Berry CSA: weeks 10 &11

In week 10 we received blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, and plums. The plums reminded me of the variety that we could find in California growing on trees in our neighborhood, small and soft and so sweet.  

In week 11 we got blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, and doughnut peaches, which turned out to be one of my favorite fruits this year. Our CSA hit 100 days of strawberries this season which is impressive, and so we also got an extra carton of strawberries. You may guess as to how I felt about that!

For the most part we ate our fruit as it came to us, but I did bake a Three Berry Buttermilk Bundt Cake for 4th of July (phenomenal!), and a recipe for Blueberry Chocolate Banana Bread. Both have been added to my bank of go-to recipes for their simplicity and because they were really, really, good. Not to mention how gorgeous the final loafs were, your Summer houseguests will be impressed!

For the bundt cake I substituted oranges in place of the lemons. For the banana bread I omitted the bourbon (only because we didn't have any!) and substituted blueberries for the walnuts. 

Berry CSA: weeks 7, 8, & 9

I'm really behind in posting about our berry CSA.  I love, love, love community supported agriculture, but at some point in every season, I think to myself, "Oh no. Not more . . . ."  The week before last it was strawberries.  During the fifth week of our veggie CSA it was snow peas and cucumbers.

The fruit is always gorgeous, fragrant, and so pretty to look at. It really should be consumed within the first few days after we pick it up at the market or it starts to look drab and necessitates being baked into something.  I have no excuse for letting some of their perfect berries go to waste.  I know. I feel terrible.  I just couldn't think of anything more to do with those strawberries, and I'm the big fruit eater around here and I was sick for a couple of these weeks with zero appetite.

Here's what we've been eating and (in some cases) tossing:

Week 7: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries
Week 8: blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries
Week 9: blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, apricots

Our recipes over the last few weeks have been uber simple: berry salads with honey glazes, or yogurt toppings; berries over ice cream; berries in oatmeal; berries with whipped cream.

I bake a fancy cheesecake in the winter months that has a delicate sour cream layer on top and I always make sure to whip up a little extra topping so that I have plenty to "taste test" without impacting the final product.  All of that to say that I made a batch of the sour cream topping and used it as a dip for the berries, and it was really good.

I'm not terribly precise when I do this, but I mix in a small bowl approximately 3/4 cup sour cream, 2 teaspoons of vanilla, and 1 tablespoon of sugar (you can use brown or white).  You can add more or less sugar and vanilla depending on your taste.  It pairs well with strawberries and blueberries in particular.

Speaking of blueberries, we've been eating a lot of blueberry pancakes. A lot. We enjoy a good breakfast-for-dinner at least once a week.

The very best pancake recipe that I have ever made, and that we've been making for several years comes from the Joy of Cooking...it's true!  Actually, I first saw the recipe when I watched the McNeely's on the Food Network one evening back in 2010.  We've been making them ever since, but recently I was looking through my joy of cooking cookbook and the recipe is EXACTLY the same, except the McNeely's add pecans.

They are so perfect.  Fluffy, tender, and a little on the sweet side.

The recipe for the "Best Buttermilk Pancakes Ever" (or depending on who you ask, "basic buttermilk pancakes", or "buttermilk pecan pancakes"):

DRY ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

WET ingredients:
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
3 tablespoons unsalted butter melted
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Whisk dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
Whisk wet ingredients together in a large bowl.
Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and gently whisk them together, mixing just until they are combined.

Place blueberries on each pancake after the batter has been poured.

Berry CSA: weeks 5 and 6

We are already a third of the way through our 20 week berry CSA. In week five we received six pounds of strawberries, a half pound of snap peas, a pound of asparagus and a pound of rhubarb. In week six we received four pounds of strawberries, four pints of blueberries, and one pint of raspberries.  Members receive a 20% discount on any additional produce purchased, so it adds value to buy up a few extra units of strawberries, raspberries, and/or blueberries, which we always do.  If there is anything left at the end of the week it becomes jam for toast or yogurt.

We're loving all this fruit, but I'll admit to being a little a lot lazy with our veggies. The asparagus was made to wait too long, and even though I had big (beer battered) plans for them, by the time I got to the bunch it was too late. Both weeks, the snap peas didn't make it much further than to be washed and left at eye level in the fridge so the kids could reach in and munch them for snacks, which only happened a handful of times.  I ate a few with some cheddar cheese but, well, we really should have given them away before they went bad.

A few things from the kitchen:

Raspberry Jam

Strawberry Buttermilk Sherbet

An instant family favorite. Although my preference would have been to use full fat buttermilk I grabbed low-fat by mistake, but it still turned out great--tangy and refreshing, with true-to-life strawberry flavor.

Blueberry Muffins

Ina's uncomplicated recipe makes a classic blueberry muffin. The batter alone is worth the effort, if you like to eat it straight from the bowl like we do.

Strawberry Rhubarb Bars

I didn't love this recipe. Maybe I was just in the mood for something sweeter, but a shortbread cookie crust would have been a better pairing. 

Mini Berry Trifles

We had some heavy cream just hanging out, so I decided to whip it up and layer it with berries for a festive to-go dessert for Andy's lunch on Monday. I ate mine (the bigger of the two) for breakfast, with an egg.

Strawberry applesauce

Strawberries and apples were made for each other and applesauce is too easy to make. I peeled and roughly sliced into quarters about 20 apples and then dumped into the pot a pound and a half of hulled strawberries, brought it to a boil and let it simmer for 30 or 40 minutes. I sweetened it with a tablespoon or two of maple syrup. The kids loved it, I ate it for dessert.

Oh, I almost forgot.  I made this strawberry dressing too.

Do you have a strawberry recipe that you think I would like?  

Curing bacon

Last month we ate brunch at Balliceaux, which has a gorgeous interior with buttery leather seating and themes of nature running through an otherwise repurposed urban industrial space that makes me want to reconsider my decorating philosophy, but I digress.  Most importantly, they have a bacon menu.

They house-cure all their bacon and serve each slice with accompaniments. Applewood smoked bacon with nutella. Chinese five spice with orange marmalade. Garlic cured with olive oil.  Oh man, it's really good.

On Saturday I needed some bacon. At the farmer's market I checked in on the Root Force collective farm and they were selling unsliced, uncured bacon and I was feeling inspired to give curing a try.

I loosely followed this recipe for the rub, but chose a combination of salt, brown sugar, rosemary, garlic, cinnamon, and pepper.

I generously coated two pounds of bacon with the rub and then dropped the whole thing into a weck jar where it will sit for 7 days, until step two.

Have you ever cured your own bacon?

Berry CSA: week 4

I've been sick for the last week, so I haven't quite been able to keep up with blog posts and picture taking. I don't have a pretty image of this week's Berry CSA share but we still got 6 lbs of strawberries and 2 lbs of snap peas. Agriberry was offering pints of their first harvest of raspberries, so I grabbed four of those as well.

Last week was a fun week in the kitchen. We're back to eating mainly from the farmer's market, with grocery lists consisting primarily of those ingredients we need to make the dishes that I have planned for the week.  In addition to the berry csa goodies that we bake and cook, I may also continue to use this regular weekly post to share some of the other produce related dishes that make up our meals each week.

Among other fresh stuff we enjoyed:

Strawberry buttermilk muffins

Roscoe (and Merritt) approved

Gnocchi with peas and bacon

Strawberry soup and a strawberry muffin for lunch

Cream of Asparagus Soup

Collard Greens with Raisins and Almonds

Buttered Spring Peas

Salad Greens from the garden

Everyone loved the strawberry muffins--they were moist and dense, and filled with berries.  Paired with a protein like eggs or bacon they made a convenient breakfast, and they also made for easy snacks to pack up on the go or to carry outside in hand. You can't go wrong with tangy buttermilk and sweet in-season berries.

The gnocchi dish was a crowd pleaser as well.  I love the simplicity of one-pot dinners, with everything you need in just one place.  I couldn't find bacon at the farmer's market (anywhere!) and so we bought fat back, which is basically uncured and unsmoked pig fat. It's cheap and fatty delicious when chopped into little bits and seared in a hot skillet.  I subbed it for the bacon in the dish and it did the job just fine.

I've made chilled strawberry soup a few times in the past, mainly as a first course at brunch. All the recipes I've tried have had similar ingredients: strawberries, juice, and a dairy component.  If the idea seems a little weird then you should probably give it a try.  The kids thought it was a smoothie and at some point I just gave up and poured it into their cups. Andy and I thought it was refreshing and a nice compliment to heavier dinners.

1 cup apple juice
3/4 cup water
2/3 cup sugar (I probably used half this amount)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
Combine in a saucepan and bring to boil over medium heat. Remove from heat.
3 cups strawberries
1/4 cup water
Puree until smooth in blender. Pour into large bowl
2 cups plain yogurt ( I subbed one cup of the yogurt for whole milk)
1 teaspoon vanilla
Add to pureed strawberries with apple juice mixture. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled. Garnish with strawberries.

As for the cream of asparagus soup and the collard greens, the soup was very rich but I enjoyed the temperature twist and the collard greens were really good--although I think I'm the only one in the family who ventured to eat them.

Happy cooking!

Berry CSA: week 3

This week we received 7.5 pounds of strawberries and 1 pound of asparagus.  (I happily swapped a unit of asparagus for another unit of strawberries, and then bought 3 more pounds of strawberries.)

Last week was strawberry-filled and we are not at all tired of them. We sliced strawberries for breakfast, we munched on them for snack, we ate strawberry shortcake with cream one night for dinner. Yep.

I cooked a perfect strawberry rhubarb jam that we spooned over ice cream, onto buttered toast and buttermilk drop biscuits. We ate it with peanut butter, we ate in on everything.  Together, the four of us devoured all three quarts of it--which sounds a little nuts as I confess this in writing.  If you had tasted it, you might understand.

The recipe that I chose from Simply in Season called for 6 cups of rhubarb, 2 cups of strawberries, and 3-4 cups of sugar. Here is the modified version that I used:

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam

6 cups rhubarb diced (2 1/4 pounds)

5 cups strawberries lightly mashed

Bring to a boil in large saucepan

2 cups sugar

Add and boil uncovered 20 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent scorching.

I poured the boiling jam directly into my weck jars and secured the lids.  Each time we opened a new jar, the lids popped as we unsealed them, so I think they would have kept just fine for a while (weeks?) in the fridge. 

Rhubarb and Berries

Berry CSA: week #2

On Saturday we picked up from the market 4 pounds of strawberries, and 2 pounds of rhubarb.

I've never cooked or baked with rhubarb before, but many years ago I enjoyed the sweet and tart combo of strawberry & rhubarb pie. Again, we are torn between enjoying the berries as they are in all their perfection--so tender and sweet this week--and incorporating them into experimental dishes. At the very least I hope to make a strawberry tart and also some strawberry and rhubarb jam. I'm looking forward to scooping homemade jam from my weck jars at breakfast.

Last week, despite my prediction that our strawberries would be eaten before I could bake anything with them,  I did manage to make a strawberry and pistachio crumble that was pretty wonderful.  Kind of a surprise hit that I adapted from a well-loved recipe that we use all the time.

My favorite cookbook of the last year is In the Green Kitchen by Alice Waters.  Her book "presents her essential cooking techniques to be learned by heart", and every dish that I've prepared from it has been phenomenal. Each recipe includes many variations and encourages creativity and confidence in the kitchen.

If you have some strawberries hanging around this summer, give this a try:

Strawberry and Pistachio Crisp
Berries
Slice 2 pounds strawberries into quarters
Sprinkle 1/2 tablespoon cane sugar over the berries
Squeeze the juice of 1/2 a lemon and toss the mixture lightly to coat

Topping
Mix together in a food processor until crumbly:
1 1/4 cups flour
6 tablespoons brown sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons cane sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2/3 cup pistachios, shelled
12 tablespoons unsalted butter

Dump and distribute the topping evenly over the berries.

Bake at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes or until the juices are bubbly and the topping begins to brown.

We let ours sit for 15 minutes to cool and set up a bit, before we dolloped whipped cream on top and ate it up.

Strawberries

Strawberries with cookie topping

Fresh from the oven

Oh yum

I also tossed together the super easy goat cheese pasta and it made a great dish for an early dinner on a hot and balmy afternoon: light and refreshing with the tangy goat cheese, citrus, and asparagus.

Do you have any recipes to share?

Berry CSA, week 1

Our first berry CSA drop was today!  We received 6 pounds of sweet strawberries and 2 pounds of fresh asparagus. Apparently this is the earliest April harvest our farm has seen in 28 years!

Eggs and asparagus are a natural combination, and as if to read my mind a friend sent me a link to a lunch of hard boiled egg sliced over boiled asparagus and sprinkled with grey sea salt, pepper, and blood orange oil.  Oh man.  I opened her note just after we finished up our dinner tonight of cheese omelets and roasted asparagus.

We have one pound of the green stuff left, and this asparagus, goat cheese, and lemon pasta looks like just the thing.

I like to share how I use my produce every week, and I have already come across some yummy looking recipes. Maybe not ideal for this week though, because I'm pretty sure that the berries will only last long enough to devour them as they are, such a predicament!

Still, these recipes make me want to get in the kitchen and start experimenting:
Strawberry Buttermilk Sherbet
Strawberries and Dumplings
Strawberry Basil Lemonade
I made this strawberry cake for valentine's day this year and it is so, so good.  Definitely worth making again with fresh strawberries this time (instead of frozen).

Next week I hear we have strawberries and rhubarb to look forward to.  Yippee!

Agriberry Farm, community supported agriculture

We bought a full season share of a berry CSA that runs from early May thru mid September. Every week we can look forward to 6 "units" of strawberries and other fruit and complementary veggies like sugar snap peas, asparagus, blueberries, cherries, red raspberries, black raspberries, blackberries, plums apples, purple raspberries, peaches, melons, and rhubarb.  Units can vary from a pound, 1/2 pint, pint, quart, peck or 3-5 fruits, depending on the type of fruit and harvest conditions.

Two years ago we bought a share of a veggie CSA, and every week I blogged about the produce we received in our share and many of the recipes that we tried. Some of my favorite posts are here (the video of Roscoe eating snow peas is classic), here, here, and here.  For our produce last year we relied on a small garden and the farmer's market every Sunday. This year we're planning a combination of family garden, csa, and farmer's market. I'm excited!

At the indoor farmer's market at St. Stephen's church on Wednesday, AgriBerry was selling the season's first strawberries!  We also picked up three heirloom tomato seedlings (brandywine, brandywine yellow, and black crimson) and 4 sun sugar cherry tomato seedlings (and some incredible looking sausage) from Frog Bottom Farm.

If you're in the area and want to join AgriBerry Farm's csa check out the details and the application here--Anne said they need more people to pick up at the Monument Avenue Farmer's Market Saturdays from 8:30 -11:30.  Maybe we'll see you there!

Thriving on Winter's Bounty

Winter Squash Lasagna

It's wintertime even though this second week of warm and breezy weather might have me believing otherwise.  But, it's definitely December and while eating seasonally in the Spring and Summer was easy peasy, and the Fall wasn't too bad either, learning how to cook (and eat) the leaves and roots of winter is not quite as joyful. At least not at first glance.  What to do with all of the spinach, beets, carrots, parsnips, winter squash, potatoes, and sweet potatoes!

I have an extensive collection of cookbooks, but lately I've been relying on two in particular.  The Winter Harvest Cookbook has shown me that the winter dinner table can still be diverse and satisfying--exciting even!  Tonight we ate a traditional farmer's skillet supper of bacon, potatoes, and kale--we added eggs to the mix for a hearty, warm, and filling meal.

Last night I baked a winter squash lasagna with crimini mushrooms, butternut squash, and romano and mozzarella cheeses.  Red wine, garlic, tomato sauce and a from scratch bechamel sauce made for a complex flavor combination.  Roscoe finished his plate clean and Merritt was close behind him.  I was pleasantly surprised, and happy to cook squash beyond my old standby of caramelizing it. (note: if you've never made Ina Garten's recipe for caramelized butternut squash, you must.  It is fantastic--but wow, it is also possible to use butternut squash in other ways too!)

The recipe for Winter Squash Lasagna can be found online here. Gingered beets and brussels sprouts, cabbage with coconut, and chestnut risotto are just a few of the recipes that are going to save me this winter--i just know it!

The other book that I keep returning to is called Simply in Season.  What I love most about this book is the way that it's organized. Corresponding to the four seasons, there are four sections and within each section is a list of the seasonal produce that you might expect to find at that time of year.  Every page offers a new recipe and the seasonal ingredients used in each one are highlighted from the larger list found in the margin, which means you can search by ingredient with a quick flip through the pages.  It has a great reference section in the front too. Root vegetable crumble (with cashews!), stuffed beets, and golden carrot salad are up next.

I also want to check out the kid version, Simply in Season for Children.

If you eat seasonally, how do you cope with the bounty that winter offers?

It's been too long

Instead of sinking into the couch cushions to tap out the highlights of our days together, after dinner each night I lay quietly and read for a while as I nurse Merritt to sleep, the sunlight fading until I can't see the words on the page. Many nights the darkness is my cue to call it a day too. If there's anything truly worth doing at the end of a long, long day, it is to go to bed early. Other nights, I slip away from my little Merritt boy and head up to the loft to catch up on work email or to finally look my husband in the eye and have a grown up conversation. There are far too few hours in the day.

So much is happening around here that living in the moment has just been easier than trying to find time to document with photos and narrative. I miss the time that I used to carve out for my blog each night. The writing always feels good, and it's unreal how a few days turn into a week (or two!) and I find myself with way, way more to say than I know I'll ever find time to get down. Just gotta keep moving forward!

The weekends have been crammed with trips to the farmer's market, day visits to Richmond for house hunting, and family naps. If our house selling experiment goes through we're looking to close in mid to late October. I have yet to fully embrace the reality of the effort required to pack up and move all of our belongings. I think I'm in denial.

I've read at least 20 books since June began (many thanks to Merritt's sleep routine). We've been so inspired by the words of Michael Pollan, Nina Plank, Barbara Kingsolver, and Alice Waters. What began as a mother's day project in the backyard has, in the course of one summer, completely changed the way we eat and redefined our relationship with the food that we bring to our table. It's been a quiet revolution. My former relationship with food might have been characterized as mediocre, at best. In forging real life relationships with our food, through the people who grow and raise it, we've found our place within our local food chain. I thought I loved food before, but I think now that I'm in love.

The kids and I have been traversing our county during the week to forage for local food dealers, and pick your own fruit farms. I've been thrilled and impressed with what we've found so close to home.

Has your Summer reading inspired you in any way?

Who wants to join me?

August 13th is Can-It-Forward Day.

We've taken up the locavore scene in our area and it seems that eating seasonally goes hand in hand with knowing how to put up food for the winter.

We buy our meat from a farmer who owns Walnut Hill Farm at Elm Springs in Falmouth, Va. Every Sunday, under his tent at the farmer's market, I pick Jeff's brain on topics that range from the seasonality of chicken, to harvest routines, and even the feasibility of buying half of a cow for our freezer. Jeff is a kind man, and doesn't seem to mind my naivete. This past weekend when I mentioned an interest in learning how to can food he generously offered to teach me how to do it. A canning 101 class, you could say. And he told me to bring a friend or two to make it legit.

If you're curious about what canning is all about, and want to learn from a seasoned pro, AND you're up for a field trip to a farm to get your canning on, let me know. We're meeting up in the early morning of August 15th. I'm bringing boxes of peaches, tomatoes, and string beans (and whatever else I can find at the farmer's market on the 14th), along with a few crates of canning jars. I'm inviting you to do the same.

This is an exciting opportunity, and it's free! Leave a comment or send me an email at marblesrolling@gmail.com if you're interested and I'll share the details.

CSA Week 12

In this week's CSA bag I found:

Watermelon, yellow squash, eggplant, cucumber, zucchini,

corn,

salad tomatoes, ambrosia melon (not pictured because we ate it already!)

The Summer is winding down--only two weeks left--and our CSA has offered us so much this season: nutrition, weekly excitement anticipating what we'll receive next, and big adventures in the kitchen and around the table. I'm grateful we had the opportunity to belong to our local Crop Share and I hope to do it again next year!

My favorite recipes from last week included a basil-lime soda, and a luscious tomato soup.

For the soda I made a simple syrup in which I steeped 1.5 cups fresh basil-lime leaves for about 2 hours. I removed the leaves and chilled the syrup then sweetened to taste tall glasses of icy soda water. Refreshing!! The lime-basil flavor was a little odd--similar to root beer but too perfum-y for my taste. However, the technique was so, so easy, that I'm inspired to experiment with other fresh herbs.

I also made homemade croutons to garnish the soup. I bought two small rolls of rosemary bread, sliced the bread into cubes, and sauteed them in olive oil until all the oil was soaked up and the edges of the bread began to brown. Then I transferred the croutons to an oven heated to 350 degrees until they were crisp and lightly browned all around. A generous sprinkling of Fleur de Sel and they were so delicious I could barely stand it.

Happy Cooking!!

CSA Week 11

In this week's CSA bag I found:

Salad tomatoes, eggplant, heirloom tomatoes, corn, cucumber,

lime-basil, scallions, cherry tomatoes

That's a lot of tomatoes, folks!!! I haven't yet attempted Gazpacho, but it looks like this week is my week!

I'm one quarter Filipino and I grew up eating a lot of rice alongside a few staple dishes. I recently decided that I wanted to learn to cook at least a handful more in order to add them to my arsenal of go-to favorites. I hope to offer at least a sprinkling of culinary culture to our kids' palettes!

Ginaatang Mais was my first recipe. It's a chilled coconut rice soup with fresh corn added. Our nanny who is also Filipino pointed out that the soup is meant to be eaten after waking from an afternoon nap. I loved the idea and so Roscoe and I shared a bowl of the sweet and creamy rice after a glorious 2 hour siesta. We sat together on the front porch in the middle of an intensely hot day and practically licked the bowl clean. The experience was both refreshing and fun! I hope we get to do it again soon.

Another highlight from last week: the buttermilk corn muffins. It's a really quick and versatile recipe--we had so many blueberries leftover from a blueberry pancake breakfast earlier in the week that I modified the ingredients and whipped up a second batch. The perfect summer treat!

How I used last week's produce:

Sweet corn: coconut milk Ginaatang Mais, buttermilk corn muffins

Eggplant: eggplant fries

Peppers and cucumbers: mahi mahi with peach, cucumber and habanero salsa

Heirloom Tomatoes and Basil: basil-garlic mayonnaise BLT

Watermelon: eaten as is, I haven't had a seeded melon in a very long time--I forgot how much work it is to pick out those seeds!

Cherry Tomatoes: mozzarella and tomato salad

CSA Week 10

In this week's CSA bag I found:

Cucumbers, eggplant, an assortment of peppers, a whole basket of heirloom cherry tomatoes, lots of ears of corn, basil, 8 heirloom tomatoes, and one watermelon. Mmmm, eggplant!!

Our kitchen was at full capacity last week, as I churned out recipe after recipe. We ate well and every dish was so pretty to look at!

Last week's recipes:

Heirloom Tomatoes and Cucumber: tomato and blueberry salad

Shiitake Mushrooms: cheddar/mushroom omelettes

Cabbage: fish tacos

Cherry Tomatoes: tomato tart

Corn: summer corn soup

Melon: we ate this first thing in the morning, and we might have enjoyed it more if we had waited a little longer to dig in. It wasn't quite ripe.

The tart is so easy and so delicious that you are silly not to try it out. The corn soup was a little labor intensive but totally worth it--I made mine with stock and milk (not just stock, as the recipe reads). While I'm at it, the fish tacos were mighty fine, and super easy.

The blueberry muffins and blueberry scones were extra, and we happily shared them with our friends and neighbors.

I don't want the Summer, or the CSA to end!!

CSA Week 8 and 9

In this week's CSA Bag I found:

I'm so-o excited about those gorgeous heirloom cherry tomatoes. A tomato tart seems just the thing!! I'm also intrigued by that melon and hope to find an interesting recipe, or else we'll just gobble it up tomorrow morning at breakfast.

A girlfriend of mine was kind enough to pick up our CSA produce while we were away. I've been so curious to know what she got and how she prepared it. Just when I couldn't stand it any longer, she emailed me!

First off: she received new potatoes, heirloom tomatoes, pint tomatoes, large and small onions, and corn.

That adorable little girl is her daughter, Lillian--the only girl out of six babies born to the families in my birthing class. I love her! And not just because her table manners are so clearly advanced.

Heidi set only two guidelines for herself as she determined how best to incorporate the produce into her family's weekly menu:

1. No other grocery trips! (She's a whole foods and farmer's market devotee)

2. Incorporate herbs and other vegetables already harvested from her personal garden

The heirloom tomatoes inspired a pasta dish that graced the table just in time to welcome her sister from out of town, and otherwise she kept things simple in order to let the produce do the talkin'. This approach is a Heidi hallmark.

So here's how she did it:

Ears of Corn--several to grill and eat this week (try with lemon basil butter or pesto) the rest to blanch and freeze

Cucumbers--simple tomato/cucumber/onion side salad with herbed vinaigrette, also tzatziki sauce served with pan fried panko cod

Onions large and Small--sliced in salads, sliced in tomato/squash bake, minced in recipes

New Potatoes--roasted with rosemary, Hawaiian red sea salt, smoked paprika flakes, EVOO, and ground pepper

Pint Tomatoes-half reserved for cucumber salad, half reserved to roast and toss with pesto pasta

Three Heirloom Tomatoes--peeled and chopped for pasta recipe to include 5-6 chopped tomatoes, 1/2 cup chopped basil, 4 oz. goat cheese (she used Sweet Valley Farm Dairy Tomato Basil/Farmer's Market), 1/4 cup EVOO, 1 seeded and chopped jalapeno, 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, sea salt to taste, heated and served over 1 package DeBoles whole wheat pasta.

It's fun to see how other families use the csa produce, and I really missed my veggies last week!

Thanks Heidi! You can invite us over for dinner anytime!! :)