Geauga Family Farms Summer CSA – Week Four

Geauga Family Farms Summer CSA – Week Four

In this week’s CSA, we received half a dozen hot Hungarian wax banana peppers, two white onions, a watermelon, two tomatoes, a pint of multicolored cherry and grape tomatoes, a green pepper, a small patty pan squash, a head of lettuce, a small bag of redskin potatoes, and half a dozen ears of sweet corn.

I was happy with the amount of last week’s ingredients we used.  We still have redskin potatoes leftover from week two, which is no big deal as they last quite awhile.  I ended up burning the green beans because, well, it happens to the best of us.  I was making crispy roasted green beans.  I check them and they were almost done.  Another five minutes went by and they were charred to a crisp – and not in a good way.  Ugh.  Other than that, we had one of the two green bell peppers from last week turn into a rotted, disgusting mess by Tuesday evening.  The lettuce is the only thing that’s really “leftover,” so a couple salads will have to be in the works this weekend.

We fired up the grill to make whole grilled golden trout and grilled corn, which used up a couple ears of the CSA corn.  Naturally, the charred pepper sandwich used a CSA green bell pepper.  Finally, the esquites, or Mexican street corn salad, used the remainder of the CSA corn.  Many of the peaches were eaten out of hand, but a couple went into a blackberry and peach jam that I will be posting in the near future.  We used the cabbage in an Asian noodle stir fry that Zak made.  Finally, the patty pan squash was stuffed.  I’ll be posting the recipe soon.

I’m very pleased with this week’s share.  I’m going to use the corn to make more esquites to bring as a side dish to dinner at a friend’s house this evening.  I would like to make some version of a stuffed pepper with the Hungarian hots.  I’m not sure what to do with the patty pan, since Zak has declared a deep and abiding hatred of it.  He says, not incorrectly, that it’s a very bland squash.  We never seem to have a problem using up tomatoes, although I also have two huge, juicy heirloom tomatoes from my dad that need to get eaten in addition to the ones we received today.  As for the watermelon, I don’t know whether we should just eat in yummy, chilled slices or try to make a juice (which can be a bit time consuming, though very rewarding).  I definitely want to make a big salad with our leftover lettuce and the new lettuce.

Some of you might wonder why I end each share post with a summary of how I think I might use the produce.  First and foremost, it’s because Zak and I usually do any grocery shopping we need to do on either Saturday or Sunday.  By talking myself through what I’ll be making with all of the CSA ingredients (or most of them) I try to ensure that I’ll use everything up, and be able to create a shopping list that includes anything “extra” I might need to make what I intend.  This saves money and time because I won’t be wasting food, buying things I don’t need, or having to run to the store more than once in a week.