Produce

We have made it to week six of our CSA.  I actually don’t know how many weeks our CSA runs for; I suppose that I should find this out at some point.  This week brought us our first CSA tomatoes.  Have I mentioned recently that I really love fresh, local tomatoes?   We’re also starting to see the first of our non-green bell peppers which makes me a very happy camper.  For some reason I love bell peppers in every colour except green.  

Tomatoes and bell peppers.  The bell pepper there in the top right is a rich shade of purple.  They’re all nice and small as well!  The peppers will be going into fajitas.  The tomatoes of this week will be going into Gazpacho, Caprese, burgers, and salads.  And my mouth.

More basil!  Lemon and regular basil this week.  Along with the garlic scapes I picked up in Pennsylvania, these will be turned into Pesto.  

Beets surprise me.  I’ve found that I really like them quite a lot!  I’ll be roasting these up with carrots this week, although it was hard to fight the urge to make Roasted Beet Risotto again.  

Art didn’t believe that these were hot peppers so he washed one of the small ones and popped it into his mouth.  Then he went running for a drink and shoved a cookie into his mouth to soothe the burning.  Or maybe he just wanted a cookie, I’m not sure.  These will be going into Indian food as well as Art’s mouth.  
Carrots and cabbage sort of speak for themselves.  This is a nice, small head of cabbage and it will be going into a peanut noodle dish.  The carrots will be roasted along with the beets.  

More cucumbers!  I feel like they’re coming out of my ears!  These will be used in Gazpacho as well as the peanut noodle dish.  And salads too, if the Salad Man remembers we’ve got them.  

I’ve recently learned scary things about commercial potatoes that make me appreciate locally grown potatoes about a billion times more than I did before.  I’ll be roasting these beauties and tossing them with pesto.  

Zucchini and yellow squash.  I love squash.  Next week I’m going to try my hand and making stuffed squash but this week I’m planning fajitas.  

I should have taken these out of the bag, but I was afraid I’d be tempted to eat them if I did.  These are from our awesome CSA farmer.  Some are oatmeal cookies with nuts and the others are oatmeal with chocolate chips.  

Green onions also from our CSA farmer, but not from the actual CSA box.  I go through so many green onions during most weeks.  

These are purple things.  The lower two pieces are different varieties of eggplant and I’ll be grilling them.  The top piece is a deep purple bell pepper.  It doesn’t know yet, but its fate is Gazpacho.  This farmer has lots of different varieties of eggplant, including the long, narrow Japanese ones.  I’m going to do some research this week to figure out how to use the Japanese eggplant I plan to buy next weekend.  

I’ve become a fan of buying tomato “seconds” each week.  I think they’re perfect. 

Art loves peaches.  While I don’t plan on cooking anything with them this week, he wanted to get a container anyway for midday snacking.  I love peaches too, so this is a win-win situation.  

These are “mucho nacho” jalapeños.  They called to Art and begged him to take them home with him.  Little do they know they’re going to be stuffed, roasted, and consumed.  

I’m never sure what this size of tomatoes is actually called.  Grape perhaps?  They’re mainly for salads and munching.  

Last year during market season I don’t think I bought a single onion or potato.  I’m not really sure what I was thinking since these are pretty amazing.  They’re nice and sweet, small, and delicious.  Looking at this picture I’m realizing that I probably should have gotten more of them.  Drat.  

And that’s the haul from the market this weekend.  We were a bit more restrained in some than last week and less restrained in others.  We’re starting to see eggplant and bell peppers, not to mention corn.  Glorious corn.  We’ll be having corn for lunch next Saturday.  I’m not sure that we’ll have it with anything; it might just be a meal of corn.  

I think I enjoy writing my CSA posts up after I’ve already done meal planning, since then I can include details about what I’ll be doing with things.  I’ll try to keep this in mind in the future!

This is the fifth week of the CSA and we received a bunch of produce we’ve seen in past weeks.  Sadly rabbits had gotten into the lettuce, so we didn’t get any salad greens this week.  I wonder how grocery store lettuces will compare to the amazing lettuces we’ve gotten these past weeks?  

Beautiful bright green swiss chard.  I’ve been enjoying just sautéing this up with garlic and bacon, but I might have to hunt down a new recipe since I’ve got two nice bunches of it this week.

Eggs!  I remembered to take a picture of them this week.  Maybe this will be a quiche week.  

Beets and green onions.  

Two medium sized zucchinis and a bunch of basil.  This might be the week I make pesto.  I think between the CSA basil and my own herb garden, I might have enough!

These cucumbers are destined to go into gazpacho.  

A head of cabbage.  

Five yellow squashes.  

Carrots!  This is a first for the CSA this year, I’m not sure yet what I’ll do with them, but I’m sure they’ll be tasty.  

Yukon gold potatoes.  It’s tempting to make the same potato and cabbage gratin that I made last week, but I’ll figure out something exciting and new to do with these.  

These zucchini weren’t in the CSA box but I have plans to make zucchini bread this week so I can take a loaf to give to my parents when I see them on Wednesday.  I’ve also learned that I can shred it and freeze it for later bread making endeavors, so I might have to stock up later in the season so I can have good zucchini bread during the winter!  

Moving on in the Farmer’s Market, I picked up a bunch of nice looking onions.  The farmer said that they’re pretty sweet on the onion scale, so I’ll need to take that into account when planning.  

And then it was on to tomatoes.  These are actually “seconds” which, in theory, are not quite as pretty but just as tasty and delicious.  And cheaper.  

And some pretty tomatoes from the farmer!  

We go through so many little tomatoes between salads and everything else, so I grabbed two pints from another farmer.

And yellow tomatoes from the same farmer.  

And, finally, peaches.  These are the first we’ve seen of the summer and they come from the farm that borders our backyard.  You can’t get more local than that!  Art loves peaches and he suggested that I get a bunch to make his favorite dessert – Peach Crisp.  I’d actually been thinking about Peach Crisp for many months now and I’m glad I’ll finally be able to make it.  

I now have lots and lots of tomatoes.  I’m so excited.  Some of them will go in gazpacho, some will go into a recipe for caprese pie that looks delicious, and I’ll see how many I have left after those two things.  I love tomatoes.  Oh yes.

This week is the fourth week of our CSA and I’m still thrilled with everything.  One of the things I’m noticing is that the amounts of vegetables I get are, indeed, smaller due to receiving a half-share.  Duh, right?  I’m going to be paying more attention to that when I’m planning meals this week and will most likely be halving the recipes using CSA veggies in order to take into account the smaller amounts of vegetables.  This will also let me have meals with two vegetable dishes, which will make it easier to make it through all of our produce each week!  

Two bunches of basil – one is regular and the other is lemon basil.  It has a distinct lemony flavor and an almost minty flavor.  There’s also more dill.

Our usual compliment of lettuces.  We received a bag of mixed greens and two small heads of leafy green lettuce.  

A nice bunch of Swiss chard and green onions.  We also got a pretty wildflower.  

A bunch of beets with greens and a handful of turnips.  I’ve never had beets before, so I’m looking forward to trying these.  Our farmer said that they’re variegated inside so won’t bleed as much as regular beets. 

Cute little cucumbers.  I’ve only started to enjoy cucumbers within the past few years and I’m not entirely sure what to do with them outside of salads, sandwiches and sushi.  I believe I’m going to attempt to make gazpacho.  

A nice pile of new potatoes!  

More yellow squash and zucchini.  I believe that next week I’ll buy a bunch more zucchini and work on baking some bread.  It freezes well and makes lovely gifts.  

Cabbage!

That’s it for the CSA box, aside from the eggs that I forgot to photograph before Art put them in the fridge.  Everything below is from other farmers at the market.  Everything always looks so delicious that any impulse control I have fails.  

Here are more cucumbers… There is a lesson here and that is “Check your CSA box before buying other stuff.”  I didn’t notice that I already had cucumbers when I bought these, so now I have lots and lots of cucumbers!

Beautiful pattypan squash.  Art was sad that he missed my first experimentation with pattypans, so I knew I had to get more so that he’d be able to try them as well.  

It’s still a bit early for tomatoes here, but we’re at the beginning edge of tomato season.  These are four “seconds” from one of the farmers.  Apparently they’ve got a few dings that make them less desirable, and cheaper, but they just look perfect and beautiful to me.  

I go through grape tomatoes like candy in this house.  They’re a main component in all sorts of salads and other dishes.  This is the first time I’ve been able to get them at the market.  Between these, the eggs, and the green onions, I have a good foundation for loaded egg salad one of these days.  

I also bought some new herbs for my garden.  Sadly, our herb farmer was out of spearmint, but I was able to get rosemary, thyme and tarragon.  I think that pretty much takes care of all of my herb needs.  I decided not to plant them today since it’s raining outside and I’m still a bit sore from all the walking in Vegas earlier in the week, but I’ll be sure to take more pictures once I plant these.  My peppers are starting to flower and all of the herbs except for the dill are flourishing nicely.

Today we picked up our third CSA box as well as a few fresh herbs to expand my potted herb garden.  Sadly, since Lance and I will be out of town next week, I had to fight the urge to buy anything other than the herbs.  I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to use up all of the gorgeous veggies from my box this week!  

This week’s CSA box included the following delicious goodies.  Sadly, I forgot to take pictures of the eggs, but I did get there early enough to get a dozen beautiful eggs.  

A big bag of salad greens and two heads of lettuce, green leaf and red leaf.

This is the first time we’ve gotten broccoli in our box!  

More yellow squash and zucchini.  

Cucumber is another first in our box and it’s still a challenge for me since I’ve only grown to enjoy cucumber in the last few years.  I’m looking forward to figuring out how to use this.  

More green onions.  I can never have too many of these!

Not only is kale new for our CSA box, it’s also new to me.  I’ve never had it before and tend to think of it as iguana food due to my high school roommate’s iguana.  Hopefully it’s tasty for humans as well.  

I’ve found some delicious looking turnip recipes in the past week in hopes that I’d get more turnips in this week’s box.  And I did!  

That’s it for the box this week, lots of delicious looking vegetables and we’ll be having salad for all of the early meals this week.  I’m slowly learning which things last till the end of the week and which produce needs to be eaten early on in the week.  

I also expanded my herb garden this weekend.  

These are the peppers from earlier in the week; they’re still looking pretty and have some flowering going on.  I learned that I’m not supposed to pick these off.  

Little teeny cilantro plants.  I love cilantro and use it often.  Once tomato season starts up, I look forward to making salsa with good, local ingredients.  And lots and lots of fresh cilantro from my own back yard.  

This pot has gorgeous variegated sage on the left side and Greek oregano on the right.  

This pot doesn’t look like much, but it’s got chives in the upper left and the other two plants are dill.  The dill plants were HUGE stalks when I got them, but I trimmed them for planting.  In theory they will bush out as they continue to grow.  

Here’s the parsley from last week.  Not dead yet.  

This is the basil from last week, still shiny, green, and it smells so fantastic.  

Here are all six pots!  I have soil, rocks and pots for two more pots and they’ll be getting mint, rosemary and thyme.  Then my garden will be complete.  I’ve already got plans for expansion next year.

I’m not very good at growing things.  My cats make growing things inside impossible and my lack of motivation makes growing things outside difficult.  However, one of the farmer’s at our local market sells fresh herbs ready for planting and they call to me every week.  I admit, I also feel a little guilty that she has nothing I want to buy.  

After thinking, talking, and a bit of research, I decided that I was going to give herb gardening in outside pots a try.  I quickly found out that I’d need more than just one huge pot, so I opted to get smaller ones and keep my herbs separated from each other.  

Since our market is open Wednesdays and Saturdays, I stopped by today to buy some plants.  While the farmer who sells herbs on Saturdays wasn’t there, another farmer had a smaller selection.  Although I’m a bit sad I couldn’t buy 50 different herbs all at once, it’s probably a good thing that, for this initial stage of the experiment, I was limited to basil, parsley, and some hot peppers.  Sold in 4-packs, I picked up two basils, two parsleys, and one each of serrano and jalapeño.  

On the way home, I stopped by the local Lowes to get 3 12” pots, soil, and some rocks for better drainage.  The plants totaled about $6.  The supplies were quite a bit more!  

The landscaping in my back yard has some tiers and I easily found some empty space on the lowest tier to place my pots.  This has the tops of the pots at about waist height, which will make harvesting easier for my knees and back.  They’re about 15 feet away from my kitchen, which should increase the likelihood that I’ll remember to use them and care for them on a regular basis.  

I put some a few inches of rocks in each pot, filled them most of the way up with soil, and them smooshed the plants into them, patting down the dirt afterward.  

Here’s hoping that nothing dies and I’ve got delicious herbs throughout the growing months!  I’m sure I’ll be adding to my burgeoning garden in weeks to come as I fail to resist the calls of sage, thyme, oregano, mint, cilantro, chives… and so many more.  

Today we picked up our second CSA box and topped it off with veggie selections from the other farmers at the market as well.  Sadly, we got there a bit too late to get fresh eggs, but I had to restrain myself not to buy more vegetables than I’d be able to use during the course of the week otherwise.  

Our CSA box, which is a half-share geared for two people, contained the following:
A good sized bunch of fresh dill.  Perhaps I’ll make stroganoff this week?

Another bag of gorgeous salad greens.  I was tempted to buy a second bag, but Art is traveling this week so 2 bags would probably be more than Lance and I could eat.  

A pretty head of green leaf lettuce.  

These are turnip greens.  I have no idea what they are, what they taste like, or what to do with them.  Eep!

This is Jersey Wakefield Cabbage which our farmer, Tina, prefers to normal cabbage.  She says it has a better flavor and I’m looking forward to trying it out this week.  

I pretty much never have enough green onions.  If I get these in my veggie box all season, I’ll be a happy camper.  Fresh green onions seem to have a stronger flavor than the grocery bought ones I get in the winter.  

Radishes on the left and turnips on the right!  The radishes will probably go into more salads, since Lance loves them.  The turnips are going to supplement last week’s turnips and go into a gratin that I had planned to cook tonight for dinner.  

Beautiful green zucchini.  I’m glad that people who plant zucchini get overrun with them; because that means that I get to reap the benefits of their excess.  I love zucchini.  Zucchini bread, stir fry, fajitas… you name it, I love it.  I had a hard time resisting the urge to buy more!

Elsewhere at the market we filled up our bag with these other gems:

This is oak leaf lettuce.  I probably should have gotten a better picture to show you that the leaves really do look like oak leaves.  I didn’t need more lettuce for the week, but I’ve never even heard of this variety and curiosity got the better of me.  

Did I mention I love green onions?  This is “five” of them, from our favorite Pesto Lady, Claudia.  

While I did fight off the siren call of zucchini, I was not quite so successful with the yellow squash.  I suppose this means we’ll be eating veggie heavy fajitas this week.  It’s my favorite way to use yellow squash and zucchini together.  

These are three different types of pattypan squash.  I think.  Each variety has a different lovely name and they look like brightly coloured jewels.  I was waffling about whether or not to buy any, since I was already feeling pretty loaded up on vegetables for the week, but the farmer gave these to me as a teaser and I couldn’t refuse.  

And finally, tomatoes.  It’s not technically tomato season yet, but we have a farmer at our market that grows them in soil in a hot house during the cooler months.  They were expensive at $3.50 a pound, but they called to me.  They begged me to take them home with me and, yet again, I couldn’t refuse.  It wasn’t until last year, when the market here started, that I finally “got” tomatoes.  Nothing you can buy at the grocery store compares to a fresh, local, never seen the inside of a refrigerator tomato.  These are beautiful, perfect, and will be meaty and delicious when I cut into them.  

On a side note, we have a farmer at the market who sells fresh herbs in pots.  I’ve always been leery of growing my own herbs.  I can’t grow them inside thanks to overly curious cats and I’ve never had much luck with growing them outside.  The idea of being able to pick fresh basil from my back yard is extremely appealing, though, so I’m thinking that I might get a big pot from some garden supply store this week and try my hand at growing some fresh herbs outside my back door this year.  Maybe.  If I build up enough courage!  

Keep your eyes peeled for upcoming menus and recipes where I will elaborate how I plan to use this Southern Maryland bounty!

Today we picked up our first CSA box as well as produce from the other farmers at our local Farmer’s Market.  I apologize for the quality of some of these pictures, I’m still learning what works and what doesn’t and forgot to take multiple shots of things in the process.  

Our CSA box, which is a half-share, consisted of the following goodies:

One dozen fresh eggs, to be used in various baking and breakfast applications throughout the week.

Mmm.  Salad greens.  Nothing more really needs to be said.  Between this and the leaf lettuce below, we’ll have lovely salads all week.  
A nice sized head of green leaf lettuce which will supplement the salad mix in numerous salads.  

Green onions, which were supplemented by some from another farmer that aren’t pictured.  These will be used in a number of the week’s recipes as well as omelets.  

A nice handful of both parsley and dill.  The dill will be used in a salmon dish and the parsley will go into the Greek Chicken Pasta.  Fresh dill smells divine.  

Believe it or not, I’ve never eaten either of these things.  Lance loves radishes and we’ll be eating them with our frequent salads.  I’m still not entirely sure what will happen with the arugula, but I have a feeling it will be going into the Three-Cheese Baked Penne.  

The picture does not do this Swiss chard justice.  It’s a nice bright green and the stalks are crisp.  Chard is another vegetable that I’ve never had the pleasure of eating, although I believe that my mom loves the stuff.  I opted for Sauteed Chard with Pancetta, which is a rather simple recipe, in order to let the flavor of the chard come through.  

Turnips are yet another vegetable I haven’t tried before.  This is part of the joy of a CSA for me, getting to try new things but not having to pick them out myself.  These will be going into the Turnip-Potato Gratin.  

That’s all from the CSA box.  Lots of new veggies to experiment with and a good mix of tried and true favorites.  I’ve been trying to subscribe to a CSA for 4 years now, and I could not be more pleased!  In addition to the CSA box we picked up the following from other farmers at the market:  

Four nice heads of broccoli.  Last week, as I pulled out a bag of frozen broccoli from the freezer, I said to myself, “Maybe I’ll be able to get fresh broccoli next week!”  I was not disappointed and I’ll be roasting this for a meal during the week.  

This is low sugar strawberry jam from a local farm.  If you have the access to locally made jams, I can’t recommend them enough.  Art loves this stuff as he finds commercially made jams entirely too sweet.  

These beautiful strawberries come from the farm that we share about 5 feet of property line with.  They’re not cheap, but you’ve got to take advantage of them when they’re in season, right?  

Sugar snap peas are likely my favorite variety of pea.  These will be going into a dish called Chicken with Creamy Mushrooms and Snap Peas, assuming I can restrain myself from just munching on them raw.  We also picked up some young or “green” garlic from this farmer, but I neglected to take a picture of it.  Green garlic is very similar to green onion and can be used in similar applications where you might use onion or even shallot.  I used last week’s green garlic in a risotto with great success.

You can find the meal plans for these vegetables here.