Tag Archives: CSA

Adventures in CSA (year 2 week 6): Tomato, Tomahtoh…

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{Note: If you’re wondering what happened to week 5, the answer is that we took the week off…}

If there’s one thing I LOVE about our local farm, it’s that they have the most amazing cherry tomatoes I’ve ever had in my entire life. These things are like candy, seriously. So when I saw that this week’s veggie box included not just a pint of cherry tomatoes but also some heirloom tomatoes, I swooned…and then promptly told dh that I was GETTING THIS VEGGIE BOX and we will FIGURE OUT how to get through them all before I leave for BlogHer’12. (I’m heading to NYC without the family, but since cherry tomatoes don’t last all that long in our house, this shouldn’t be a problem.)

This week’s list of goodies was a nice balance of “WTHMORECUCUMBERS?!” and “Ohhhh Tomatoes!”. We even got a pair of small purple potatoes, which promptly were turned into purple potato chips with the remnants from a prior week’s veggie’s box. In fact, thanks to our local farmstand (which has a fishmonger truck on Fridays only), our dinner Friday night was entirely local: sea scallops from Provincetown, corn from the farm and potato chips made from the farm’s purple potatoes. SO GOOD.

Year 2 Week 6 Veggie Box

TOMATOES!! YEAY!!!

  • Potatoes
  • Green Peppers
  • Cucumbers
  • Cherry Tomatoes
  • Corn
  • Wax Beans
  • Zucchini
  • Heirloom Tomatoes

Now, lest you think we don’t have a plan for the heirlooms yet…guess again. DH has a basil plant at work (don’t judge – I think it’s wicked cool), and he brought home a container of freshly picked basil leaves to go with the heirlooms. And I will acquire some mozzarella. And then we shall have a caprese salad and ALL WILL BE RIGHT WITH THE WORLD. But lest anyone think I’ve gone crazy locavore and am planning to press my own olive oil…think again. Colavita is my friend. And it will still be awesome.

The peppers will likely be snack-time for the kiddos, who are complete pepper-heads, and the wax beans may just get steamed and eaten with dinner. That’s the funny thing about some of these summer veggies: they’re so wonderful that the best preparation is often next-to-no work. Just wash, dry and eat. Or maybe wash, steam and eat. Zucchini and other squash do well on the grill (especially if you sprinkle some spices and herbs on top, or a mixture like Penzeys Greek Seasoning – a fan favorite in our household). It’s not until you start to get to the fall and all those winter squash that more prep really needs to come into play.

So score one yet again for the veggie box – the simpler the preparation, the easier it is to incorporate into a busy schedule that leaves little time for elaborate dishes during the week. More on the value of the box in a later post…for now, I’m just going to enjoy making my (even brief) plans for all this lovely local veggie goodness.

No Adventuring this week: What Gives?!

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It’s a crazy time of the year in our household, and the CSA boxes are most definitely part of the insanity. Seeing as how I’m getting ready to attend my first BlogHer conference in a few weeks, I’ve had to practice my elevator speech when faced with the inevitable question: “What is your blog about?” Really, my blog is about four things:

  • CSA and learning about eating local
  • Cooking, heavily focused on crock pot and recipes featuring CSA box items
  • Fitness – which will get louder as my marathon walk approaches, and…
  • Balance (which also includes my random musings about parenthood, things that bug me, etc.)

As we looked over this week’s CSA box contents, both DH and I were meh about the whole thing. Dear Lord, do there have to be still more cucumbers that I don’t want to deal with?! (The cosmic punchline being that my sister handed me a bag with four ginormous cukes today, insisting that I should “do whatever [I] want as long as they don’t come back home with [her]”. Her garden is overrun by cucumbers of considerable size.) So, we didn’t order the box. And then, when dh went to the farm stand today with the kids, he returned with some more blueberries, some raspberries and a half-pint of their SO DELICIOUS cherry tomatoes (which were gobbled up over the course of dinner). I queried him about whether we were going back tomorrow to do a MYO box, and he responded that the selection was only so-so. There wasn’t much that he was excited about, and the selection “wasn’t that good”.

Well, hmm.

This is an interesting turn of events. We’re not required to work from a box, because we didn’t purchase one, and there’s not much that’s exciting at the local farm. Sure, I could hit up the grocery store, but they’ve already telegraphed what they have that’s local, and the list is short and undistinguished. I could go to Whole Foods and hope they have more to offer, but I’m just not feeling it this week. I think it comes down to three problems:

  • The opt-in weekly program doesn’t require us to participate
  • The selection isn’t inspiring a MYO
  • My head’s so far into BlogHer that it’s, ironically, not into the CSA game

And this is where I laugh a bit. While it’s going to be a bone of contention with some PR folks at the conference, I’m sure, that I haven’t selected only ONE core competency to make the focus of my blog, the blog really represents who I am. I’m trying to figure out what it means to eat more local foods – what the cost is to our budget versus the cost to the greater good (health, the environment, the local economy, etc.). I’m a food-lover, and I grew up in a culture that places very high importance on good-tasting food. So, of course, if I’m going to talk about what will become ingredients for recipes, why not talk about the recipes, too? Thus, the cooking.

What about the fitness? Well, I’m sorry if it seems a bit silly, but I think it’s a big deal to walk 26.2 miles, and it’s not something I think anyone should attempt lightly. I learned quite a bit from web sites and friends about what I need to do to prepare, and I’m trying to pay back some of that goodwill by posting about my experiences training and walking, so some other n00b doesn’t go into their first marathon completely unprepared.

And “balance”? “Blather”? Yeah, yeah. My head is filled with all kinds of knowledge, both potentially classifiable as useless (such as how the Washington Redskins came to be known by that name) and useful (such as the critical differences between the European Union and the United States that will make it easier for the US to weather continued global recession). Sometimes I just feel the need to get stuff off my chest. If it bugs you, don’t worry. Just go look at the Chocolate Chip Muffins recipe or something, and all will be right with your world.

In other words there will be no CSA post this week…but I’m still very busy lining things up for BlogHer such that I should (hopefully) very soon have even more interesting things that will help bolster what I’m already doing. So, stay tuned…

Root Vegetable Chips

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A number of years ago, I stumbled across Terra Chips at a grocery store and realized I’d found something BRILLIANT AND WONDERFUL that I couldn’t afford to eat on a regular basis. When we got potatoes, turnips and beets in this past Friday’s veggie box, the first thought that came into my head was: I MUST MAKE MY OWN TERRA CHIPS. At first, dh was totally on board. Then we sorta ran out of time and he was completely against it. Still, I managed to have my way…and it was a good thing I got what I wanted, because these turned out SO NICELY.

We also learned, really quite by accident, that we were slightly off in our assessment of the potatoes; turns out they were purple potatoes – a fact we didn’t discover until we put them in the food processor and there was suddenly purple juice in the bowl. Needless to say, purple potato chips >> potato chips. Why? BECAUSE THEY’RE PURPLE. Of course.

Now, this recipe does call for the use of a food processor. If you don’t have one, or if you don’t have a slicing blade and can’t acquire one, this can be done with a mandoline or similar slicing tool. I wouldn’t recommend doing the slicing by hand…the equipment is needed to make the slices a relatively even, consistent thickness (in a short amount of time).

 

Root Vegetable Chips

nom *crunch* nom *crunch*

 

Prep Time: 20-25 mins

Cooking Time: 30-35 mins

Serves: up to 3 people, fewer is a distinct possibility

 

Ingredients

3-4 small or medium-sized purple potatoes

1 bunch small turnips, greens removed

1 bunch red beets, greens removed

2 Tb canola oil, divided into three 2 tsp servings

salt, to taste

 

Make it Happen

1. Preheat the oven to 400F.

2. Wash the potatoes, turnips and beets. Peel the turnips and beets, set aside.

3. Put your slicing blade into a food processor and add the turnips. Pulse until all of the turnips are thinly sliced.

4. Place the turnips into a bowl and toss by hand with 2 tsp of canola oil.

5. Place the turnips onto a large cookie sheet covered with aluminum foil, in a single layer.

6. Repeat steps 3-5 with the potatoes, then the beets. Make sure to rinse the food processor parts immediately following the slicing of the beets, to keep from staining the plastic.

7. This process should probably cover two large cookie sheets (one for the potatoes and one shared by the turnips and beets).

8. Place the cookie sheets into the oven, on separate racks, and bake for about 30 minutes.

9. When the chips are cooked to your desired amount of doneness, remove them from the trays with a spatula and place them in a bowl. Sprinkle a small amount of salt on top and toss to coat lightly.

NOTE: the turnips and beets will be a little softer than the potatoes and may not be crisp after 30 minutes. If you want to ensure crispness of the turnips and beets, I recommend slicing them thinner than the potatoes and/or putting the sheet with the turnips and beets into the oven about 5 minutes before the one with the potatoes.