CSA 2: Imminent Herb Murder

I love our CSA.
I know it's a little early to say that. We've only just gotten our second box, after all. I'm just so enjoying having all these fresh vegetables that I've never cooked with/eaten/liked/heard of before. I even used all the asparagus from the last box, even though I didn't like asparagus.

Asparagus

Actually, I'm not really ready to officially "like" asparagus yet, but it's maybe growing on me. I cooked with it twice. Once I hid it in a stir fry, and once it was it's own side dish, roasted in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then drizzled with balsamic vinegar and sprinkled with parmesan shavings. 

Just before roasting, all swimming in olive oil.

 As an aside, I should really look more closely at pictures I take with my phone before I eat the subject matter, just to make sure the pictures aren't as blurry as these. I wonder if the rest of the pictures will be this bad. Lets find out together!

A little balsamic vinegar goes a long way.
I also sprinkled some chives on them because
we got a lot.

Parsnips

Asparagus I'd never cooked because I knew ahead of time that I didn't like it. Parsnips, on the other hand, I'd never cooked with because I didn't grow up eating them, so I had no idea what to do with them.  Turns out they make a pretty rockin' soup. The recipe came from the Harmony Valley Farm website. It's called Spicy English Parsnip Soup. It's parsnips, potato, onion, ginger, curry powder, and a few other ingredients, cooked until soft and then pureed in a blender. It was spicy and creamy and filling. It did not, however, look very exciting. See?

Garnished with chives (lots of chives in the fridge) with
a side of rosemary roasted potatoes.

Sunchokes

I was excited to use sunchokes because our friends love them but we'd never even heard of them. They look kind of like enormous ginger roots. It was suggested that we make fries out of them in the oven, but since I sort of just did that with the potatoes in the last picture, I chose to make a salad with them. The salad (also a HVF recipe) used a bunch of the veggies from our box, which was a fun way to sample them. Garlicky Sunchoke Salad with Dill and Feta used the sunchokes, green garlic, chives, and french breakfast radishes (which are just weird-shaped regular radishes, as it turns out) along with dill, vinegar, oil, and feta.

Look, I started using Instagram!

 It was totally tasty, like a dilled potato salad. We let it marinade for a day, if I recall. It was crunchy and flavorful, and felt very adventurous since it was so full of things I'd never eaten before. Also, I hadn't worked with fresh dill for a long time, and I'd forgotten how tiny and delicate and so full of intense flavor and aroma it was. My hands smelled dilly for forever afterwards!

All The Things

Wednesday night, the night before we got the next box, was taco night. Now don't get too excited, I'm not going to get into it about the tacos. I will say that I used the Trader Joe's brand taco seasoning, which it turns out is hotter than the surface of the sun. If you ever buy a packet of it, take its advice and only use half. Why do they give you twice as much as you need in a non-resealable container of powder when they know that you'll either use too much or throw away the extra, you ask? No idea. Seems crazy to me, too. It had a nice flavor, but seriously, only use half.

Anyways, I decided a side dish that used up a much leftover produce as possible was in order, since there was a whole box of new produce imminent.

Today's recipe: Let's-Use-This-Shit-Up Salad


Ingredients:
4 oz uncooked orzo (or whatever's leftover in the bag from last time you made orzo)
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 pint grape tomatoes, cut in half
1/2 green pepper, diced
1 green garlic, sliced thin
1 Egyptian walking onion, sliced thin
1 handful chives, chopped (seriously, though? There's STILL chives in the fridge!)
1-2 tbsp taco seasoning (left over from 30 Days Of Tacos, currently in a jar on the back of the stove)
2 tbsp olive oil
Juice of 1 lime
Salt
Pepper
Feta cheese for garnish

1. Cook orzo according to package directions. Drain.
2. Meanwhile; chop, dice, slice, drain, and cut all of the other ingredients. Put them all in a big bowl. 
3. Add the orzo to the bowl. Toss together.
4. Add taco seasoning, olive oil, lime juice, salt, and pepper. Toss again.
5. Serve, sprinkle each serving with feta cheese.
6. NOM.

It was suprisingly good. I think that I still sort of live under the assumption that any food that I invent rather than find a recipe for is going to automatically be bad. Apparently, that is not the case. In fact, I'll probably get some more orzo so we can make something like this again. Yum!

CHAPTER 2: THE NEW BOX

We have a flourescent light under the cabinets in the kitchen that seems to make greens POP.
Also, Derek is clearly better at taking not-blurry pictures with his phone than I.

This week's box includes:

• Overwintered Parsnips
• French Breakfast Radishes
• Asparagus
• Rhubarb
• Potato Onions
• Garlic Scapes
• Pea Vine
• Hon Tsai Tai
• Baby White Turnips
• Baby Bok Choi
• Spinach
• Garden Herb Packs (in the planter over there in the top right corner)

I still haven't used the rhubarb from last time, although I think it's still okay. Now I surely have enough for a pie or something....although I'm also thinking about trying rhubarb-cream cheese baked wontons. Again, since I thought it up, it'll proabably be terrible.
The Hon Tsai Tai and Pea Vine will undoubtedly end up as a salad. I'm going to try sauteing a baby white turnip today (another vegetable I don't cook with  because I didn't grow up eating it).

Can anyone tell me what those curly green things over to the right of the asparagus are? Are they the garlic scapes? I suppose I could go bite one of them to find out.

I should stop blogging with you now so I can go to Target and get some planting supplies for those herbs up there. I'm sort of excited about trying to plant and then not kill something. The "not kill" part will definitely be the challenge. It's not that I enjoy murdering plants, its just that they don't tell me when they're thirsty, and so I tend to let them...just...die.

Sad.


...Oooookay. So I guess I'll just go ahead and end with that bummer. Bye bye!

Days 29 and 30: Better Late Than Never

So, I realize that it's May 12th right now, and that I haven't told all ya'll about days 29 and 30 of 30 Days Of Tacos yet, but just hear me out.

Short version: I was really busy, and then I was really lazy. 

Long version: Turns out I'm still pretty lazy, so I'd rather not talk about it.

Instead, let's talk tacos, and then I'll tell you guys about what I'm gonna blog about next!

So day 29 was a Sunday.  We had a friend in town. She was working with Derek. Some of the folks over at the shop wanted to go out for dinner. We went to Brasa Rotisserie. That place roolz (provided you like meat). Unfortunately, that meant that we had a huge dinner and then still needed to eat a taco for the day.

So sad.

So we had to go to Chipotle after dinner, all super duper full from the great meal, and have an emergency taco.

It was an uncomfortable pain in the ass, however it was also our first Emergency Taco, so I was fully willing to have the experience, even though I felt like barfing afterwards.  We each just ordered one hard shell taco. Mine had steak. It looked like this.

And I ate the whole thing.

For the final day of the month, we had a little palaver and decided that traditional, original recipe tacos were the way to go. It was a whole taco-bar situation, with homemade guacamole (I didn't realize that I didn't know how to make guacamole until I started making it and realized that I had very little idea what was supposed to be in it. So i mashed up a avocado or two and then threw in tomatoes, onions, lime juice, and some other stuff and then mixed it all around until it looked legit.)

What goes better with hard shelled, Ortega
seasoned tacos than tater tots?
 Nothing, I say!

On the side are tots (side note: we had a gluten free friend with us for the glorious conclusion of the month, so I got to learn that tater tots and hard taco shells are both gluten free foods. So that's something) and spanish rice from one of those bags of premade rice that you microwave for 90 seconds. I wish I could remember what brand it was so I could tell you to not EVER buy it.

So these tacos had Ortega seasoned ground beef, lettuce, tomato, shredded cheese, guacamole, pickled jalapeno, and green onion. Traditional. Delicious. A fitting way to wrap up 30 Days Of Tacos.



Ok, so now that we're past Taco Month (or the "Most Magical Time of the Year" depending on who you ask) I was thinking that I'd like to try blogging about something else.  Last year, I didn't have a plan, and even though I had the best of intentions (or at least some mediocre ones) I coudn't manage to do much actual writing to you guys. This year, however, Derek and I are trying a new food thing, and I was thinking I could tell you about it as we go.

In an effort to be more like our friends Aleisha and Josh, we joined the Harmony Valley Farm CSA. It's a thing where you pay them some money, and then every week or 2 (we're on an every-other-week plan) you (in this case "Derek") go to a site in your neighborhood to pick up a box of produce. They send whatever's in season. Along with the box is a newsletter that lists all of the stuff you're getting and has a few recipe ideas. We just got our first box on Thursday, and the newsletter is already very helpful, as I was unfamiliar with many of the varietals we recieved.  They also have meat, fruit, cheese, and coffee shares. Part of me regrets not getting a cheese share, but I don't think I could have eaten all that cheese. I would have had fun trying, though.

I stole this picture from Derek's
facebook page because I'm a
picture thief and bad planner.

This week the box included:

• Overwintered Parsnips
• Sunchokes
• Baby Arugula
• Salad Mix
• Nettles
• Green Garlic
• Chives
• Egyptian Walking Onions
• French Breakfast Radishes
• Rhubarb
• Asparagus

I had to have Josh explain the difference between the green garlic and Egyptian walking onions to me since they look almost identical. Also, we're glad they told us about sunchokes and stinging nettles. We look forward to eating those sunchokes, and the nettles went straight into the trash.

Every 2 weeks we'll get a new box with some different stuff in it. I was thinking I'd try cooking some of this crazy stuff and then tell you guys about it. I'll probably use a lot of the farms recipes (the website I linked to up there has lots of great looking recipes for it's produce) until my confidence grows.
So far, I've only used the chives from the box (good lord, we have a lot of chives), adding them to everything I've cooked since Thursday (so...one meal). Tonight I was thinking of trying some Spicy English Parsnip Soup and Garlicky Sunchoke Salad with Dill and Feta.


Ok, so I'm pretty excited about this new culinary adventure, and I'm pretty excited about sharing it with the internets. Sadly, I don't have anything else to share right now, and the tire on my car currently leaking air isn't going to patch itself, so I should split. See you cats later!