Sunday, June 30, 2013

Week 3: Friend Picnic!

Say you've just moved- you've been up to your elbows in boxes all week- things are now finally put away- you have a clean kitchen (that more than one person can fit in at a time!)- & you have a week and a half of farm share produce in your fridge & it's already Saturday- what do you do? You have two of your coolest (& hungriest?) friends over and make a CSA farm share picnic? Is that what you said...? Exactly, that's what we thought, too.


Week 3's produce:
(June 25th)
Beets
Napa Cabbage or Green Cabbage
Lettuce
Hakurei Turnips
Swiss Chard
Scallions or Garlic Scapes
Pick-Your-Own:
Strawberries
Peas: Snap and Snow
Dill
Cilantro



This also includes some left-over garlic scapes from last week's bounty. From this awesome array of veggies, Ellen, Amy, Audrey & I made beet, turnip & potato salad (with scallions). We fired up the ole electric skillet and made some veggie cheese burgers (with fresh local lettuce).


(pictured above: all four of us in the new apartment...look how big it is compared to our previous studio!!!)

The cooking experience was awesome. Then, to make any picnic complete, we ventured out into our "backyard," which also happens to be the beautiful green-space that is CA's campus. Picnic-ing and fun ensued:



Next week, America's birthday: who wants to come cook at our new place for July 4th weekend? Whitney...Catherine...?




A Belated Week 2 Post




Week 2 & 3 was a blur. Ellen and I moved for the second time in a month to our long-term apartment on campus. It's official; we're going to be house parents to 20 teenage boys starting in late August. We're not sure if we're ready for that adventure yet though, so we're enjoying the quiet, summer days on campus before the kids return.

The blog posts paused for a fortnight or so because of the long, humid move that took two days of storage/ old apartment box transfer and then a week full of unpacking. I was also charged with painting my own apartment the week before (I'm working on the school's paint crew in the summer to make a little extra cash), so needless to say, Ellen and I are sufficiently tired from the past two weeks of nesting. This is our first weekend in the new place & enough boxes are unpacked to take a minute to catch up on our farm share adventures.

Above, you'll see that two Tuesday's ago (the painting week & four days before the actual move), I trekked out to the farm on a bit of a rainy late afternoon to collect our share. They had a larger pick-your-own variety this time. I was excited to take advantage of this, but I was sufficiently soggy by the time I'd finished harvesting.

Week 3's pick your own did bring us with another round of strawberries. This time, we were also allotted two pints of sugar, snap and snow peas! I brought home a handful of cilantro and dill, too.


I purchased this jar of local honey. Some of the honey comes from The Food Project honeybees & some comes from surrounding farms. It was a $9 purchase at the CSA pick-up. Totally worth it.

Once I returned home with the farm share, Ellen and I spent a long, tired Tuesday evening cleaning our fresh produce and feeling CSA fatigue. The pick-your own can take 45 min or so, so after an hour of CSA fun, you return home to wash 20 lbs of produce before bed; it can be a little bit of a struggle...

Turns out that in my late twenties, I'm an early to bed early to rise kind of girl. If only the CSA pick-ups were early morning! I'd be so much more efficient. Luckily, Ellen has the self-discipline and energy to keep us both going as we wash greens and root vegetables for 45 minutes or more.

From this week's CSA, we did manage to make a delicious salad spread along with a really hearty helping of mashed potatoes, turnips, with garlic scapes & butter (of course).



Above are some pictures of El utilizing our tiny tiny kitchen space (hoorah! for our last week in this little studio) as we whip up our mashed root veggies.

Now on to week 3, a much bigger kitchen & some friends!

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Post-Softball Feast

Hey there -

This afternoon we had our first Sunday softball win of the season, complete with Court's first homerun of the year. After the game, we headed back to Concord to tackle some of the remaining veggies from week 1.

For starters, we made a white bean and garlic scapes dip using our new blender. (Thanks Mom and Dad!) We followed this recipe (NY Times) that came in our weekly CSA email.

If it looks like we are cooking in our closet, that's because our closet is in the bedroom, which is also the kitchen.

Before this week, neither of us had ever had a garlic scape. But it turns out that they are really good! We had a few leftover, so we cooked 'em up and put them on top of a TJ's organic 3-cheese pizza along with a couple random cooked greens and some parm. After it cooked, we topped the pizza with some fresh arugula.


Great post-game meal! and plenty of leftovers for lunch!


Turnips are our last item from week one. Any ideas?

Stay tuned for week 2!

CSA List for Week 2 is in!

Week 2
June 18 + 20, 2013

Spinach
Lettuce
Garlic Scapes
Red Russian Kale
Arugula
Black Summer Choi
Hakurei Turnips

Pick-Your-Own

Shelling Peas
Snow Peas
Strawberries
Dill
Cilantro
Perennial Herbs


Our email from the CSA informed us that last week, four farmers with the help of two others harvested 2,982 pounds of food- how crazy!

Stay tuned!

Our current dining room- ha!



Right now, Ellen and I are waiting to get into our new apartment on my prep school campus. We should only have two more weeks in the interim apartment (pictured above). It's a very small studio with a bed & a kitchenette. Our cooking space feels limited now & our dining room is even tinier (see Ellen modeling our gorgeous plastic tub dining room table above...bed is on the right). We're really excited to have a real table, cooking area & dining space that isn't one 12x15 ft room; we're just two weeks away!

Garlic Scape Scrambled Eggs



Step 1: Wash garlic scapes, chop & saute in butter for 5 min

Step 2: scramble some eggs and add to the sauteing scapes

Step 3: low & slow on the heat until delicious

Step 4: Add baguette


This was easy and a solid choice! I had never had garlic scapes before. I thought they'd be much stronger (like scallions), but they are more mild (like asparagus). They were a nice addition to the eggs. Total breakfast (or Brinner) win!

Friday, June 14, 2013

Strawberry fields (forever)



Here are the strawberries that I got to pick from this week's farm-share (forgot to add the picture to the last post). It was super fun! I got to trudge through the muddy field & pick from the rows of strawberries (which were full of life- spiders, a happy grass hopper, bees, etc.). Also, I have never had a more delicious strawberry. They were fresh, juicy & sweet-

Yummmmm

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Week 1 Day 3




El and I have embarked on a journey by signing up for CSA Farm-share. We chose The Food Project, an awesome nonprofit that engages youth in sustainable agriculture and promotes access to healthy food in urban and low income communities. It is a great organization, and their farm is only four miles from our new apartment.

We decided we'd like to try and keep track of the ways we use the food in the CSA (maybe like a food journal, or maybe just so we can think we're pretty awesome). Either way, we can share it with all of you, & you can see what it's like to eat from your own back yard & eat in season.

We are both busy people- we both work full time jobs & are also members of two local softball teams (not to mention we're moving twice this summer), so cooking our way through a weekly 24 lb box of local produce won't be the easiest hobby. I am imagining whiny, crabby 5:30 pm protests (this is probably me, let's be real) that emphasize that I simply have no energy left & I can't possibly cook a half a pound of chard right now or wash those cabbage leaves (this may or may not have been this week). Anyway- sometimes when it's the end of a long day- it takes some motivation to get the oven going. Hopefully, this blog will keep us going!


This week:

The goods!
In our farm-share we found; spinach, swiss chard, napa cabbage, garlic scapes, turnips, radishes, arugula, tatsoi (braising mix), & pick-your-own strawberries (pictured above)!

Dishes made so far:
Salad (with napa cabage, shallots, ranch & shredded cheddar cheese)
Tonight, we made lemon-parmesan swiss chard & a fresh baguette topped with radish butter (it's muy muy delicioso)

Recipes:
Radish Butter: http://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/radish-butter

Lemon Parmesan Swiss Chard (based roughly on): http://allrecipes.com/recipe/sauteed-swiss-chard-with-parmesan-cheese/

Project Yummmm!