Cake and Cumin

First, you’ll notice a different background for this week’s veggies… that’s cause we moved! The best part about the new place… the cabinet specially made for spices! (see the pic below).

Now, down to business… sugar peas, hull peas, beets, strawberries, kale, purple asparagus, tomatoes, lettuce and spring onions.

The tomatoes are going in a tomato soup! Asparagus and likely both kinds of peas will be put in a stir-fry with some spring onions as well. The lettuce is great for salads… obviously. I think this time around the strawberries will just be eaten in yogurt, and finally those beets! I think we’ll slice them up thinly and saute them with their greens and the kale.

I recently decided (and by recently, I mean as I opened up this window) that I’ll try to give CSA baskets titles this time around (mostly because last time it was really hard to try and remember what number I was on and if I had missed a week). The picture below is from last week’s CSA. You’ll see there were a lot of salad greens, so I didn’t end up doing a post because most of the stuff was used for salad. I will tell you though, beyond just having the greens for standard salad we did make a moosewood crunchy tofu salad with peanut/soy sauce which was super delish.

Now for this week… this week, we got rhubarb, strawberries, peppermint, spring onions, swiss schard (2 bunches cause we swapped our beets for some more chard), red lettuce, and radishes.

We’re a little brunt out on strawberry rhubard crisp so I’m making a rhubarb chutney with the rhubarb and strawberry ice cream with the strawberries. Unrelated to the basket, I have the most amazing Molly Moon’s recipe for hot fudge which we don’t make too often because we just can’t stop eating it, but I’ll be making a batch this week.

We love the radishes in butter and often sautee both the radish and radish greens with some garlic.

The lettuce will be used as salad (we literally have not had to buy salad greens in weeks!).

We’ll dry the peppermint (we got oregano last week… used some fresh on pizza and dried the rest).

Finally, i’m not sure what we’ll do with the spring onions. We often through it into dishes spontaneously. I do, however, now have a nice size bunch from last week and this week so I’ll find a recipe that takes a decent amount of spring onion. We’ll probably put a lot of it into a quiche we’re making this week and may use some in BBQ seitan sandwiches for a little extra kick.

You can see the chard pictured below which was made alongside some rice and fish with tomato, basil, summer squash, and shallots (recipe is from epicurious).

Hi tumblr-world! It’s been a little while. I’m happy to announce that our summer CSA has started and it is amazing! So, here we go again… in between marathon work-sessions to make sure people know Neighborsations is the most amazing new platform to meet and make friends in your neighborhood, I’ll be listing what we got and how we’ll use it.

This week the box was HUGE. We got bibb lettuce, baby greens, red leaf romaine lettuce, another kind of lettuce/spring greens, radishes, asparagus, potatoes, swiss chard, kale, rhubarb, and spring onions.

The radishes were cooked last night… both greens and actual radishes. I love sauteing them in butter with some garlic, salt, and pepper. We threw the kale in there as well because there wasn’t a lot.

All the greens will be eaten in salads, and sandwiches (we had salmon burgers last night).

I have no idea what to do with rhubarb except make a strawberry rhubarb crisp (also what would you do besides that) so that’s what I’ll do.

The chard will be sauteed. Nothing better than the simple olive oil, salt, and pepper for that stuff.

I’m making some pasta on Wednesday with peas, mint, and parmasean, so the asparagus would be perfect in that.

Finally, at least some of the potatoes will go in to a minestrone soup. And the spring onions… geez those are like the ultimate “throw in anything” item. I add it to pasta, veggies, tofu dishes, and pretty much anything that needs a slight kick.

Although recently this blog has been more inspirational quotes and entrepreneurial journey-related things, I promise I am still cooking! The winter CSA (which is coming to an end) has been fantastic. Mostly greens and so instead of turning them into some complex recipes, most of it is chop and saute in olive oil or butter with a little salt and pepper. Serious deliciousness. But this weekend… we hit a disaster.

This past weekend I had set aside time to cook a few Syrian desserts… 1 I’ve made over a dozen times and 2 that were brand new! It was awful! For the first recipe, my dough was just not working. The dough was way too flaky, and every time I added more water, it made it border line too sticky. The goal was to make these beautiful little cheese turnovers, the result were like the ugliest things I’ve ever produced. The second cookie, greybeh, are a traditional sugar/butter cookie shaped in rings (they’re usually made for engagements or weddings). I think this was one of the most infuriating tasks I have ever attempted. The dough was so fragile and light that it practically fell apart in my hands. I made about 10 rings before “pivoting” and deciding to make thumbprint cookies instead. The third food was ka’ik, anise-flavored rings. Thank goodness these came out delicious because if I had spent 7 hours cooking and NOTHING came out, I may have lost it a little bit.

One a side note, last night I made caramel ice cream with homemade hot fudge. The fudge is unbelievable and while it took the ice cream a little longer to freeze for some reason, paired with the hot fudge, it makes me want to eat ice cream all day long.

I’m super excited to be participating in this excellent panel on Tuesday, Feb. 19th with some other amazing ladies. RSVP here if you’re in DC and interested in attending: https://mightybell.com/spaces/14219/posts/61867

I just have to keep looking at this… at least once per day! Should be the prescription for every entrepreneur.

I’ve lost track a little bit on what week we’re at for the CSA. I’ve been cooking a lot (you’ve seen some of the pictures) but not posting about cooking plans, so I’m playing a little catch-up. Last week we got spinach, cabbage, swiss chard, homemade noodles, salad greens, other kinds of salad greens, romanesco (the triangle looking things below, they are like a mix between cauliflower and broccoli), parsley, broccoli, and butter (yup, that log in the front is a huge thing of homemade butter!). This week, we got a bunch of potatoes (only 2 are shown), kale, cut kale (I think), celery, garlic, radishes, spinach, and a jar of pickled beets.

To be honest, the great thing about the winter CSA is that almost everything you just saute up with garlic and olive oil… it’s amazing. So pretty much every time you see a green, that’s what we’ve done.

This past week, we did use the chard and broccoli in a dal with veggies recipe from Mark Bittman which was delicious. The radishes we’ve been sauteing in butter with some garlic, salt and pepper and they turn out really really good. If we have parsley or some sort of herb I’ll usually throw it in there. This upcoming week, I’m thinking of doing a potato, fennel, leek soup with the potatoes and there is a plan to make Cape Cod Turkey (salt cod) which uses potatoes.

As for the cabbage… we now have two still in the fridge so I’ll have to make those sooner rather than later and all I can say for the beets is at least I don’t have to do anything with them… they’re just there whether we eat them or not.