eating a breakfast pancake at a meal other than breakfast (aka: brunch or brinner), which is always a great idea. But now that I've had a savory pancake, I think it's a great idea! These were a great way for us to work through some of the 8-ball zucchini and sweet corn that came in our Week 9 box. Topped with sour cream and some fresh salsa, they were just right.

Zucchini Corn Pancakes on Girl Versus Dough 

Used From Our CSA
8-ball zucchini
bicolor sweet corn

Thoughts on the Recipe
This was really so easy and straightforward. The batter came together really quickly, but cooking it all up was more time-intensive. Steve tends to be the grill cook in our house, or at least the one who is usually standing at the stove when hot oil is involved. And he made several comments about how long the pancakes were taking: at 3-4 minutes per side, it took at least 40 minutes to get through all the batter. Still, we loved these and would certainly make them again, on a night when we know we'll have the time.

Has anyone else ever made a non-breakfast pancake? It was a new concept to me, but maybe I'm just out of the loop!

Week 9 Delivery

Welcome to CSA Week 9! Here are the items we received in our box this week:

Vegetables
agretti
Chinese purple garlic
green kale
8-ball zucchini
red cherry tomatoes
red beets
bicolor sweet corn 

Fruit
bag of peaches
pint of blueberries
jar blueberry jam

Chicken
breasts
whole leg

Agretti is a totally new-to-us item, and after reading a bit about it (some info here), I realized that it's kind of a unique and rare vegetable in the U.S., with a brief window of availability - quite a treat to get some in our box! We've already used it up and I'll share more about what we made in the next few days, but just know for now that it rocked. The Chinese purple garlic is also something I've never seen before, but I'm planning on using it like regular garlic. Somebody stop me if it's some wacky variation and I shouldn't do that, but it feels like a safe bet.

Otherwise, I'm happy to have some more kale this week (planning to repeat a favorite salad recipe) and love that we are flush with zucchini. Also, sweet corn! Oh, and more beets - ha. I'm still not sure what's going to become of those this time around. Overall I'm pretty happy with the way Week 9 has been shaping up thus far and I'll be back with some details soon!