2016 CSA Week 4

Ford says he has a great group of young people working at the
farm this season. Here they are in the strawberry patch earlier
today getting our shares ready for tomorrow! Ford and Amanda
are appreciative, I'm appreciative, and I'm sure you are too!

Good evening fellow CSA members!

I was shredding some carrots for a salad this evening (I'll share the recipe) and decided just to eat a couple of them to help speed up the shredding process... Man! There is just nothing like fresh, local carrots. I'm afraid I may not eat any other type of carrot. 

And good news! We have MORE carrots coming this week! And strawberries! And... Well... Here's the list:

Produce	Storage	Longevity
strawberries	unwashed, in fridge	2-5 days
carrots	unwashed, in fridge	2 weeks
lettuce	unwashed, in fridge	1 week
bok choy	unwashed, in fridge	1 week
tatsoi	unwashed, in fridge	1 week
tomato juice or salsa	shelf stable	months

I was excited to see bok choy make its first appearance of the season (I do love Asian food and greens)! But honestly, this is a lot of greens for our house! I hate to admit: sometimes a full week (or longer) passes without us eating any leafy greens. (Sad, I know.) Until after dinner tonight we still had quite a few greens left from last week's share. Once I saw all we're getting this week, I kicked into gear and made a dinner salad. And I decided this week will be all about the greens. I've been looking up and brainstorming recipes today and hope to try some out this week. I'll let you know how it goes.

For now, you can check out these previous recipes, and I'll share with you what I did tonight (it could easily be replicated with this week's share).

Bok Choy Apple Salad
Tahini Soy Sauce Greens

As always, please keep sharing your recipes, tips and tricks with me and let me know if you have any questions! amyrosekarr@gmail.com

Our dinner tonight:

I decided to pull out the old cookbooks in search of something to use our greens that my husband might not hate. We sometimes do salads (though lettuce is almost the only veggie in his salad and it is smothered in a sea of cheese and dressing), so I thought I'd look for salad recipes. I have a cookbook from one of my favorite restaurants: Tupelo Honey Café. I looked in the index and they had a recipe using bok choy. I looked at it and realized it would be great without the bok choy. Here's the recipe. (The salad recipe is for one dinner portion - if all you're eating is salad, it will feed one adult so multiply it accordingly. There were three of us at dinner tonight, so I tripled it.)

Get your leafy greens quota salad with sherry vinaigrette
Tupelo Honey Café cookbook, page 94

1/2 medium beet
1 teaspoon olive oil
4 tablespoons toasted sunflower seeds
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 cups chopped leafy greens (such as Swiss chard, kale, boy choy and napa cabbage)
2 tablespoons peeled, shredded carrots
6 grape tomatoes
2 ounces goat cheese
Sherry Vinaigrette (recipe follows)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and wrap the beet in aluminum foil. Bake for about an hour, or until tender when pierced with a knife. Remove and cool before peeling and dicing. Heat the olive oil in a saute pan or skillet and saute the sunflower seeds, salt and pepper over low heat for 5 to 7 minutes, until lightly toasted. Combine the greens, beet, sunflower seeds, carrots, tomatoes, and goat cheese. Serve with the vinaigrette.

Makes 1 large dinner salad

Sherry vinaigrette
Tupelo Honey Café cookbook, page 95

1 shallot, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons minced fresh parsley
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme leaves
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon stone-ground mustard
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup sherry vinegar
1 cup olive oil

In a food processor, combine the shallot, garlic, parsley, thyme, Dijon mustard, stone-ground mustard, salt and pepper. Puree the ingredients for 1 minute With the processor running, add the vinegar and then slowly drizzle in the olive oil until the dressing emulsifies.

Makes about 1 1/2 cups

The Verdict: 4 and a half broccoli stalks. I'm not even joking. I let my husband take a bite of my salad before making his because I had a bottle of store-bought ranch waiting if needed. I did also have some marinated chicken with the salad. He said the salad alone was only four broccoli stalks, but the chicken helped it. I about fell over when he told me. He said he could have it again for lunch tomorrow and could eat it every week! I can't even believe it.

Recipe notes: This is a lot of work for a salad, in my opinion. If you want something easier, just buy a dressing. Also, there were no beets in the produce section of my grocery store this morning. True story. (Johnie would say he dodged that bullet!) If you decide to make the dressing, I'll share that I did not do all that mincing. I mean, what do I even have a food processor for if I have to spend all my time mincing before hand? I just threw everything in there whole. I pureed everything but the olive oil, then I just dumped all the olive oil in at the end and mixed. Maybe if I followed the instructions, the dressing wouldn't keep separating, but I'd rather give it a good shake when I'm ready to dress the salad than do all that work. Also, it is some pretty strong dressing. I used 6 teaspoons of it on our salads (we would normally use a lot more dressing than that).

It is a lot of work, but for my husband to happily eat several cups of veggies for dinner... It was worth it. Tonight, at least.

Have a great week!