Summer CSA - Week 5

I love the weekly deliveries but I am beginning to learn just how much work this is. Now I really understand why housewives in the 40s and 50s jumped on new convenience foods as they appeared on grocery shelves. If only they had exercised a bit of restraint (or food marketers were idiots), that wouldn't be nearly all that's available anymore and our nation would be healthier.

I pick up on Wednesday mornings which means those afternoons are spent googling for recipes as well as washing, chopping and preserving what I can't use right away. The upside is that the kids and I have the most fun lunch of the week on Wednesdays!

This week we received red leaf lettuce, kale, broccoli, orange and white carrots, fennel, beets, peas and kohlrabi.

Farmer's Market and a Delight I Almost Missed!

After the craziness of the past month, we purposed that the long weekend would be one of recovery and time spent together for our little family.

I had planned a few things. Simple things like homemade ice cream, a trip to the climbing gym a cookout with grandparents and our first family visit to the local farmers market. I have frequented the downtown one in years past, not knowing that I was bypassing one half the distance from home!

It was a hit for all of us. We wandered about, asked questions, tasted things and left with three bagfuls of local sensory overload. When your kids pull you aside and ask if we could please buy some of those Shitake mushrooms and a shaker of bee pollen from that other man, it just confirms that kids have perfectly-working taste buds, too. Given a choice between Doritos and spreadable garlic-herb goat cheese, you don't need to tell them which one is healthier because their bodies tell them which is better (in every sense of the word.)

We left with salad tomatoes, mixed greens, garlic scapes, cucumbers, baby potatoes and the aforementioned mushrooms which are grown about 15 miles from us. We also bought some locally-made treats such as gazpacho, rolls, chicken black bean ravioli, goat cheese feta and the herb cheese mentioned above.


I'd recently read about garlic scapes and was thrilled to be able to talk to someone about ways to prepare them. Scapes are the plant portion of the garlic plant which is cut off to send more energy to the growing garlic bulb. (This explains why scapes are only available for a few weeks each year.) This trimming allows the bulb to become the plump little fellow we are accustomed to seeing. They are fanciful curlicues with a moderate garlic flavor.

I made a pesto out of them which I tossed with the handmade pasta we bought. Yum.

A Highly Recommended Read

I recently finished reading Anti Cancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber. I cannot recommend it highly enough. 

The author was just beginning his medical career when, by accident in his own lab, he discovered he had brain cancer. He readily admits his attitude was that of the stereotypical doctor -- a stubborn reliance on Western methods of healing and health management. As the doctor became the patient, though, his eyes were opened to a frustrating world of downcast eyes and grim adherence to outdated treatments in spite of other promising options. 

The path he discovered, and followed, changed his life...quite literally because it almost certainly saved it. He has become a 15-year brain cancer survivor (wow) by caring for his so-called 'terrain' which involved changes in diet, exercise, stress management and spirit. 

Granted, that's a lot of the stuff I yammer on about all the time so maybe that's why I loved it. The book teaches so much about cancers, though, and how they take root and flourish in our bodies. Despite that part being nearly all-new to me, I found it a very easy read. If you have a family history of cancer, or even a personal one, I daresay this book will make you feel hopeful and powerful. 

Lest you fear that it will overwhelm you with the need to change everything about your life, I'll leave you with this excerpt from the final chapter:

Fortunately, we can begin to protect ourselves against the biological mechanisms of cancer without adopting all the methods that have a positive effect. The body is a huge system in equilibrium, where each function interacts with all the others. Alter just one of these functions and the whole is inevitable affected....Every situation, every person, is unique; each person's way forward will be too. What matters above all is nourishing the desire to live. Some will do it by participating in a choir or by watching comedies, others by writing poetry or keeping a diary or getting more involved in the lives of their grandchildren.

If you read it, please let me know what you think!!  

Summer CSA - Week 4

The only new thing we received this week is a different variety of lettuce. I'm not too educated on types of lettuces but it's green and yummy.

One month into our first CSA summer, I'm thankful to have learned so much. Last year, I read Carrie's CSA posts with feelings of great curiosity and possibly greater intimidation. I didn't know what a lot of it was and wasn't sure how she ever used those things! Would my gang even eat it???

As it turned out, though, I've found delicious and healthful uses for things I've never purchased before (kohlrabi, beets, kale, radishes) and discovered that I should throw out my opinions of what my kids will and won't eat. I told you yesterday about the radish green soup but not about the broccoli stalks (the florets were cut off for snacking/lunches) I steamed for myself because I couldn't bear to toss them out. Little did I know that everyone would eat stalks-only. Awesome!

Good Eatin'!!

Life has seemed almost normal this week. What's been really odd about school ending a whole month early is just the sense of waiting. Waiting to hear about how grades will be determined, waiting to hear about field days and awards ceremonies and waiting until friends are finished with school has made May a month of uncertainty.

We finished all that up this week, though, and now we can really relax into our summer. We've already been to the library a few times, had garden-hose water fights and had lazy mornings which stretched into lazy days. Maybe a month-long warmup to summer is just what we needed!

For me, normalcy means hours in the kitchen and, boy, has this week been fun!

I made hummus which we all love and is a great alternative to dressings and dips for fresh veggies. It's also a wonderful spread on sandwiches.

Hummus

Put three cups of cooked and drained chickpeas in the food processor. Using a garlic press, add garlic to taste. (I use 5-6 cloves for a moderate 'garlic-ness' but if it's just for our family, I'll add a few more.) Turn on the processor and slowly pour in one cup of extra-virgin olive oil and process until smooth and creamy. 

Other highly-recommended things we've enjoyed this week:

Pork Blade Steaks with green onions, oven-roasted beets, Green Onion Hash Browns  and  Radish Top Soup which I originally made for C's lunches. It uses the radish greens which I thought the kids might balk at. I was completely wrong. They love it! Of course, with ingredients like homemade chicken stock and raw heavy cream, what's not to like?

Artsy Girl

My girls love to paint. The last time E mentioned she couldn't think of a gift to make for someone, I asked her to paint a bin for my pantry. I was just thinking of a couple of pretty colors in a striped pattern, but this is what she came up with. It's certainly much better than I could have done!

Summer CSA - Week 3

Trying to catch up on these posts -- with food coming every week instead of every other, I can't keep up!

Our box this week contained swiss chard, lettuce, spinach, carrots, green onions, beets, radishes, cauliflower, kohlrabi, strawberries, bread and eggs.

The exquisitely odd-looking kohlrabi is new to us but was an instant favorite. A member of the cabbage family, it can be eaten raw or cooked. It's flavor is similar to a broccoli stalk but milder and sweeter. So far, we've just added it to the bin of chopped, raw veggies we snack on throughout the week. 

As for the greens, our share includes a LOT more than I normally buy. Fortunately, I love salad and I've been warming the kids up to it over the last few weeks with small side salads. So far so good on that front. 

Unfortunately, I wasn't prepared to use so many greens the first week and some wilted before I got to them. After dreading throwing them out (and accompanying guilt), I had a flash of inspiration -- vegetable stock!

Among the things that had seen better days were...bits of bok choy, kale, swiss chard, celery and green onions. I washed and chopped them and added carrots, garlic, peppercorns and bay leaves. After simmering for a couple of hours, I removed the vegetables and seasonings and returned the broth to the stovetop to reduce further. In the end, I had two quarts of dark and delicious-smelling stock to stow away in the freezer. No waste, no guilt!