CSA - Week 2

So... I've been eating my veggies. Which is to say, a lot. Almost every meal has vegetables in it. Besides salad, I feel like I'm eating the entire CSA box myself most days. I'm okay with this. 


Four big things happened this week:

1. I tried Fava Beans for the first time.

2. I tried Swiss Chard for the first time.

3. I tried Garlic Scapes for the first time.

4. I tried Dandelion Greens for the first time.

5. I found my first slug inside my lettuce. Even though I'm certain he was free-range, organic fed and not genetically modified, I did not eat him.

Here's what was in the box:





Beautiful, no? And look! Strawberries! All this cost me ~$20, which I think is a great price for all these organic veggies. Included was:


Fingerling potatoes
Carrots, Cucumbers, Lettuce
Baby onions
Chard
Fennel 
Dandelion Greens
Garlic Scapes
Cilantro
Fava Beans
Strawberries


Here's what I did with them all:


Fingerling Potatoes - I boiled them whole, unpeeled, in heavily salted water (1 lb. of kosher salt) until they were tender. The amount of salt seemed ridiculous to me, but once the potatoes were done, they were perfectly salted, with a tender skin that softly burst when I bit through it.

You can see the residue of evaporated salt on the pan rim.

I ate quite of few of them right from the pan, but then decided to roughly mash a few of them. I added some of the baby onion tops, a little butter and pepper. They were delicious, because of course they were.

Carrots, Lettuce, Cucumbers - We just ate them raw. These were my go to midday snacks, while they lasted! I think Anika ate most of the cucumbers herself.

Baby Onions - I tossed these with olive oil, salt, pepper, and balsamic vinegar and then roasted them at 400 degrees, for about 30 minutes. They could have stayed in for a bit longer, but were very good nonetheless. The balsamic vinegar thickened and caramelized on the onions. 

Chard - I was really excited to try this. It was so beautiful just to look at, bright magenta stalks that veined into the dark green leaves above. They sure looked delicious.

The recipe I made was this Chard, Onion and Gruyère Panade from Food.com.

I wish that I had liked this dish, especially because it took quite a bit of time to prepare and make. What I wanted it to taste like was french onion soup, all rich mouth feel with that bite of Swiss. But it just wasn't tasty. The husband agreed. Alas.

Dandelion Greens - I wilted them in a pan with some olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. The next time I make these, I'll be sure and completely remove the tough stalks. The greens turned out tender when flash cooked, but the stalks remained chewy and hard to eat.

Garlic Scapes - I made this Garlic Scape Pesto from Mike Kostyo's blog. I had almost everything on hand to make it, and it came together fast. Pesto has such a high taste payoff for little effort. I used pine nuts rather than pumpkin seeds.

Cheese tortellini with the pesto. I added some of the roasted baby onions too.

Cilantro - I made a pesto with this as well. A Cilantro Lime Pesto! We ate it with chicken in burritos. And by we, I mean me, because no one in my house likes cilantro, yet. So this is what happened to most of it:

This will be great later this year. I'm sure I'll be freezing many other sauces this summer!


Fava Beans - I was hesitant to try these. But I'll try anything once. They looked harmless enough...





I opened them up, and was surprised to find it filled with a fuzzy white fur. I thought maybe it was a bad pod, but they were all filled with the fuzz, the big beans cradled within it.

The luckiest of beans. It looks pretty cozy in there!

Fava beans, de-podded.

After taking the beans out of the pod, I then had to boil them for a few minutes, until the outer shell cracked off. Then I popped the inner bean out. It was a lot of work, for just a few beans. But they were really good. I ate them just as is, with a little salt, kind of like edamame.

Fennel - I sliced the bulb thinly and sauteed them with garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. I am quickly realizing pretty much any vegetable tastes good with garlic, olive oil (or butter), salt and pepper. This is becoming my go to way to cook stuff.





As for the strawberries, we ate them, tops and all, one by one, while lounging on the couch that first night.

Here are a few photos from last week's box. This is the Quinoa and Kale Quiche I made last week. 

These are the Colorado Red Potatoes. I roasted them and they were flippin' awesome. Cooking them cut side down, mixed with the olive oil, salt, and pepper, made a golden brown crunchy crust. 

I chopped them up and made a scramble the next day. 

I'm really enjoying the CSA boxes. Let's see how long I can keep this up. :)