July 9 - MORE Zucchini?

My parents very kindly picked up our box today since I was away and Mark gets home too late. It also gave them an opportunity to see how the whole pick up process works and to take a vegetable or two for themselves from my box. (Thank you, THANK YOU, parents, for taking a zucchini!) It's not that I don't like zucchini - I do. But wow - I have quite the zucchini collection at this point.

The other fun thing about having my parents pick up my veggies, is I got to play the "guess the vegetable" game with them this week. They were (I hate to say it) a bit better at identifying things than Mark was, but a few things stumped them. For example, "a fluffy green thing that looks like the top of a carrot" was dill. And, "a little red lettuce" was radicchio, which I suppose if you think about it actually IS a little red lettuce. They didn't mention the extra surprise though, which was absolutely fantastic flat leaf parsley.

If you're wondering, this is what we got:

• Swiss chard (Holy cow - is there no end to the swiss chard! I'm going to need to get inventive with the cooking.)
• Beets - yay
• Dill - this is GREAT in salads and smells heavenly
• Zucchini - need I say more
• Yellow squash - yes, I realize that this is really just a zucchini of a different color, but somehow I like its golden cheerful color more.
• Cucumbers - always useful
• Radicchio - I like to shred some of this in a salad. It's bitter, so you wouldn't necessarily want to eat it straight, but it really adds, both in color and flavor, to a salad.
• Red Batavian Lettuce - nice, sort of wavy leaves
• Romaine lettuce - always useful, but the curlier lettuces fill up the salad bowl more easily.
• Parsley - this is honestly the VERY BEST parsley I have ever tasted. I put it in our salad.

Tonight I brought a huge bowl of salad to my parents' house. It had two types of lettuce, yellow squash, radicchio, dill, parsley, white salad turnips (from last week) and shredded carrot (also from last week). It was a big hit, and really, I'm not sure if I've ever had a fresher salad.

Beets

WOW. Who knew that beets were so good? Not me. I confess that until now the only beets I'd ever had were either pickled or from a can. Even the one time that I made a beet side dish, I started with canned beets. Little did I know what I was missing.

Mark and I had a real beet experience last week. First I steamed the greens and we ate them with a bit of butter on top. Yum! Then I boiled the beets, peeled them, cut them into cubes, and spinkled them with lemon dijon vinagrette dressing while they were warm. They were unbelievably good. We ate the whole bunch of beets in just about one sitting. (I even saved the water that I'd boiled the beets in, and we drank that. It looks like Kool Aid, but it makes you feel like you're detoxifying yourself from all the junk you've eaten over the last month.)

July 2 - Guess the Vegetable

Because I'm on vacation in Vermont and New Hampshire, my good friend Marla kindly picked up my vegetables and brought them to my house and left them for my husband. This resulted in Mark and I getting to play a wonderful game on the phone tonight that I call "guess the vegetable." It went something like this...

Ann: "What did we get today?"
Mark: "Well, there are some whitish things in a bunch."
Ann: "What sort of whitish things?"
Mark: "I think they might grow underground."
Ann: "Do they look like anything you've ever seen before?"
Mark: "Maybe they're some kind of onion? They're about an inch across and and inch and a half tall."
Ann: "Do they have layers like an onion?"
Mark: "No."
Ann: "What does the top look like?"
Mark: "There are some kind of leaves sprouting out of the top."

Etc, etc, etc. In case you were wondering, I guess white radishes or turnips. Turns out they were baby salad turnips. We went through many iterations of this same conversation as we tried to figure out what the other veggies were. To his credit, Mark was able to identify carrots, dill and lettuce without any help from me.

This was actually a very entertaining game and I hope we get to play it again. For those of you who are interested, we also got zucchini (a lot), yellow squash, beets, and possibly kohlrabi in addition to the things mentioned above.

June 25 - Box #4

Today, three people accompanied me to the CSA pick up place to see how it all works. My friend Marla, her friend Nancy, and my daughter Emily. They watched how I sign my name on the sheet, take the contents out of a box and put it into my cloth bags and then fold the box up in the corner to be used again. It was really fun to watch everyone's faces as I kept pulling unusual green things out of the box - "Look! A Swiss Chard! A cabbage! Some weird green things that look like fans!" (These turned out to be Collard greens). Things just kept coming out of that box like clowns out of a circus car. When I was done, I had:

• Cabbage
• Red Oak Leaf Lettuce
• Beets
• Strawberries! (best I ever tasted!)
• Escarole (I mistook this for some sort of lettuce)
• Collard greens (I didn't know WHAT these were when I saw them)
• Fennel
• Basil
• Swiss Chard

When we were done packing up our vegetables, Marla looked at the haul and then said in her own unique Marla-style - "Wow, you guys must have no trouble pooping." No comment.

We already ate half the strawberries - they are unbelievably good. And I had a salad of the red oak leaf lettuce tonight for dinner. I'd never had it before -- it's probably the most attractive lettuce I've ever seen. It really does look like red oak leaves. And it was easier to wash than some of the other greens have been.

Rhubarb and Kholrabi

Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting that you eat them together. I'm just noting that already I have tried two things I never tried before. We ate the rhubarb compote over pancakes last weekend and it was excellent! Much better than I would have imagined.
The kholrabi was actually quite good cut into matchsticks and mixed into a salad. It added a great crunch and a slightly spicy flavor.

June 18 - Our third box

Uh oh... I'm starting to feel panicky. There was about twice the amount of vegetables in this week's box than in last week's. My fridge is absolutely exploding with green leafy things... not all of which I'm familiar with.

I had the pleasure today of actually saying hi to Farmer Matt. Farmer Matt, if you're reading this, I'm the one who asked what that round green lumpy vegetable was. (Note to readers - it was a kohlrabi.) It's really kind of thrilling to see the person who was responsible for growing the round green lumpy vegetable. Perhaps it's because I grew up in Queens (not the most rural of places), but I find the whole idea of farming to be very interesting. I'd love to actually see the farm sometime and see how the vegetables look as they grow. They often are much different than you imagine (ever see brussels sprouts, for example?) And I find that I'm curious about many things, like does the kohlrabi grow undergound or above ground? I don't know. (Guess I'll be visiting Wikipedia after making this posting).

In this weeks box was a ton of exciting things, including:
- Kale (uh oh, I still didn't use my kale from last week)
- Romaine lettuce
- Green curly lettuce (this thing is GIANT - it took up a whole drawer in my fridge)
- Garlic scapes (I LOVE these!!! More in a future posting)
- Strawberries - yay!
- Kohlrabi (never saw it, never ate it, and I'm slightly afraid of it)
- Swiss Chard (this is so beautiful, I almost hate to eat it)
- Sugar Snap Peas (I can't figure out if I'm supposed to eat the pod or just the peas. Anyone know?)
- Baby arugula (I love arugula salads)
- Cilantro (I have a wonderful recipe for Cilantro Pesto)

I went home with two completely filled up shopping bags of wonderful (and interesting) produce! We're really enjoying being part of the CSA so far, and I feel as though we're part of something that's more community oriented. When do you usually get to meet the farmer who grew your kohlrabi?

Rhubarb

I had the first rhubarb of my life today. It's pretty great to be almost 44 and still have the chance to taste a new vegetable (or is it a fruit?) Whatever it is, it's very odd. It looks like pink celery and when cooked into a compote with sugar, tastes sort of like cranberry sauce. I like it! Note to self: cut back on the sugar next time - tarter is better.