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!