CSA: Week 12, or Watermelons are &#$@! Heavy

An exciting week for me, because I just received the first (of hopefully many) watermelon from my CSA this season.  It is a pain to carry, however.

• Peaches
• Watermelon
• Cantaloupe
• Purple potatoes
• Green okra (apparently there is red okra, but I was not one of the lucky ones to get that)
• Bush baby zucchini
• White cucumbers
• Green bell peppers
• Dill
• Bi-color sweet corn
• Green kale swapped for carrots

I made decent headway on my previous deliveries, with only some potatoes, onions, peppers, and heirloom carrots remaining from the last two weeks of produce.

CSA: Week 11

What happened to Week 10, you ask?  Well, I was gone most of last week, so I had my dad pick up my fruits and vegetables, and he managed to use a portion of them.  I still had one ear of corn, some delicious plums (for some reason my dad did not think they would be good because they were so small -- whereas I subscribe to the theory that smaller fruit = better fruit, because they have not been bred exclusively to be gigantic), and a few other vegetables.

This week is another story, and I am staring down the barrel of the following summer bounty:

• Bi-color sweet corn
• Heirloom carrots
• Sweet onions
• Green bell peppers
• Pea tendrils
• Cucumber
• Green cabbage (swapped for white cucumbers)
• Blackberries
• Blueberries
• Peaches

The cucumbers, bell peppers, and carrots scream some sort of non-leafy green salad.  Sweet corn needs nothing else except a pot of boiling water.  But what shall I do with all the summer fruit?  A fruit salad, maybe?

CSA: Week 9

In an effort to catch up a bit with my CSA produce usage, I made a cherry and blueberry crisp using the sour cherries and some of the blueberries I received over the last two weeks of the CSA.  The fruit filling was delicious, but the crisp part was just okay -- I should have used my normal crisp recipe that I use for my mango pear crisp.  Oh well.  I also roasted all of my new red potatoes with rosemary, thyme, and garlic -- those turned out pretty well too.

This week, I am staring down an impressive list:

• Green cabbage swapped for pea tendrils
• Red kale swapped for flat parsley
• White beets
• Fennel
• Broccoli
• Green bell peppers
• Red gold potatoes
• Blueberries
• White currants
• Rhubarb

I think I plan on using all of this stuff this week!  The parsley makes my life easier, since it is more garnish/ingredient than principal veggie.  I am excited to try the white beets (after last week's delicious red beets), and I may finally make that blueberry rhubarb crisp (with the good crisp topping).  But what I am going to do with white currants?

Pictures are worth 1000 words...

Per Alex's request, I am going to try and post pictures of some of the dishes I make with my CSA produce.  Since I am many weeks behind, here are pictures of two dishes I made awhile ago, and one I enjoyed today.

This is a salad made with arugula, pink radishes, roasted rhubarb, a fresh Italian goat cheese called caprino, and walnuts.

This time I used both the pink radishes and the radish greens to make a lamb stir fry.  The greens cooked down considerably, so they unfortunately did not add much beyond some dark green color to the dish.

I simmered some tofu in a sauce with garlic, ginger, hoisin sauce, and hot bean paste, then added some pea tendrils.  Very tasty - and spicy!

So there you have it.  It is not everything I've cooked, and I need a lot of practice to get better food photos, but hopefully you'll see more culinary creations on my blog soon!