Week 2

I thought my weeks went by fast when I had a child but they go faster when you get a weekly batch of vegetables! Here is picture of this week's bounty.

We have romaine lettuce, red leaf lettuce, kale, swiss chard, beets, cabbage, zucchini, summer squash, pickling cucumbers, traditional cucumber, green beans, snap peas, and basil. The basil came as a small potted plant so we planted it in a planter in the backyard.

My goal tonight is to meal plan, make a supplemental grocery list, shop tomorrow and start cooking. This week I will double check that I have all ingredients in the house before I try and make something.

Lastly, I prepped the lettuce tonight in anticipation of making a salad tomorrow. My new salad spinner was CLUTCH! The red leaf lettuce this week was very sandy. I dunked and drained it 3x in a water bath and maybe should have done it a 4th time but it seemed OK. I spun both lettuces, let them air dry on the counter over a paper towel and in a half hour bundled them into a plastic baggie and put them in the fridge. It should make for a crisper salad this week.

Kale, Zucchini/Summer Squash, Collard Greens, Peas, Kohlrabi

Over the weekend I attacked more veggies.

Kale
I have never been interested in trying kale. I may have taken a bite once or twice when it was served on my plate as garnish. I would describe it as a thick, dense, dark green with curly ends. I have seen Rachael Ray use it in lots of recipes but I have always swapped kale for trusty old spinach. So I searched around for recipes that seemed appetizing and decided on baked kale chips.  The way it dries out in the oven makes it light and flaky. The seasoned salt is a great way to give it flavor. I had to go out and buy seasoned salt and I want to encourage you to find a MSG free brand. You really do need to watch it in the oven so it doesn't burn. My batch started to smoke so I took it out just in time. To my delight it came out tasty! A bit like dry salty spinach, but in a good way! Now it will not replace potato chips or tortilla chips (preferred in our house) but we ate kale and liked it. I would consider making it again and adding to a soup or salad or as a salty/crunchy snack.

Zucchini/Summer Squash
I wanted to make zucchini bread but upon pulling out the ingredients I did not have baking powder in the house. Earlier in the Spring I did a mass cabinet clean out and have been buying items as I need them. I realize now that taking on this challenge, I will be adding back pretty quickly. So, to use up the zucchini and summer squash I did an old family go to recipe. I washed the dirt off and chopped into 1/2 inch slices or half moons. The zucchini was a behemoth! Dropped into salted boiling water and cooked until al dente. I drained in a colander and put it back into the hot pot. It tends to be a wet vegetable to I try to let some of the additional juices cook off in the hot pot. Be careful to watch that it doesn't burn. I season with salt and black pepper to taste. And then because the power of cheese is strong in our house...I add Parmesan cheese. Again, this is to your taste preference. I find with the cheese that butter isn't needed. Plus it is healthier to leave it out, but you can add it if you want.

Collard Greens
I think I have maybe eaten collard greens once before in my life. Maybe. I know my family has never made it to serve so it had to be at a dinner party or restaurant. Either way, I don't remember what it tastes like. To me it looked like turtle food! I wasn't interested in making it southern style with the pork or ham so I did some research and came across this recipe Sweet & Tangy Collard Greens. Come to find out, I did not have fresh or powdered ginger in the house or balsamic vinegar. I swapped the crushed red pepper for the ginger and balsamic glaze instead of vinegar. I also added sesame oil instead of vegetable oil since I was trying to go for more of an Asian style. I omitted butter again as I am trying to do this in a healthy way. I also added in all ingredients while cooking instead of tossing like a salad. Below is a picture of Sunday's dinner. Brian's dad shot a deer last season and we pulled a steak out of the freezer and cooked it over a wood fire in the back yard. I thought it would stand up to the dark leafy greens of collard greens and in case your interested, paired with egg noodles with a touch of butter, salt and pepper.

To be honest, it was a collard green train wreck! The flavor was fine. Brian thought it was maybe a little sweet but I had gone heavy on the crushed red pepper and was trying to balance the hot and sweet. But the texture was not good. It was like chewing an artichoke leaf. Tough and woody. It was disappointing. I hope that I will get collard greens again just so I can try out a different recipe. I will do more research this time and not alter anything to see if I can get a better product.

I did learn a trick for washing and prepping though. Add the leaves to a large bowl of fresh water and dunk/swish until clean. The leaves almost repel water and it makes for easy cleaning. To take the leaves off the stem, hold the green like a fan. There will be a central vein down the middle of the leaf. Tear from the top down on either side of the vein and you will get two long leaf pieces sans stem. Cut or tear to whatever the recipe calls for. It was easy and I appreciated getting the tip from a recipe website.

Peas
The peas this week were AMAZING. I can't say enough about how wonderful it was to enjoy the peas. It took very little time pulling the peas from the pod. I could have easily and mindlessly done it for hours. I would say we got 2-3 servings this week. I placed peas in boiling water and cooked until tender. I simply tried once every few minutes until the texture was right. They were so good I did absolutely nothing but eat them. No salt, pepper, butter, nothing!! This is one of those times that local and fresh is the key to a great product. YUM. I really hope we get more peas over the summer. Even though they are great as easy side dish, I would love to find a recipe that peas are the star.

Kohlrabi
My goal is to finish everything each week and I just ran out of meals to give it a try. Plus I am a little intimidated by it. Farmer Joe's Gardens did send some recipes along with the share this week highlighting kohlrabi and I saved them but I may just want to do some additional recipe hunting before giving it a try.

Week 1 Eating Part 1

The plan!

• Strawberries were the easiest. Half of them got eaten straight out of the container. They are beautiful, perfect small stemmed strawberries. Not the behemoths you get from California. Super sweet and delicious. Besides eating as is in all their glory. I made stuffed french toast. Now any good Jewish girl can make a mean french toast out of Challah bread. I have always wanted to try strawberry stuffed french toast and though it was worth attempting. I found a basic recipe online and it was OK. I need to make the cream cheese/strawberry filling a bit sweeter with some sugar. Check out breakfast! Now I know this does not lean into the "eat healthier" blog goal. However, Brian had just spent his two weeks in the field with the CT Army National Guard so we splurged with a special Saturday morning breakfast. 

• Lettuce was also an easy thing to figure out. Salad! Brian and I eat salad with dinner almost every night. That is one reason I chose to participate in the CSA because I was spending so much money each week on produce alone to make salads and side dishes. Between the two lettuces I had plenty plus to make a large salad for the week. I estimate I saved $6.00 on lettuce this week.
  
• Previously my lettuce came in a triple washed bag. I had gotten rid of my salad spinner long ago. If I am going to be washing lettuce at any frequency, I will need to go buy another one. A bit of a bummer that I have to buy another one, but there is no way I want to wash and dry lettuce with paper towels on the counter. I may stay at home, but I don't have a lot of free time.

• Tomorrow I plan to make some zucchini bread. I will have to look up a recipe and give it a try.

Week 1 Bounty

I pick up my share each Wednesday. Choices were Wednesday or Saturday. Since I am currently a stay at home mom, I thought Wednesday would be the better choice. My plan is to pick up my share, assess what I have and plan meals around it. Ideally I can shop for the fill ins on Thursday or Friday and do a majority of cooking when Brian is home on the weekends. Then we have easy weekday left overs until we do it all over again.

This week I received: collard greens, kale, peas, strawberries, romaine lettuce, red leaf lettuce, zucchini, summer squash, and kohlrabi.

How did I get here?

I love vegetables. I always have. As a kid I would eat fruits and veggies over sweets. That has changed a bit as I have gotten older.

I like to cook (and eat) so when we moved into our first home, a garden seemed like a great idea. Then I realized I’m a lazy gardener. So this blog is not about gardening.

This all started three summers ago when my husband and I started a garden in our back yard and planted the typical New England garden. Green beans, tomatoes (6 varieties), lettuce, cucumbers, variety of peppers, squash, zucchini, brussel sprouts, herbs and more. We pretty much put the plants in the ground and did nothing but water and weed (sparingly).  We crowded our poor 14x14 space and could barely walk through the garden to get our bounty. And who really needs 30 cucumbers a week! I swear we were pickled by the end of the summer.

Year two we narrowed the list down and planted less plants and varieties. It was the hottest summer that I could remember and I was pregnant so the garden got very little love, again. When our son was born 12 weeks premature in August, the garden was truly abandoned at the peak of harvest. 

Year three I realized something had to change. I wanted a large variety of fresh vegetables. Yet I didn’t need 15+ of each item each week. I also didn’t have the time or desire to tend to a garden. Plus we were ready to branch out to vegetables we had never tried before. So with some research I found the Connecticut community supported agriculture website and narrowed the list of farms down to the one closest to my home. Farmers Joe’s Garden Farmer Harvest Program is a perfect opportunity to eat fresh, local produce, at a good price, and support our friendly farmer. Farmer Joe’s is a 15 week program so I am also participating in Massaro Farm’s CSA Fall Share program for 4 weeks.

In future posts I will discuss our family, each farm, the produce, the cost comparison, the recipes and overall experience.  I will try and include photos of the weekly share and possibly the end result on a plate. I welcome comments and especially recipes!