CSA Share: Week 11

We have had some illness this week which is why there is a lack of posts and whatnot.  See below what got this week!


If you are reading for the first time, our CSA comes from Screamin' Ridge Farms. Below you will see photos of each type of produce that we received, an amount in parentheses showing how many times we have received the item during the CSA, the approximate weight, and some of our ideas for what to do with the item!  Enjoy and leave us comments if you have any ideas for our produce that we haven't thought of.  We are always welcoming new ideas.

Cherry tomatoes (4) -- approximately 7.4 oz

Cabbage (of the strange curly variety) (3) -- approximately 2lbs 11.7oz

Cucumbers (6) -- approximately 2lbs 6.5oz

Romanesco (3) -- approximately 1lb

Yellow Tomatoes (1) -- approximately 7.1oz

Radishes (5) -- approximately 6oz

Patty Pan (5) -- approximately 15.3oz

Yellow Squash (4) -- approximately 15.7oz

Tomatoes (2) -- approximately 11.1oz

Green Beans (3) -- approximately 1lb .3oz

Garlic Bulb (4) and...

EGGS!!!!

Have a great week!

CSA Share: Week 10

Produce is coming out of our ears!  Even with all of the cooking we did last week we still have produce left over and a plethora arrived this week as well.  The fresh taste and variety however leaves us with no complaints!  I am so excited that we are getting such a wide variety that it is hard to be bored.  If you are looking to make you diet healthier, a CSA is definitely the way to go!  I'm eating more vegetables than I have in my entire life.

If you are reading for the first time, our CSA comes from Screamin' Ridge Farms. Below you will see photos of each type of produce that we received, an amount in parentheses showing how many times we have received the item during the CSA, the approximate weight, and some of our ideas for what to do with the item!  Enjoy and leave us comments if you have any ideas for our produce that we haven't thought of.  We are always welcoming new ideas.

Radishes (4) -- approximately 1lb 7.4oz: With all the greens I think that Radish Top Pesto may be made and frozen for future use this week.

 Romanesco (2) -- approximately 13.3 oz

Zucchini (4) -- approximately 2lbs .3oz

Garlic (3) -- 1 bulb

Tomatoes!!! (1) -- approximately 11.4oz : great for some homemade tomato sauce and of course on sandwiches

French Rat Fingerlings (3) -- approxiamtely 15.6 oz 

Cherry Tomatoes (3) -- approximately 8.6 oz

Screamin' Ridge Pesto (2) -- approximately 9.8oz

Green Beans (2) -- approximately 8.1oz

Cabbage (2) -- approximately 3lbs 11.2oz and....

EGGS!!!

What would you do with this bounty?

What ails you

Due to some recent illnesses in the house, today's post will be done later tonight. Thanks for waiting

The Cooking Adventures of Chef Z & MB

Hi Guys!  Chef Z & I talked about it and it made much more sense to give an overview of our culinary adventures during the week rather than just what I reheated in a microwave.  Those pictures will still be included of course, but they will be sprinkled throughout.

This week we started off drying some herbs.  This is an incredibly easy method of preservation if you have a dehydrator.  Simply remove the leaves from the stems, rinse and dry, then place so that they are not touching on the screen.  Dry on the "herb" setting.  Ours says that's approximately 95 F.  We have done this with quite a few herbs and it is great since we will have organic/sustainable herbs this winter for stews and slow cooker meals!

Homemade Spicy Dill Pickles were also made this week.  3 large cucumbers, I've found, make 6 jars.  Here are 3 waiting to be processed in a hot water bath.  This recipe uses the traditional combination of equal parts apple cider vinegar and water with canning salt and whole mustard seeds as the brine.  While the brine is brought to a boil, the jars are packed with a sprig of fresh dill, 1-2 hot dried chili peppers, and 1-2 cloves of garlic.  On top of that goes tightly packed cucumbers that have been cut to the same size.  Instead of pickling lime, I have been using the Ball Pickle Crisp Granules that are sprinkled on top of the cucumbers as according to the directions on the container.  We will see if this method works as well as the traditional lime.  The cucumbers are then covered with the brine and sealed.  These are water bath canned for 10 minutes.  In approximately a month we will try them out!

Chef Z here!  This is what I like to call "This is what a CSA dinner looks like".  This was created for MB and my anniversary dinner.  We had some filet mignon left over from a bulk meat order, some fresh baby vegetables, fingerling potatoes, and crispy onion. The potatoes were blanched then fried in vegetable oil. The vegetables were blanched, then sautéed in garlic butter. I just seasoned and grilled the filet, I let the sauce do the rest of the work. The sauce was a reduction of some lamb jus that I had left over from braising. In order to balance the gaminess, I added red wine and a little beef stock then reduced to coat the back of a spoon. The crispy onions were lightly floured, then tossed into the oil used to fry the potatoes. This meal turned out great and, considering the quality of the beef, ended up costing us very little. I would guess that it ranged anywhere from 7-10 bucks a plate. At a restaurant this plate would easily cost you 50-60 dollars, gourmet at home.... YUM!!

In an attempt to use up some of our raw milk and CSA eggs, I made whole wheat pancakes topped with Raspberry Jam.  Yummmm.  Not entirely CSA but very very tasty.

In an effort to preserve more of our bounty for this winter, the cabbage was steam blanched in a steamer basket for 3 minutes then soaked in ice water for 5 minutes. (Side note from Chef): this technique is called shocking. What this does is stop the cooking process so that as you vegetables cool waiting for the next step, they do not turn to mush. Even when freezing, you vegetables will continue to cook in the freezer, shock them and viola, perfectly cooked vegetables that still have a little crunch to them!! After it was soaked and cool, it was laid on towels to dry out, then placed on a baking tray to "flash freeze" in our freezer.  Once the cabbage was hard to the touch, it was taken off of the baking sheet and placed into freezer bags.  This cabbage will work well in soups, stir fries and in slow cooker meals.  It won't be as crispy as fresh cabbage but it will be a great addition to our winter meals and it will keep our grocery bills down!

Since I had a HUGE zucchini to use up, I searched online for a recipe that would be a different use aka other than zucchini bread.  On The Kitchn I found this recipe for Zucchini Butter.  I made some changes like exchanging shallot for onion and adding garlic.  For my version, I also used straight olive oil and no butter.  In one word, DIVINE!  It was so delicious I almost ate it all on the spot right out of the pan!  It was a great addition on crackers and corn muffins.  I wish that I had used it as a spread on a sandwich or burger!  Nom, nom, nom!

Squash & Zucchini were also preserved this week using the shocking and flash freezing method discussed for the cabbage.  The cooking time was found in Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition - 2006 and worked fairly well.  This make me happy to know we have preserved a summer veggie that we can throw into vegetable medleys and stir-fries all winter long without having to buy out of season produce!

This is Basil Puree.  All that it is -- fresh basil, garlic scape and olive oil.  This was blended and then frozen with a little olive oil on the top.  It can be used as a pesto base, as an addition in a sauce, or as a method of seasoning.  This keeps that fresh basil taste year round!

Another Chef Z dish (you can tell by the white dishes) -- We have farfalle pasta cooked in a garlic cream sauce, fresh cherry tomatoes, broccoli, and a rack of lamb with a lamb just reduction. Remember that jus I made for the beef? Well, to add more lamb flavor I took the pan that I seared the lamb on and deglazed with white wine. I scraped the pan with my tongs to get up some of the tasty bits stuck to the bottom, then added the remainder of the jus. I would have preferred to use a rich red wine, but you work with what you got. Turned out pretty freaking tasty, the cherry tomatoes were the highlight of the dish for me though, seriously like crack in tomato form.

Using the bits and pieces removed from the lamb that Chef Z fabricated above, a Panang Curry was made with a small can of the curry mixture from Mama MB's favorite Asian market mixed with coconut milk & onions.  This was served over sushi rice with roasted Romanesco.  So spicy but sooo good.  I had to eat this meal with a HUGE glass of milk.  The great thing though was that it was really filling, plus, the leftovers freeze really well for a second in a rush meal!

Lastly for this week, a Spanish Torta (potato & egg omelet) was created using the recipe from Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition - 2006 using CSA eggs and potatoes with caramelized onions and garlic.  This was served with steamed broccoli and green beans from this weeks share.  It made quite a bit but the great thing about this meal is that it can be eaten at breakfast, lunch or dinner!

Tune in tomorrow to see what we get to cook with this week!

CSA Share: Week 9

This week a lot of preserving is on the menu.  Cabbage, summer squash, zucchini and cucumbers are all being "put up" for winter!  This is personally exciting for me because that means less money to spend this winter on healthy veggies and more variety too!!

If you are reading for the first time, our CSA comes from Screamin' Ridge Farms. Below you will see photos of each type of produce that we received, an amount in parentheses showing how many times we have received the item during the CSA, the approximate weight, and some of our ideas for what to do with the item!  Enjoy and leave us comments if you have any ideas for our produce that we haven't thought of.  We are always welcoming new ideas.

Swiss Chard (2) -- approximately 4.9 oz

Cherry Tomatoes (2) -- approximately 14.7 oz, it should be more but Chef Z ate some on the way back from pick-up

Broccoli (2) -- approximately 14.9 oz

Romanesco (1) -- approximately 12.8oz

Yellow Squash (3) -- approximately 2 lbs 3.1oz

Cucumbers (5) -- approximately 1 lb 5.7 oz

Patty Pan (4) -- approximately 13.8 oz

Yellow Potatoes (1) -- approximately 1 lb 4.3 oz

Zucchini (3) -- approximately 1 lb 12.6 oz

Green Beans (1) -- approximately 1 lb 1.1 oz

Eggs! and ...

1/2 gallon of Milk -- not from the CSA but picked up on the same day from a different farm.

Does anyone have any good ideas for preservation methods for our veggies?  We are finally getting more than we can eat in one week!

The Wednesday Weekly Reheat

THE WEEKLY REHEAT

The review will consist of the following: What I ate, What I liked about it; What I didn’t like about it; Any additions I made to it; What I cooked it in; A score that will be out of ♥♥♥♥♥ with 5 being the highest in the lovin’ factor – Enjoy!

Hello everyone!  This week I was much more diligent when taking photos of food!  So this week we had some of the following meals:

Veggie Scrambled Eggs with Prosciutto:  How can you go wrong with eggs, veggies and meat?  This was a great use what you have meal on a day that was too hot to cook much of anything else!  ♥♥♥♥

 

 Flat bread topped with Screamin' Ridge Pesto, Zucchini & Squash slices, and Cabot Cheddar cheese with a side of Steamed Baby Bok Choy coated with Olive Oil and red pepper flakes:  Nom!  While this dough is not ideal for making traditional thick crust pizzas (I used the Jim Lehay No-Knead Pizza Dough and froze the extra dough) it is great for flat-breads since it gets nice and crispy!  I had some leftover zucchini slices and yellow summer squash so I roughly chopped those into pieces and topped it all with Cabot extra-sharp cheddar.  It was a great change from supper heavy pizzas ♥♥♥♥.  On the side I took 3 baby bok choy and tore the leaves off the stem/stalk and rinsed each leaf individual to get rid of excess dirt.  I took the leaves and cooked them in a steamer basket.  After they were cooked, I tossed them in a dish of olive oil, red pepper flakes, garlic powder & onion powder.  ♥♥♥

Pan Roasted Chicken Leg with Grandma M.B.'s classic stuffing:  having lots of leftover odds & ends bread pieces in the freezer, I took the initiative and made stuffing with celery, carrots, onion, seasoned ground beef meatballs coarsely chopped and of course herbs.  For a reheat meal, it was a great dinner.  The chicken leg was 1/2 of one that Chef Z had made one night before so on a reheat of 2 minutes it was nice and juicy ♥♥♥♥.  The stuffing was not so good on the reheat, even when I sprinkled it was additional water.  The veggies were great, but the bread was just too hard.  I guess that the bread was just too stale the first time around and the additional cook time didn't help♥♥.   

Roasted Veggie Au Gratin: Here is one of my lazy dinner creations that turned out great!  I took a square glass baking dish that fits in our toaster oven (this is a great alternative to a real oven during hot weather) and coated it with a generous amount of olive oil.  I then chopped up 3/4 of a medium sized zucchini, 3/4 of a yellow summer squash, and approximately 5 nice sized cherry tomatoes and tossed them in the baking dish and made sure that they were all coated with oil.  Once coated I spread them so they made an even layer in the dish.  In a small bowl I took bread crumbs, red pepper flakes, Romano cheese, salt & pepper and mixed them together.  I then took the topping and sprinkled it evenly over the top of the baking dish.    I then baked it at 350 for 15-20 minutes, or until the cheese was browned.  While this was baking, I took a variety of pasta that we had in odds and ends and cooked it.  When the vegetables were done, I took a small amount of pasta and topped it with the veggies.  I really enjoyed it and it didn't heat up the house too much! ♥♥♥♥  On the reheat it wasn't quite as good.  The noodles got a little dried out.  The veggies did hold up better on the reheat in the toaster oven.  But not so well in the microwave.  ♥♥♥

Come join us tomorrow to see what treats we are getting in Week 9 of our CSA!