For dessert, I made a rustic tart with nectarines and some gorgeous raspberries from the farmer's market. I did it the lazy way, with store-bought Pillsbury pie dough. All you need to do is lay out the dough, pile some fruit on it, fold over the edges so they overlap, sprinkle a little sugar on top and bake for about 30 minutes at 425 degrees. Couldn't be easier! This is what it looked like before it went into the oven:
Dessert was farmer's market strawberries on top of some semi-stale poundcake that we splashed with amaretto to make it moist again, with whipped cream on top. I am not a huge fan of almond flavoring, but the amaretto paired suprisingly nice with the strawberries.
So, how did we do with our self-imposed challenge to use up everything from our CSA basket, with minimal waste? Well, we did pretty darn good, I think. We used everything except 3 eggs (which can last longer than a week anyways) and the flashy trout's back and turnips. However, we sliced and cold pickled the turnips so we can use them in salads and we also plan to use the trout's back in a salad for tonight's dinner. So all in all, I would say it's been a success so far!
CSA items used: carrots, beets, beet greens
CSA items used: carrots, onions, strawberries
CSA items used: onions
The last meal was crepes made with 3 of the eggs. There are no pictures because they were awful-looking and hard to make, but at least they tasted ok! We have a new non-stick pan that is too big for making crepes, so they kept breaking because of their weight. Then we switched to an old smaller pan, but it was not really very non-stick in the middle anymore. So back to the big pan and Leah used the flat handle of a wooden spoon to fold and flip them, which seemed to work ok, but still not the greatest. We finished them off with a simple sauce of butter, lemon juice and orange juice with orange imperials.
This particular CSA program, the Local Choice Food Box from Growing Washington, lets you pre-pick your order from what they have available each week. For a Saturday or Sunday pickup, you can order online starting Wednesday at midnight. You have until the end of Thursday to complete your order. If you don't order or miss your window, they will fill the box with a variety of things thay call "farmer's choice." This is what the order form looks like online (this doesn't include all items available, just the top and bottom of the screen). For a small box, you can choose 8 items, mixing and matching whatever you want. You could order 2 of something you really like or skip something you hate. It's pretty nice, they give good descriptions and tell you how much of each item to expect in a single order.
(To see a full-size version of these pics, click on it once, then again from the next page)
You have selected:
- English Shelling Peas
- Nelson Carrots
- Mizuna
- Swiss Chard
- Turnips
- Spring Walla Walla Onions
- Sugar Snap Peas
- Chioggia Beets
This one is easy enough to make. I started with peeling and chopping the rest of the purple carrots and sauteed then with a couple of the spring onions from the basket. Note: the purple leached out of the carrots and turned everything a weird purplish color, which looked kinda gross but tasted just fine. I would probably not use these again for mixing into anything, but they are fine on their own or roasted. After the veggies had softened a bit, I added a carton of chicken stock, about a half a bag of frozen peas, a few of the leftover potatoes from the previous night and the chopped up chicken and brought it to a boil. Also added a bunch of salt and pepper too. Then I mixed up the Bisquick dumplings, added them to the boiling soup, reduced the heat to low and cooked it uncovered for 10 mins, then covered for 10 mins. Then it was ready to serve and that's when we noticed how purplish everything was!
I scrubbed and cut the beets and peeled the carrots and tossed them into a roasting pan with some fingerling potatoes from the farmer's market and a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Then I seasoned the chicken breasts with salt and pepper and put a little leftover compound butter under the skin to keep it moist and hopefully add some more flavor to the meat. Then I placed the breasts on top of the veggies and put the pan into the oven, baking them at 475 for about 15 mins, then turned down the heat to 400 for another 30 mins. I checked the internal temp with a meat thermometer at that point, and they were not quite done yet (they were big breasts on the bone), so I left them in and started the beet greens. I used the rest of the compound butter and added a couple garlic cloves to a skillet and then added the beet greens and a bag of arugula that was hanging out in the back of the fridge. I added a couple splashes of balsamic and sherry vinegar, salt and pepper and then tasted. It was a little too sweet for me, so I squeezed the juice of a tiny little lemon (probably about half a normal lemon's worth) over it, which added just the right amount of acidity. Turned up the heat on the chicken to a low broil for a gew minutes to crisp the skin again and voila, dinner was ready!
We signed up for a local CSA basket and challenged ourselves to use up all of it each week, before it goes bad, without too much waste. We chose to go with the Local Choice Food Box (small veggie and small fruit) from Growing Washington, which sources all items from Washington farms and lets you pick and choose what you want each week from what is available. We picked up our first box this Sunday from the Lake Forest Park farmer's market.
Contents included: Purple Haze carrots, Flashy Trout's Back lettuce, strawberries, turnips, spring Walla Walla onions, mixed beets and free range eggs
