4 posts tagged “strawberries”

I think we did a good job of using up our CSA veggies this week. After a week-plus off from having sauteed greens, we ended up making sauteed chard, which turned out really good. I don't know what it was about this time as compared to the last few times, but it was much tastier and more tender. Leah sauteed some onions and garlic and then added in the chard and we squeezed some lemon juice and added some lemon zest to it. maybe it was the zest that did the trick. We also had our yukon gold potatoes with lemon and parsley, which made them seem lighter.

For dessert, we just had some vanilla ice cream with CSA strawberries, chopped banana and chocolate sauce. Very simple, very delicious and a good way to use a pint of small berries.

We have a LOT of catching up to do for this week! It was so hot during the week that we couldn't cook and ended up going out pretty much half the week. Most of the stuff we had from the CSA requires cooking, so by Friday we still had potatoes, fava beans, beets (and greens), turnips (and greens), green/purple/yellow wax beans, mixed greens and chard. That's a lot of stuff to try to figure out what to do with in only a couple days. Plus we got our first fruit box from the CSA as well. I don't think we'll be counting the fruit as part of the weekly challenge, since the pears we got are just now ripe enough to eat.

So, Friday cooled down a ton by comparison to the rest of the week and we took advantage of that to boil some veggies to make our favorite nicoise salad. The baby yukon gold potatoes were so good in this dish! Leah really did a great job with the lemon vinagrette and all the veggies were so perfect. Unfortunately, the purple beans turn green almost as soon as you start to cook them, so that was a bummer. The yellow wax beans were incredibly tender, must be because they are so fresh and new this time of year. We also used the other Lemon Boy tomato that we got at the Farmer's Market and it was really delicious. We'll have to grow some next year!

Leah had also cut up all the fruit that was getting a little overripe and decided to make waffles for breakfast to use them up. We found a super simple waffle recipe that turned out great: 2 cups Bisquick, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup oil, 1 cup club soda. It made a perfectly light and crispy waffle and was easier to make and tasted as good as the buttermilk waffles I made from scratch before.

We needed to decide what to do with the bag of mixed spicy greens. Leah's mom used to make a hot bacon dressing to go with dandelion greens, and I have never had that before, so we gave it a shot. The mixed greens were a little bitter, like dandelion greens, so it seemed like they would be a good match for the sweet bacon vinagrette. We also sauteed the turnips and added the greens to the salad mix to beef it up a little and tossed in the rest of the green and yellow wax beans. We were a little worried about the dressing, because it was REALLY sweet. We added more red wine vinegar and some dijon mustard and a liitle salt to cut some of the sweetness, but kind of resigned ourselves to the fact that it just might not be very good. You win some and lose some, right? So we tossed the greens with the dressing, added the turnips and beans and crumbled the bacon on top. And guess what? It was actually really good! I think the bacon bits helped a lot, but the greens were just bitter/spicy enough that the sweetness was nicely balanced. Oh, and the steaks turned out perfectly, too :P

We had a salad planned for Sunday night's dinner because we needed to use up some lettuce and veggies from the previous week and also knew we would be getting more lettuce and greens this week. So, Leah made a chimichurri marinade for the gulf prawns, avocados and romaine hearts, all of which she grilled. I tossed romaine, mizuna and  flashy trout's back lettuce (the speckled one, from last week's CSA) with a citrus vinaigrette as the salad base. We layered some tomatoes, Korean cucumber, grilled avocado and grilled gulf prawns on top of the lettuces. We also added a few of the pickled turnips that we made the other day. Those turned out nice, kind of sweet and spicy. The trout's back was similar to romaine, but a little more earthy and delicate. The mizuna was very nice and tasted like a really mild sorrel, without the sourness. The mix of the three lettuces, with one being grilled, made for a surprisingly good salad blend!

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, the second meal of the CSA Challenge was really just using up leftovers. We had a lot of chicken leftover from the night before and also had some carrots and onions, so I originally planned to make a pot pie. But when I got to the store to pick up some chicken broth and pie dough, I decided at the last minute to switch it to chicken and dumplings instead, because it would take way less time to make.

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!

Dessert consisted of store-bought pound cake topped with the CSA strawberries and some fresh whipped cream. Very simple and very delicious! The only hard part was whipping the cream, which for some reason took me 3 tries and dirtying of various kitchen mixers until I finally just hauled out the Kitchenaid mixer to do it. I don't know why I thought the immersion stick blender chopper attachment would work, but I tried it first. Then I just used the regular attachment, since I had somehow managed to get that to work sometime before, but it also wasn't happening. I thought about using a hand mixer, but couldn't find a bowl that would work, so I dragged out the Kitchenaid from the pantry. Now I have a sink full of dishes and a countertop full of stuff, all just for some whipped cream!