Geauga Family Farms Summer CSA – Week Three

Geauga Family Farms Summer CSA – Week Three

The fact that I’m a day late in posting this doesn’t mean I’m not excited about our CSA share this week. We received a head of lettuce, a bunch of Swiss chard, a bunch of kale, beets with greens on, a zucchini, a cucumber, a large bunch of basil, a tomato, a pint of cherry tomatoes, and a bunch of garlic scapes. Yum! So much variety and interesting ways to use everything.

A nice kale salad with tomatoes, cucumber, and a garlic scape dressing is in the works for tonight, as well as some garlic and garlic scape mashed potatoes. A pesto is definitely going to be on the menu this week, as well. Most everything from last week has been used up, so I’m pretty proud of our CSA progress so far.

Geauga Family Farms Summer CSA – Week Fifteen

Geauga Family Farms Summer CSA – Week Fifteen

Well, we’ve reached the last week of the Geauga Family Farms Summer CSA.  In this week’s share, we received sweet potatoes, two acorn squash, a bunch of collard greens, a bunch of carrots with greens, a bundle of potatoes, and a dozen apples.

Despite cooking at home every night but yesterday and not having gone shopping for a couple of weeks, we managed to have basically everything leftover form last week.  I don’t know how we managed it.  Compounded by my lack of posting, I feel like a bit of a blogging failure.  I made a couple of good dishes but have failed to post them out of sheer laziness.  Basically, I was a total screw up as far as blogging and intelligent menu planning goes this week.

Tonight, I am going to make collard greens and kale simmered in a spicy tomato sauce.  I have an abundance of squash to use – both butternut and acorn, now.  I think I’m going to do a butternut squash and carrot soup one evening.  I have a few different types of peppers to use up (bell, Yummy orange, hot peppers from a coworkers garden, and jalapeños), so I might to a dish that involves some sautéed melange of peppers over some beans and rice.  Almost two dozen apples are sitting on the counter, so I need to either make more apple cider or apple butter or get my lazy butt baking.  If I can accomplish all of that this week, I’ll be left mainly with potatoes and squash, which are safe in the pantry for awhile.

Geauga Family Farms Summer CSA – Week Three

Geauga Family Farms Summer CSA – Week Three

I’m very excited about this week’s haul.  In our share this week, we received a head of green lettuce, two patty pan squash, a pint of jewel-like cherry and grape tomatoes, six gorgeous peaches, a pint of blackberries, a yellow onion, a head of cabbage, two green peppers, and half a dozen ears of Ohio sweet corn.

We did a good job of using up last week’s ingredients.  All we have left are the green beans and potatoes.  It has been too damn hot to turn on the oven, otherwise I surely would have made crispy roasted green beans and some roasted and smashed potatoes.  The heat is supposed to break a little bit, so I’m thinking those are on the table for this week.  The miso glazed beets I posted this week used the beets from week one of the CSA.  The mushroom and silken tofu in miso-dashi broth used a knob onion from last week, though not much else.  I made a pesto-like spread using the fennel fronds which I should be posting shortly.  We also ate a big salad with loads of CSA vegetables including the zucchini, some cucumber, onions, all of the lettuce, and some of the tomatoes with a homemade Caesar dressing using anchovies – delicious!  Zak made a really yummy stir fry using up a lot of other vegetables as well.  Finally, another onion and the fennel bulbs were braised in beer and vegetable stock and served over creamy polenta.

As I already stated, I am really, really, really happy about this week’s share.  The variety is awesome, and I have so many ideas for how to use it all.  I definitely want to tackle the leftovers from last week by roasting and smashing the potatoes and making crispy roasted green beans.  I want to stuff the patty pan squash with some sort of cheesy rice and/or barley mixture, so hopefully the weather will accommodate and grant me with a cooler day to do that.  I want to make a broiled and/or fried pepper sandwich with at least one of the green peppers.  The berries and some of the peaches are going to wind up as blackberry and peach jam, since I’m almost out of my blueberry jam.  I’m not sure what to do with the cabbage and don’t have anything “fancy” planned for the corn (yet).

By the way, if you’re a member of a CSA and want to share what’s in your box (is it bad that whenever I hear “what’s in the box?” I think of Brad Pitt saying it in a hysterical voice over and over again during the last scene of “Seven”?) or need some inspiration for what to do with your box ingredients, check out the link party at In Her Chucks.  It’s got loads of links to other CSA’s and ideas for what to do with the ingredients in them – it’s become a go-to source for me over the past couple of weeks to drool over, envy about, and put on my “to do ” list.