Saturday, November 3, 2012

CSA Weeks 16, 17 and 18

Hello hello, and happy November! Is it awful that the moment Halloween ended, I started hearing Christmas carols in my head? I come from a family that takes Christmas very seriously, and November is just prep time for yuletide. I'm itching to break out my three Christmas trees and start baking cookies and pies!

But I'm getting way ahead of myself. I still have to tell you about the final weeks of my Silverbrook Farm CSA, and in my next post I'll feature the first share of my new bi-weekly winter pickup from The Kitchen Garden.

Week 16 of my Silverbrook CSA brought:
Butternut squash, lettuce, pea tendrils, apples, tomatoes, ground cherries, potatoes, green peppers, and grapes. I also bought cranberries, parsnips and borlotti beans.

I used the cranberries and pea tendrils in this recipe for pan-seared scallops on a bed of greens and sprouts, drizzled with cranberry and horseradish sauce. The original recipe called for mixing horseradish into prepared cranberry sauce, but I could only find horseradish in sauce form itself, so I criss-crossed the two, and was very pleased with the results. This dish looks beautiful, has a unique combo of flavors, and is filling but light. Plus, this was the first time I had made cranberry sauce from scratch, and I couldn't believe how easy and quick it was!

Next, Taco Day rolled around (which was also Vodka Day), and the lettuce, borlotti beans, peppers and tomatoes became filling for a huge batch of tacos. Spicy and delicious!

I paired the parsnips and potatoes with mushrooms to make a rib-sticking root vegetable curry inspired by The Complete Curry Cookbook. The original recipe was for a beef-stew like curry, but I replaced the meat with mushrooms and cut the cooking time in half.

Finally, the butternut squash and mixed greens went into a improvised salad with onions, red cabbage, pepitas and nutritional yeast that I loosely based on a recipe in the I Love Trader Joe's Cookbook. The salad was okay, but not great, and I worked really hard at making the sauteed shrimp flavorful, but they fell flat.

Looking back, I'm realizing that I combined the shares from Week 17 and Week 18 to make meals. I was busy and not eating a home after the Week 17 share, and before I knew it, I was picking up another haul of food. Here's what I received:
Week 17 was more grapes, pea tendrils, another butternut squash, a head of cabbage, kale, bok choy, apples, potatoes and a jar of mustard. (Once again the kale was swarming with aphids and got tossed.)

Week 18 had eggs, lettuce, pea tendrils, more mixed greens, butternut squash, apples, pears, and potatoes.

I also bought a mammoth sweet potato, which went into three different dishes. Here's a picture for scale:

First up, one third of the sweet potato went into my favorite sweet potato and black bean chili with cornbread.

The cabbage I cut into quarters and roasted, drizzling it with chili lime sauce according to this amazing recipe from The Kitchn, which I can't believe I haven't mentioned before. I paired the cabbage with pumpernickel toast and seasoned white beans on a bed of pea tendrils.

The mixed greens joined tomatoes, onions, peppers, lentils and bulgur in a batch of Protein Power Goddess Bowls from Oh She Glows (see recipe in sidebar).

The bok choy went into a large bowl of Sriracha slaw (from the Sriracha Cookbook), which I paired with lemony miso noodles.

Nothing from the CSA here, but I made a second spicy Asian dinner out of more Sriracha slaw, and bowls of Mark Bittman's kimchi soup with tofu.

More pea tendrils and random veg became a side salad to a main dish of Hipster Food's pumpkin rotini (recipe in sidebar).

Potatoes, potatoes, potatoes! What to do with them all? I turned to Smitten Kitchen, one of the most popular food blogs out there, for a great tortilla de patatas recipe, which used up a good portion of my potatoes, onions, and eggs. This is a fantastic breakfast or lunch dish that is homey, savory and filling.

Lastly, again, nothing from the CSA here, but in honor of Pumpkin Day, which also happened to be Pretzel Day, behold: pumpkin pretzels!!! This is your basic homemade soft pretzel recipe, with pumpkin puree mixed in. I couldn't decide if I wanted them to be salty or sweet, so I sprinkled them with both kosher salt and cinnamon. They were a hit!

I'll stop there before this turns into a mega-post, and deal with my last Silverbrook share and my first new CSA share in the next post.

'Til then!

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