Deadlines and Week 15

I haven't posted for several days because we were off to a wedding in Easton, Maryland. It was quite the affair. There was a traditional Hindu ceremony in the morning with a luncheon, we had about an hour for a costume change, and then there was an Episcopal service and a black tie reception. We are generally shorts and t-shirt people, so this was a big deal for us. I bought a new floor length black dress and heels. My husband bought a tux, a tux shirt, cuff links, a bow tie and cummerbund. We had made it to NJ when he realized that he forgot his bow tie at our apartment. There was not time to turn around, but luckily there ended up being a men's store right down the street from the hotel. The second tie was a real bow tie, so we also learned to tie it (our new skill for the weekend).

The luncheon featured a delicious Indian buffet made by the bride's family. For dinner, we enjoyed salmon and chicken entrees. My husband and I split the entrees, but we each liked our own dish the best. The salmon had a rich buttery sauce served on a bed of vegetables. The chicken had a flavorful maple, ginger and clove sauce with squash and spinach.



On our way home yesterday, we got a call from Zip Car telling us that our car was overdue. We thought we had it until 5:00, but they said our reservation ended at 11:00. Oops! They were able to rearrange the schedule and let us have the car until 3:30. There went our time buffer. We were racing the clock the rest of the way home. We were just entering the Holland Tunnel at 3:10, and we pulled into the garage at 3:30 on the dot. We quickly dropped off our wedding gear at home, and raced to pick-up our farm share. We arrived at the building, and learned that the pick-up point moved again this week. No climb to the roof top, but a walk a few extra block to a community garden. We made it in time, and because we arrived at the end of the day we got extra corn and garlic.


We saw the return of some favorites that we hadn't seen since the beginning of the summer. This week we will be enjoying garlic, corn, kohlrabi, radishes, turnips, kale, cherry tomatoes and heirloom tomatoes.

Week 13

We went to go pick up our CSA share yesterday to find no tent, no people and no vegetables in the normal spot. We did get there a little later than usual because we had a busy morning, but we were still well within the 12-4 time slot. We decided to head into the Bluestockings Bookstore (they help organize the CSA) and see if they knew what was going on.

We were informed that they had been running into problems with the parks department (he used the phrase "the Man was keeping them down"), so the share pick-up point had to be moved. He directed us to walk around the corner to an address, someone would be there to let us in, climb to the roof, and we would find our vegetables. It almost felt like a scavenger hunt or a speakeasy during prohibition. We walked around the corner, a girl sitting in a lawn chair asked if we were with foodstockings, we said yes, and she let us in. We climbed 7 flights of stairs, and got to enjoy a great view of the city while picking out our vegetables.


This week we will be enjoying tomatoes (there are 3 additional heirlooms that I forgot to put in the photo), garlic, corn, green beans, collard greens, leeks, and onions.


Check back in to see how we eat it all up. The big challenge for the week: tomatoes. We still have some left from last week, and we got a bunch more this week. Readers have made some great suggestions for pasta sauce, but my husband doesn't really like red sauce. I mentioned to him that the tomatoes we got yesterday would make a great tomato sauce, and he responded that he thought they would make an even better salsa. So, I guess we will be having some salsa this week.

Week 11

This week's share marks a turning point. We got our first tomatoes and sweet corn through the farm share. A very exciting development! We immediately started plotting delicious ways to prepare them.


This week we will be enjoying corn, tomatoes, onions, wax beans, garlic, yellow cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, rainbow chard and zucchini from our CSA share.


At the end of the day, we headed over to the Union Square Greenmarket to see if there were any bargains to round out the vegetables from this week's share. We did quite well. We picked-up some tomatillos, peppers, cucumbers, cabbage, sage and blackberries. I'm going to try my hand at making some sauerkraut from the small cabbages. I realize it will be a small yield, but I see this as a test run for when cabbages really come into season in another month or so.

Chicken Salad Crostini

The East Coast is in the middle of a horrible heat wave; it was 103 yesterday and 100 degrees today in NYC. The electric company is urging everyone to cut back on their electricity consumption because there are concerns of blackouts. Because of the temperatures, we were determined to prepare a dinner that required no heat.

We cooked some chicken in the crock pot over night, and put it in the fridge for the day. My goal for dinner was to make something new and different that used the chicken and CSA veggies, but required no cooking. Nothing came to mind, but luckily my husband came up with the idea of chicken salad sandwiches with homemade mayonnaise. We discovered in the process that the bread was a bit stale, so the sandwiches became crostini.


Chicken Salad Crostini
2 salad turnips, peeled and chopped
1 French breakfast radish, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 C shredded chicken
2 T mayonnaise
salad greens
toasted slices of bread

Mix the turnips, radish, carrots, shallot, chicken and mayonnaise. Layer the bread, salad greens and chicken salad.

Mayonnaise inspired by Joy of Cooking
1 large egg
1 egg yolk
1/2 t Dijon mustard
2 t vinegar
1/2 t salt
3/4 C olive oil

Blend egg, egg yolk and half the mustard in food processor or blender for several seconds. Add half the vinegar and salt and blend for several more seconds. Slowly add the oil while the blender or food processor is running. (We are able to pour the oil through a small hole in the top, and it controls the pace for us.) Once the oil has been added, turn off the machine. Fold in the rest of the mustard, vinegar and salt. The mayonnaise will only last 1 -2 days in the fridge.


The crostinis were ok. We kept a lot of the marinade in the chicken salad, but it ended up not tasting great with the veggies. Maybe it burned a bit? Next time I would make the chiken salad with plain shredded chicken.

Week #5

We had missed our farm share vegetables greatly, so it was with great anticipation that we walked over to pick up the latest installment yesterday. On the way, we realized we weren't the only ones that were excited...

New York City is still under the spell of World Cup mania. Each country seems to have created at least one "headquarters" location to watch the game. The Germans picked Loreley Restaurant and Biergarten and were spilling out into the middle of the street to celebrate Germany's victory over Argentina. (The photo doesn't do the crowd justice. The sea of revelers had to part to let cars through.)

Here are the vegetables for this week:
We will be enjoying radishes, carrots, chioggia beets (they have stripes), garlic scapes, kohlrabi, turnips, salad greens, and braising greens (mustard greens, Asian greens, kale and more).

Hummus

Tomorrow we will finally get our next share. I have really missed all those veggies this week. In the mean time, here's one of our favorite recipes. We love hummus with vegetables, pita, on salad, with falafel, or even CSA radishes, turnips and crackers.


Hummus
1 can chickpeas
2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
2 T tahini
1 T cumin
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 T olive oil
water
salt to taste

Add all of the ingredients to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. If the texture is not to your liking, add water teaspoon by teaspoon until reaching the desired results.

I usually like a really thick hummus for a dip and a thinner texture to put in a pita with falafel.

Dinosaur's Mean Greens

I couldn't wait to start digging into our share last night. I decided to cook up the braising greens based on a recipe from Dinosaur Bar B Que. If you have never been to Dinosaur Bar B Que, it is worth the trip. It started in Syracuse, and now has a location in NYC at 125th St (right across from the Fairway). Friends from Texas even think the brisket is good, and it's hard for a Texan to admit that New York State BBQ is even edible.

So I started with the Dinosaur recipe for "Mean Money Greens Revisited," and made a couple of tweaks based on what we had available. This is what I ended up with:



Dinosaur Inspired Greens
1/2 pound braising greens (use up to 1 pound)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
4 large cloves of garlic, minced
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce (or to taste)
1 teaspoon maple syrup (or honey)

Wash the greens well. Drop the greens into a couple of inches of boiling water. Boil for 5 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water. Coarsely chop. Pour the olive oil into a large skillet over medium high heat. Add the peppers and onions. Once they're soft, add the garlic and cook 1 minute more. Dump in the greens and give them a stir. Add 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon pepper, the vinegar, Tabasco, and maple syrup. Stir a couple of more times, and it's ready to serve.

Ours ended up heavy on the peppers and onions because we only had a little over a half pound of greens, but it was really tasty and we got a rainbow of vegetables right in one dish. All of the veggies were still firm. If you prefer a more traditional texture, just keep on cooking them until they are to your liking before adding all of the seasonings.



Even though the greens were good enough to eat by themselves, we decided to add a couple of other things to our meal. We started with a salad of mixed greens with a bit of red onion and some yogurt dressing leftover from some Pakistani takeout (from Lahore Diner - delicious!), and the rest of the menu included some blackened salmon and lemon, garlic quinoa. Doesn't it look delicious on our gorgeous mustard yellow plates?

Looking forward to the next delicious meal.

First Day

This morning kind of felt like the first day of school because it felt like a new beginning, and I was excited to head off and get our first share, meet the farmers and the other members. Of course just like the first day of school, I started having some second thoughts as the time got closer. We had originally wanted to join a different CSA because it had a pick-up during the week, it was a bit closer to our apartment, cheaper and offered an affordable fruit option. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, we procrastinated signing-up and missed the deadline. During lunch I started lamenting that maybe we had missed out on the better option.

When we arrived at our pick-up point, I saw that all of my fears were unnecessary. They had several giant ice chests with labels on the side letting us know the contents and the quantity to take. We got about half a pound of two different salad green mixes, braising greens, asparagus, beets, radishes and broccoli raab.



I'm ecstatic with the selection, especially considering that this is only the first week. This is probably more food than we got during the height of our CSA two summers ago.

Looking forward to some delicious meals.

Anticipation

We are looking forward to getting our first CSA share of the season tomorrow. The members of the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) pay for a share of the farm's vegetables at the beginning of the season. We joined a CSA two summers ago and we were really disappointed with the amount of food we received. We would head to the Farmers' Market each week to supplement our vegetables and found that it would have been cheaper to just buy each week at the market. Of course we joined the CSA to support the farmers and have a culinary adventure, but it would have been nice if it felt like a good value too.

We took a break from CSA life last summer, and now we are ready to venture out and try again. We have joined the Foodstocking CSA. We thought we'd blog our way through the summer to hold ourselves accountable and share our ideas on using up massive amounts of kale and other veggies. But who knows, maybe there will not be massive amounts of anything... please join us on our adventure.