Reflections on Week 2 and Garlic Scape Time!

So finishing Week 2 and beginning to think about Week 3, I have had some time to see how a weekly CSA fits into our weekly dining plans.  Just a reminder of what was in last week's share:

Lettuce

Baby Carrots 
Broccoli

Sugar Snap Peas

Spinach

Burdock Root

Cilantro

Oregano

As you can see the early season brings lots of herbs and greens, which means lots of salad.  This is the first time we actually had to throw away some items, which I HATE to do.  The first item I had to toss was the burdock root.  Apparently the burdock root needed to be refrigerated, the root doesn't do to well being left out on the counter. The other thing we ended up tossing was part of the spinach, as we had just too much.  I need to get better about taking things into work and sharing with my co-workers.

I used a few sprigs of oregano fresh when making chickpea pasta the other night.  

The remaining was dried in the oven and will be used as a dried spice, which was already used to season frozen pizza.  Drying herbs in the oven is a very easy process, while the herbs may not be as favorable as if they were dried naturally for a few weeks, I think the extra flavor doesn't justify the extra work.  To dry fresh herbs in the oven set your oven on the lowest setting and place them in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour.  After the baking time, turn off the oven and leave the dried herbs in the oven overnight.  When finished place the dried herbs in a airtight jar. 

So what about Week 3; what surprises will be in the share this week?

Lettuce (2 Heads; 1 Small and 1 Large)

Radishes
Snow Peas

Dill

White Knob Onions

Garlic Scapes

Beets (Although I exchanged the beets for another bunch of garlic scapes)

So what in the world is a garlic scape?  Garlic scapes are the shoots that are removed right before a bulb of garlic divides into cloves.  Garlic scapes have a mild garlic flavor and can be used in anything that calls for garlic.  The scapes can also be used to make a pesto without basil or other herbs.  Garlic scapes are a fleeting favorite for garlic lovers!

Stir Fry - The Perfect Weeknight Dinner

So many nights after a long day at work, the last thing you want to think about is making dinner.  For nights when pizza delivery sounds better than making dinner, the ideal meal is stir fry.  In less than 30 minutes, you can have a filling and healthy meal on the table.  Stir fry works so well because while the rice is cooking, you are able to multi-task and prepare the sauce and begin to prepare the stir fry.  Stir fries are also great for nights when payday is still a week away.  With just a few staples, you can have a filling dinner.

 Peas and Broccoli All Chopped and Ready to Go

The stir fry used the broccoli and 1/2 of the pea pods, as well as a bag of frozen stir fry veggies.  For the sauce I made my favorite Asian inspired sauce, the wonderfully epic sauce from General Tao's Tofu (hint: double the sauce recipe).

After making the sauce, I added the vegtables to the wok.  After the veggies had a nice crust, I added the sauce to the wok, letting the vegetables pick up the flavor of the sauce.  To finish plating the stir fry, add the stir fry to a base of rice.  We use basmati rice in our kitchen.  Basmati is inexpensive at warehouse clubs.  I am able to get a 15 lb bag of rice from Sam's for around $10.00.  This amount of rice lasts almost 6 months, even when typically having rice 2 nights a week.

Week 1 Wrap-up and Week 2 Share

So we did pretty good for our first CSA week.  The only item that hasn't been used is the rhubarb, mainly because I haven't been motivated enough to chop it up and freeze it with some sugar.  The plan is to freeze it for either pie, or at the recommendation of a co-worker, strawberry-rhubarb jam.

The remainder of the cilantro and green garlic was used for making cilantro pesto, which I froze, and making salsa last Friday for Black Bean Burrito Bake.  This was the first time I got to use the food grinder attachment my mother gave me for my KitchenAid for Christmas.  As you can see below, the food grinder made a nice fresh salsa.  I will definitely use the grinder again to save me from endless chopping.

So what about week 2, what vegetables would I get this week?  Monday night I received an email from my CSA with what I could expect on Tuesday. 

Week of June 7, 2011:

Lettuce

Baby Carrots 
Broccoli

Sugar Snap Peas

Spinach

Burdock Root

Cilantro

Oregano

The strangest item in the share this week is burdock root.  Burdock root its not very common in American and European cuisine, yet remains popular in Asian cooking.  The recommendation from my CSA is to use the root to make burdock chips, similar to potato chips.  What's not to like?!  Fried and salty!!  Because of the wet spring we have had here, the broccoli is stunted, but should still be good.

 From L to R: Spinach, Baby Carrots, Broccoli, Sugar Snap Peas, Lettuce, Oregano, Cilantro (Store in Water to help keep longer), Burdock Root (across top)

Also on the menu this week:

Stir fry- half of the sugar snap peas and the broccoli
Salad - Lettuce and part of the spiniach
Baby Carrots - Glazed as a side dish with pasta
Pasta - Remaining 1/2 of sugar snap peas and some of the oregano
Burritos - Includes cilantro hummus
Burdock Chips - Side dish with homemade bean burgers
Remaining oregano will be dried for spices

All in all, a nice varied share this week, and I look forward to eating the share!

A Rare Miss

Since becoming a vegetarian 18 months ago, I have trouble thinking of something I made that my girlfriend and I that we haven't finished and usually liked or loved.  Becoming vegetarian helped to expand my culinary horizons.  Originally we used prepackaged meat substitutes to help replace certain meals.  Over the last 18 months, we are using less and less packaged meat substitutes, as I have learned to make things such as veggie burgers.  Seeing beets in this weeks CSA share, I decided I would make veggie burgers with beets.

Beets and I have a checkered past.  Growing up, my parents had a family friend that they would often visit.  These visits usually involved dinner, including the "perpetual salad".  This was a salad that they had with dinner that usually just had new stuff added to it.  One of the always found items were beets.  These beets overpowered the salad and usually turned the salad an appetizing shade of pink.  I had always thought beets tasted like dirt, so I tended to avoid them.

I figured this week would be a great chance to give beets another chance, as I have gotten older my tastes have changed.  I found several recipes for beet burgers, usually including rice as a binder.  The other night I roasted beets, onions and some green garlic in the oven for about an hour, until nice and tender.   After the beets cool, I remove the skins and dice the beets up.  Just a heads up, beets will stain your hands and anything else they touch a nice shade of purple, so I would recommend not wearing anything light-colored.  I then added the diced beets, onions and garlic, to a bowl of rice and mashed black beans.  I seasoned the mixture with garlic, salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder and oregano.  The mixture made 6 patties, which I then refrigerated overnight.

Coming home after work, I pulled out my flat grill pan and excitedly browned up the patties.  The patties took on a nice brown crust.  Even with the nice crust, the patties were not very good.  My girlfriend said "These taste like something I would eat in the woods if I needed to survive".  After my first bite I replied, "This tastes like what people think vegetarian food tastes like".   We ended up eating the salad we made with the greens from the CSA share and then ran to Hyvee, and took advantage of the 2-day sale, buying a few boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.  If beets are in a future share they will be left on the exchange table, and replaced with something else.

An Experiment with Quiche

 Spinach, eggs, cheese and radishes?!

When I saw spinach on the CSA list this week, the first thing that came to mind was quiche.  Quiche is a great dish for a weeknight, throw some items in a pan for a quick saute, whisk some eggs, add them to a crust, top with cheese and bake; in 40 minutes viola it's dinner!  Common ingredients in quiche are eggs, cheese and spinach.  What about radishes?  Well seeing that I had a bunch of fresh radishes in the fridge, I decided to experiment adding radishes to my quiche.  If this disaster turned out to be a disaster, Papa John's is only a phone call away.  

It turned out my fears were unfounded, the radishes while an unusual addition to quiche created a wonderful subtle spice to the quiche.  Raw radishes were too strong to add to a mellow dish, like a quiche, but sauteing them with some onions and green garlic helped to mellow out the edge of the raw radish and the green garlic.

 Sliced radishes and green garlic ready for the pan

 A quick saute in olive oil, onions, salt and pepper helps remove some of the bite of the radishes and green garlic

As with most quiche recipes, mix the eggs with spices and a bit of cheese. 

 Mix the eggs and the vegetables, notice the nice color the radishes give the mix.

Pour the mix into a pie crust, top with cheese and bake at 350 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes

So would I use radishes again in a quiche?  You bet, the radishes added a nice layer of flavor to a sometimes bland dish.  I look forward to a couple slices for lunch tomorrow!

Spinach and Radish Quiche

Prep Time: 20 Minutes Baking Time: 40-45 Minutes

Ingredients:

2 to 3 Radishes, Quartered and Thinly Sliced  

1/2 Small Sweet Onion, Finely Diced 

2 Cloves of Garlic or 1 Bulb of Green Garlic, Minced Finely

1/2 lb of Fresh Spinach, roughly torn

2 Tablespoons of Olive Oil

2 Tablespoons of Balsamic Vinegar (I used Trader Joe's White Balsamic Vinegar)

4 Large Eggs

1/2 Teaspoon of Garlic Powder

1 Teaspoon of Onion Powder

1/2 Tablespoon of Dried Dill

1/2 Tablespoon of Stiracha Sauce or other Favorite Hot Sauce (Optional)

1 cup of shredded cheese of choice (I used cheddar)

1 Frozen 9-inch Deep Dish Pie Crust

Sour Cream, Optional

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Dice radishes (remove leaves and roots, if included), onions and green garlic (remove root and top wilted leaves).
3. Heat a medium skillet over medium heat, adding olive oil.
4. Saute onions for 4-5 minutes, until soft and transluent.
5. Add garlic and radishes to pan, seasoning with salt and pepper.  Saute for another 4-5 minutes or until the radishes are soft.
6. Add spinach to skillet, season with pepper and vinegar.  Allow the spinach to wilt, then add pan contents (spinach, onions, radishes and garlic) to large bowl to cool.
7. Add eggs and spices (dill, garlic powder, onion powder, hot sauce, salt/pepper) and 1 pinch of shredded cheese to a medium bowl.  
8. Whisk egg mixture and add to bowl of spinach and vegetables.
9. Pour mixture of eggs and vegetables to pie crust and top with cheese.
10. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until golden brown.  Serve with sour cream if desired.

 

 

Radishes, Rhubarb and Introductions: CSA Week 1

Like a kid waiting for Christmas morning, I was eagerly counting down the hours at work today, waiting for 5:00 pm to pick up my first share.  After I left work, I headed over to the house of a local CSA member, who was in charge of the CSA pick-up in my area.  Walking up the steps to her porch I was greeted with a smile and a hearty hello.  I was then handed an approximately 50 page cookbook with recipes and facts of all the veggies my farmer is growing.   After introductions I turned my attention to the tables full of this week's harvest.  Walking through, signs instructed me to pick up one of each item.  At the end, there was a table for exchanging items that someone may not like.  This being my first week, I decided to take my share without exchanging anything.

This week's share included from L to R:
Spinach
Beets and Beet Greens
Radishes
Green Garlic
Rhubarb
Spring Salad Mix
Cilantro


Plans for this week's share include a spinach and radish quiche, beet veggie burgers, green garlic pasta, a spring green salad, pico de gallo for a weekend road trip, and prepping rhubarb to be frozen for a pie later.  The green garlic will be used to replace the garlic in many dishes this week.  Green garlic is basically very young, 4 to 6 week old, garlic.  Green garlic has a very strong garlic flavor that can be mellowed with a simple saute. Since my girlfriend and I have plans to go out of town this weekend, we are trying to use a majority of the share up before Friday afternoon.
 

First Post and Eve of First CSA Pick-Up

This is my first season utilizing a CSA for a majority of our vegetables.  This is also my first attempt at blogging.  My girlfriend and I are vegetarians, so hopefully we will have no problem utilizing our CSA bounty each week.

Before we get started, let me explain what a CSA is for those unfamiliar with the concept.  A CSA, which stands for community-supported agriculture, is a membership-based association.  Members pledge support to a local farmer and in return members receive a weekly share of the farmer's product.  These members accept the risks and rewards of the farmer's season, if the season is good, the member is rewarded with a bountiful harvest of a wide variety of vegetables.  On the other hand if the season is not so good, the member may not have as wide variety of vegetables, or a lesser quality of product.

The CSA I have joined for this season is a 26-week long share, through Henry's Farm here in Central Illinois.  The CSA share was $400.00, which is about $15.00 a week.  $15.00 a week may sound like a lot for vegetables, but pricing organic and out-of season vegetables at the local Kroger came out about the same price.  The fact that these vegetables are in-season and grown locally helps even out any price differences.

This blog will be a place to reflect upon my CSA impressions, as well as a place to share recipes, and results of these recipes, on some of the new veggies I get in the weekly share (what in the world do I do with beet greens?).   Without further ado, let's see what is in the inaugural CSA share. 

Week of May 31, 2011:

Green Garlic

Leaf Lettuce

Radishes

Spinach

Cilantro

Beets with Beet Greens

Rhubarb

Pictures and initial impressions will (hopefully) follow after pick-up tomorrow!