Week One (of Two CSA bins)

Denison Farms CSA Bin: raspberries, strawberries, radishes, lettuce, fennel, leeks, potatoes, carrots, cucumber.


Minto Island Growers CSA Bin: lettuce, salad mix, rhubarab, turnips, mint, bok choy, green garlic.

The first produce bin of the year!!

So, at 2 am last night...when we had been travelling since the wee hours and passed through all time zones on our return from a cross-country trip with 2 little ones, I was not as excited as usual about picking up our produce bin. Even less excited was my husband who was counting the minutes it was adding to our late night to “swing by the porch” and pick up the first CSA bin of the season! In my zombie-like jet-lagged state this morning it was even worse trying to sort and prep all the produce, but I know that we are in need a serious diet detox from travelling and this is perfect timing to have an abundance of fresh fruits and veggies in the house!

For dinner I made a carrot top soup. This is something that I have wanted to do since we first starting getting the CSA bins years ago...it always pains me to throw away all those leafy wisps at the top of the carrot bunch! I started sautéing radish and turnip greens last year, but have yet to attempt to use the carrot tops in anything other than making veggie broth. Well, today that is a-changin’! I am doing a slight variation of this recipe:
http://www.chef2chef.net/recipes/recipe-archive/13/078137.SHTML.

I added a few minced garlic cloves, some dried thyme, red pepper flakes, lots more chopped carrots and doubled the amount of rice (also, using brown rice). I’m making a loaf of freshly baked homemade honey whole wheat bread so even if the soup is a bomb we’ll have some yummy bread! Oh, and serving it with a salad of course (gotta use up some of that lettuce, cucumber, radishes and carrots!)



UPDATE: The soup was delicious! Got a thumbs up from both adults in the house!

Late night fruit crisp

As often happens, when the kids are in bed and it's getting later and later....I get hungry for dessert. I was really craving a fruit crisp last night and so I inventoried our fruit (fresh, frozen and canned) selection and offered the following selection to my husband: blueberry, rhubarb, peach, apple or cranberry (or any combination thereof). His answer was "anything but blueberry" so I began a search for an amazing apple cranberry quinoa crisp that I knew I had somewhere. It took me about as long to find the recipe as it did to make the dessert. But it was ALL worth it. Just as delicious as I remembered it!

***Apple Cranberry Quinoa Crisp***

Mix the following ingredients together and put in a glass baking dish:

2 large apples (I use whatever I have on hand, this time it was cameos) - cored and chopped into bite sized pieces (leave skin on)
1 cup frozen cranberries
1/4 cup sugar (or sweetener of choice)
1/2 teas cinnamon

In a separate bowl combine the following ingredients and then spoon over the fruit mixture:

1 cup quinoa flakes
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup coconut oil (or butter or butter substitute, this time I used a little Earth Balance Spread, but mostly coconut oil - I definitely think that the coconut oil makes this crisp topping spectacular!)
1/4 - 1/2 cup brown sugar, depending on your preference of how sweet you want it

Bake 350 for 45-50 minutes until the top is lightly browned.

Coconut Milk-Brown Rice Pudding

This recipe is adapted from David Gabbe's cooking class recipe. David teaches a variety of vegan cooking classes in the Salem and Portland areas and I *highly* recommend him if anyone is interested!

Here's my take on his recipe:

Cook 3/4 brown rice (he recommends using more water than usual to result in a chewier, softer rice....he suggests 3 3/4 cups water - the resulting pudding from this is delicious!! Sometimes I just use leftover rice that I have on hand though)

Add:
1 1/2 cups coconut milk
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup finely chopped dates
2 teas vanilla extract

Stir and cook until heated. Simmer uncovered for about 10 minutes.

Then, mix 2 tablespoons arrowroot powder (or could use any other thickening agent) with 2 tablespoons COLD water. Slowly stir this mixture into the rice pudding and stir constantly until it is thickened. (usually takes about a minute or so)

First Wednesday Farmer's Market of the Year!!

Here's a quick snapshot of the produce we got at the Farmer's Market today...fresh spinach, broccoli raab, carrots, garlic, zucchini, new potatoes and strawberries!

What's for dinner? Breakfast!!

This was really Friday night's dinner...tonight (Saturday) we went out for Mexican food. But last night I didn't have time to post. We had a "breakfast for dinner" night. Above is a photo of my FAVORITE pancake/waffle mix. It's sooooo good! I use the instructions on the back that call for whipping the egg whites and then folding them into the batter, so it creates an extra fluffy/light product. The other version is equally good (just denser), but quicker and easier, especially when camping and such. Last night I used some homemade hazelnut milk as the liquid for the pancakes which I think added a really nice touch. We served them with thawed strawberries and blueberries from the freezer and (I'm a bit embarrassed to say) I think I ate 5 waffles! Yep, they were THAT good! :)

Cookie Time!

So, dinner tonight wasn't anything spectacular (although it WAS mighty tasty!) - we had quinoa noodles (a new favorite of mine), panfried tempeh cubes, homemade marinara, steamed broccoli and roasted asparagus. The kids also had their favorite bread, Salem Sourdough from Cascade Baking Company.

But the real star of the show (and this post) was dessert...I attended a Green Cuisine forum at Willamette University earlier this week and one of the items served was this fabulous vegan cookie. Students were the "chefs" for the evening and I accosted the one who made the cookies when I noticed she was carrying one of my favorite cookbook author's books in her hand. Turns out the cookies were from "Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar" by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. I just so happen to own this cookbook (which I suppose isn't a surprise to those of you who have seen my cookbook collection!) For those of you who have the book, or get it from the library, the recipe is for the Chocolate Agave Trailmixers (pages 96-97 of the book). I have to say that the recipe itself wouldn't have stood out to me, but the samples of these cookies were delicious!!

I made these tonight with a couple modifications - sugar for agave, dark chocolate chips and with dried cherries and freshly roasted cashews. Yum, yum!

Pizza and Salad...two nights in a row!

After telling a friend what I ate for dinner last night she said that I should start my food posts NOW ;) Since we are eating the same dinner tonight I thought I'd actually take a photo of the food BEFORE we ate it, so there was a visual.

So, a food photographer I am not! And, to make matters worse, I couldn't even find our camera in a timely manner, so I had to take this picture with my iPhone. I'd like to say this will improve, but likely it will not. Anyway, what's in the photo? In the back are salads....with greens, carrots and snap peas - all purchased with glee at the Farmer's Market last Saturday! I topped it with some tamari pumpkin seeds and used Annie's Shitake dressing. Even for a non-salad-lover it was pretty tasty! The pizzas.....the kids have olive and cheese (it was already cooked). The adult pizzas were ready to go in the oven when I took this quick photo. The one on the left (which appears to just be a pile of cheese) would be my husband's. Under the mound of mozzarella are sauteed mushrooms and ciopollini onions (both also from the local Farmer's Market), olives and a homemade roasted tomato sauce. My pizza is a vegan version with homemade pesto (no cheese, extra garlic!) for the sauce, sauteed mushrooms (lion's mane, shitake and maitake), ciopollini onions and some panfried asparagus spears.

Okay, and I got a photo of my pizza after it was cooked...now I'm going to eat it. Yumm!

An apparently long introduction

(photo of my little bee....and one of the main reasons for my obsession with good food)


Fanatic.
Obsessed.
Enthusiatic.
Passionate.

I am sure that there are more, but these are a few words that describe my fervor for fresh, seasonal, local, organic produce. Going to a Farmer’s Market for me creates an adrenaline rush akin to a runner’s high or a shopaholic’s binge (which I can say emphatically because I have experienced all 3 feelings more often than I care to admit).

I was ecstatic when I first heard about CSAs - Community Supported Agriculture or basically buying a farm share at a local organic farm. With a CSA you pay a fee upfront for a year (or growing season) ‘s worth of produce. Then, once the farm is producing edible crops, there is a once a week delivery where you pick up a bin of fruits and veggies. It took a year or so to convince my husband, who, curiously, used to work on an organic farm, that we should join. But we’ve never regretted our decision to do so. Yes, sometimes it means that our fridge is literally packed with produce. And, yes, sometimes it means I was frantically searching the internet for recipes for such things as fennel or mizuna, as I had no a clue what to do with them! But, thankfully, that learning curve was relatively short as we realized what we could (and couldn’t) do with different varieties of produce. It forced us to try new things and encouraged us to have a more plant-based diet during the CSA season in order to best utilize the produce. Another bonus is that my kids LOVE just about anything that comes from “the box” and usually eat a carrot or basket of berries on the drive home from picking it up and then a handful of raw spinach or chunks of raw cauliflower and broccoli as soon as we get home.

In addition to our weekly CSA box (from May – November) I also LOVE Farmer’s Markets. Even when we are on vacation I seek them out! Where we live we are blessed with a year round Farmer’s Market as well as a Wednesday Market and a Saturday outdoor market (the later two are only operational Apr/May – Oct). I frequent all of them often! I also take advantage of U-picks during the summer and stock up on LOTS of berries (raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, etc ) in the freezer. I just took up canning a few years ago and make copious amount of canned tomatoes, sauces, green beans, peaches, jams, applesauce, etc. This past year I forayed into the land of homemade canned ketchup and infused liqueurs as well. Fun stuff! Yes, it means a lot of time spent in the kitchen during the summer, but it is so rewarding to have a well stocked pantry and freezer all fall and winter!

Last year we lept into new terrain with local foods and, in addition to our CSA share, we also obtained a plot at a local community garden. For a small fee, we “rented” a plot of land and use of water at this garden and began to grow our own crops. I was determined to do it without use of pesticides or other non-organic additives to the soil, etc. Amazingly, almost everything we planted did stellar! We had a bounty of tomatoes, peas, zucchini, eggplants, peppers, etc. in our little plot. Some very questionable plants that my children insisted on getting past-season outside a pharmacy didn’t do well, but that wasn’t surprising. What was surprising (and probably shouldn’t have been ) was how much WORK it was to garden! My two small children were initially excited about the “project” and my then 6 year old made bar graphs to chart how many of each vegetable we harvested. However, their enthusiasm quickly waned and I had to resort to letting them sit in the air conditioned van next to the garden plot while I furiously worked in 90 degree weather to tend to the plot daily.

This year I got the crazy idea, and, ask my husband….my crazy (ie brilliant) ideas can rarely be stopped, to get TWO CSA shares instead of renewing our garden plot. Now, getting 2 shares from the same farm would clearly just be silly! I mean, if I have a hard time going through the allotment of potatoes from one week’s bin, how would I sanely be able to go through twice that amount?!? My brilliant solution….if I joined 2 different CSAs there would be a bit more variety. We’ve been members of our initial CSA for many years now and there is a consistency of what is in the bins and I have no doubts that we can go through that amount of produce (we have for years). The new CSA is going to be a bit more of a wild card….both in quantity and variety, but I figure that it will work in lieu of the garden plot (and perhaps a little less u-picking and farmer’s market shopping – although I can’t give up the market experience altogether!).
For some reason I don’t see it as that big of a deal to have 2 CSA shares (maybe after the first couple weeks I’ll repost and change my mind) but I am always met with a quizzical glance when I tell people that I signed up for 2 Farm Shares this year. Enough people seem curious and say “tell me how that goes” that I decided to start this blog, so I could just refer them here!  And, I figure that it will be a motivator and measure of accountability for me in using all the produce that we bought and someone else toiled over to bring to our table.
The two biggest challenges that I anticipate are: (1) Lettuce and (2) Potatoes. Part of my issue with these two items is that they can’t be preserved. I am anticipating A LOT of freezing and small batch canning as I am determined nothing will go to waste. However, one can’t preserve lettuce in any fashion (and, gasp! I don’t like salads) and the year I tried freezing potatoes in different forms (mashed, shredded, chopped, etc.) I wasn’t pleased with the results when I cooked them later in the year. We used some of them, but, sadly, some ended up in the compost pile. I am hoping the compost pile won’t share in the wealth of either of our CSA shares this year!

I am not delusional, I know that we will be flooded in produce this summer, but I’m up for the challenge! My Zip-lock freezer bags, seal-a-meal and canning jars are ready! Bring it on!

(Oh, and when I get a chance I will post more on the two CSAs I chose and why as well as the local Farmer’ s Markets, etc. …..don’t worry….there’s more to come! And when the produce starts flooding in there will surely be lots of recipes and food ideas that I have to share as well – both on the immediate eating and preserving side of things!)