When two heads are not better than one

I subscribed for a share in the Two Small Farms CSA this year.  It costs about $20/week, and you can pick up your box at some thirty locations all up and down the Peninsula on varying days - easy peasy.  Last Wednesday I picked up the first box.

It contained

• a few bunches of spring garlic (looks like green onions, but smells and tastes like garlic)
• LOTS of parsnips
• 2 small butternut squashes
• 2 petite bunches of celery
• multicolored carrots - an enormous orange ones, and pink and white ones, too
• a little bunch of hot-pink radishes
• a tight, crisp green cabbage
• more escarole than you can possibly imagine.

For about six extra dollars a week, you can (and I did) also receive a bouquet of local, organic flowers.  I was skeptical of these, expecting buggy, spindly wildflowers, but the bunch was gorgeous - enormous pink tulips and two colors of iris and branches of flowering rosemary and bay leaves (whose leaves I'm going to dry and save when they're done being colorful) and a number of other bright orange and pink flowers I don't know the name of.  I enjoyed them as a bunch for several days, then separated them out into four different, smaller bouquets I put around the house, and which are still going strong.  Six dollars well spent.  If they're still looking good when the next box comes in tomorrow, we're going to have an embarrassment of flowers.  (But if they're organic, maybe we can eat them.)

I'm accustomed to organic produce costing an arm and a leg (and, truthfully, don't buy it when it does), so I'm amazed how much eating $20 provides.

So far, I've used the veggies in:

3 meals' worth of cream of vegetable soup (celery, parsnips, spring garlic)

4 meals' worth of honey glazed root veggies (multicolored carrots, parsnips, radishes)

2 servings of Asian-style cole slaw (cabbage, radishes, spring garlic)

1 serving of stir fried radish greens (radishes)

1 wilted salad (escarole, spring garlic)

1 serving of smoked salmon dip-filled crudite (celery and radishes).

I'm not crazy about celery, but I'm chastened by the idea that food dislikes are to some extent acquired, and have managed to get through it all, by seasoning highly the above (mostly celery) soup, filling raw stalks of it with crazy delicious salmon-dip, hiding chopped celery as a base layer in a mushroom risotto and freezing the small amount that remained for stock.  Very pleased with myself.  I suspect that at least one item a week will be my 'challenge' item, which I will have to really push on through.

I am NOT pleased with myself re the escarole.  There is a ridiculous amount.  I guess it's just two heads, but it's a little bitter, so it doesn't make for an inviting salad, so I don't know what to do.  I stir fried some on the weekend, but can't say I enjoyed it.  But they're looking at me, wiltingly, and I know I need to make some headway before tomorrow's box comes in. 

Anyway, I've only gone shopping once - a last minute run on Good Friday to grab some mussels and frozen fish filets for dinner.  Ace picked up some milk and cereal and OJ, and bread at the farmer's market.  So, financially, this CSA thing is not as much of a hit as I thought it might be, now that I'm forced (by the threat of waste) to build most meals around the produce. 

The threat of waste is no small thing.  I have a few things remaining, besides one and a half HUUGE heads of floppy escarole, but they don't bother me yet.  Three quarters of a cabbage (we can blow through this in a couple of stirfries and slaws), a handful of parsnips and carrots (just enough for one roasted dinner) and the butternut squashes, which I've refrained from cracking into in favor of the perishables.

It's a challenge, for sure, but I'm looking forward to the year. 

Tomorrow, I'm expecting to get a bunch of greens that are mysterious to me - Italian greens I've never heard of, tumbleweed.  The farm is kind enough to include some recipe ideas in their weekly newsletter, which they send in advance so we can plan ahead.  They manage to make a lot of the vegetables that intimidate me (bitter greens, chard) seem, instead, sophisticated and refreshing.   So I'm going to hew closely to their recommendations on these - I feel like I'm being thrown into an area of cooking that's completely new to me, dealing with mystery produce, and it's exciting. 

I think I'll learn a lot this year.

Comments

[7thStreet]

Swiss chard is especially delicious in omelettes. And I'm personally dreading the end of the brussel sprouts for the season. I'm not sufficiently in tune with the land to know exactly when that will come, but as long as they are available, I make sure to obtain more at the farmer's market (conveniently located just outside my workplace) because split, doused in olive oil with a dash of onion salt, and roasted with a drizzle (or more) of balsamic, brussel sprouts alone can make my day.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how this applies to your escarole problem. :)

[Heather]

Can I just call you Martha? Wow, impressive work!

Here is a recipe that uses an ENTIRE head of escarole. (Of course, it claims to serve 8. :-)

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Penne-Pasta-with-Cannellini-Beans-and-Escarole/Detail.aspx

Add crushed red pepper and garlic for more flavor. And if you aren't opposed to some fat, add some grated cheese on top!

[tasterspoon]

Oh, Heather, that pasta recipe looks great, and look at all the five star reviews it got! Maybe you and D and K can come over and eat escarole pasta soon? (Really soon?)

7th Street, have you ever seen that cute photo of a cabbage on one side of a grater, and a whole bunch of Brussels sprouts on the other, you know, because they look like tiny cabbages? It was on a poster I saw once that I regret not buying.

I think it was by the guys who do these books:

http://books.google.com/books?as_auth=Saxton+Freymann&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=author-navigational&hl=en

[7thStreet]

I think I have seen that photo and I think you're correct on the source. Is it just me though, or is this one a little scary looking? http://books.google.com/books?id=-VN7GwAACAAJ&dq=inauthor:Saxton+inauthor:Freymann

[Professor Art Nerd]

I also hate celery! I fear that Kev and I (but mostly him) are too picky to really be able to benefit from joining something similar here. I'll be reading up on the progress- maybe if we introduce our sproutlet to "exotic to us" veggies early, he/she will be more culinarily adventurous?

[Amy]

This might sound weird, but you could see if there's a local group who could use your leftovers. I do rabbit rescue and bunnies eat a lot of greens! A lot of the items you got aren't really good for buns, but leafy greens certainly are.

Jealous of your CSA!

Some of our CSAs have sharing programs where you can designate not to receive something that week (or leave it at a community table at the pickup site) so you don't waste it and someone else has a chance to have more.