• kale
• green peppers
• leeks
• celeriac
• winter squash
• carrots
• garlic
• onions
• pick-your-own basil

The celeriac is back!  Our farmers have grown this in the past, and I took to it right away.  I’ve used it mostly in my standard veggie soup, but this time I’m absolutely going to try it in the Cream of Celeriac Soup recipe from this week’s newsletter.   An old article from the NPR archives, The Vegetable World’s Ugly Duckling, gives some fun info on this unusual veggie, plus some tasty-sounding recipes.  Leave it to our farmers to widen our veggie horizons!

I’ve got a lot of veggies in my fridge and freezer to get through, so keep checking back throughout the fall and winter for recipe ideas. 

See you all at the farm party!

In our share this week:

• kale
• collards
• leeks
• carrots
• onions
• garlic
• pick your own basil

Here’s a recipe to try that uses our garlic and onions:  a quick Dal Makhani.  I always order this dish when my husband and I go to my favorite Indian restaurant.  Even though this quick dal recipe doesn’t hold a candle to my restaurant’s version, it’s tasty and healthy.  Ingredient variations I used were 2 Tbsp tomato paste instead of tomato pulp and whole milk instead of low-fat milk, plus I added some butter which made my version a not-so-lowfat dal.  Also, the recipe calls for ginger-garlic paste, which I made by simply mashing up some ginger pieces and a small garlic clove together.    Of course this dish would be the best served over rice, but all I had pre-made were rotini noodles.  Oh well.

• kale
• leeks
• beets
• peppers
• tomatoes
• carrots
• onions
• garlic

Lotsa leeks this week.  I don’t feel like making soup today due to the hot weather that’s still hanging around, so I plan on chopping up those leeks while they’re still nice and fresh, freezing them, and making Creamy Potato and Leek Soup as soon as it turns cooler outside (see also my previous post, interestingly done during the exact same pickup week from last year!).

If you still have those fingerling potatoes from last week, try roasting them a la this Rachael Ray recipe.  I tried it out last night, and it was quick, easy, and…”yumm-o.”

Alton Brown’s blueberry episode was his inspiration, and he then went online to find a homemade pie crust recipe with video.  I was in charge of buying the ingredients, and found fresh blueberries at our local fruit farm for an end-of-the-season bargain price.  Alton’s recipe calls for tapioca flour, which I finally found at Market Basket in the Bob’s Red Mill section.  He skipped the freezing of the blueberry mixture step in Alton’s recipe since time was of the essence and it was very important to have it for dessert after lunch.

Very shortly, all the fresh farmstand blueberries will be gone, leaving me to hope that all will go well using frozen blues.   So, give a homemade blueberry pie a try, and maybe you’ll be as pleasantly pleased as I was.   I will no longer have my blueberry pie any other way.

• kale
• potatoes
• carrots
• green beans
• sweet corn
• peppers
• garlic
• tomato
• onions
• apples

This rainy day is a good day to make a veggie soup.  I posted the recipe last year about this time.  Today I’m using some previously-frozen farm broccoli, some leftover red cabbage that’s still in my fridge, a few cherry tomatoes, some carrots, and of course the farm onions and garlic.  I like to simply throw all the veggies in my food processor, whir it up, and add it all to the pot.  What a great way to use up those forgotten veggies.

In our share this week:

• kale
• swiss chard
• carrots
• Tropea onions
• summer squash
• tomatoes
• garlic

Whenever I have medical questions that I’m researching, and since I’m a native Minnesotan, I usually head over to the Mayo Clinic website.  They have hundreds of healthy recipes on the site, and so I thought I’d share some of the results of my recipe-surfing with you (one for each veggie in this week’s share):

Kale:  Braised Kale with Cherry Tomatoes

Swiss Chard:  Fettuccine with Swiss Chard and Mushrooms

Carrots:   Baby Minted Carrots

Tropea Onions:  Lentils with Wild Rice and Crispy Onions

Summer Squash:   Steamed Summer Squash with Warm Leek Vinaigrette

Tomatoes:   Lima Bean Ragout with Tomatoes and Thyme

Garlic:   Grilled Portobello Mushrooms with Thyme and Garlic

Happy, healthy eating to you!

• arugula
• escarole
• broccoli
• cabbage
• eggplant
• leeks
• carrots
• tomatoes
• green peppers

Today with that eggplant, I made baba ghanouj for the first time.  I followed this recipe over at littlebluehen.com, but cut it in half.  This version is a lot like hummus, and quite easy to prepare.  Having another eggplant recipe to choose from is always helpful.

I love cooking with leeks, and if it was cooler out I would make a leek and potato soup.  See my previous post for that recipe, and also a slaw recipe using our broccoli.  With the escarole, I think we’re going to make Farmer Mike’s Escarole, Beans, and Sausage recipe (see this week’s newsletter).  I’ve made variations of this, but this time we want to follow the recipe verbatim.

Also, I urge you to try Farmer Anne’s suggestion for using the arugula, of which I’ve been using a slightly-adapted version:  heat some olive oil, saute cherry tomatoes with a big handful of arugula, then add some feta, cooked penne pasta, and a little lemon juice.  I’ve been whipping up this little treat several times a week since reading about it in our newsletter from a few weeks ago (under the What’s New In Your Share This Week section).

I made a hot and sour cabbage and tofu soup from my Moosewood Restaurant Cooking for Health cookbook, but I also found some fantastic-sounding recipes over at tastespotting; just type “cabbage soup” into the search bar, and you’ll be directed to other sites with delicious recipes and beautiful photos.  I think the Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup looks good, and I’m really looking forward to making Simple Cabbage and Bean Soup.  I’m just happy that cabbage lasts so long in the fridge, waiting patiently for these somewhat cooler days.

In our share this week:

• kale
• lettuce
• swiss chard
• cucumber
• summer squash
• Tropea onions
• tomatoes
• garlic
• and a hot pepper

Ahhhh, Tropea onions.  I’m excited for members who are getting their first taste of these sweet treats.  As Farmer Anne says, they do need to be cooked to bring forth their sweetness.  Some interesting reading on Tropea onions can be found here, where this Italian guy (actually, a first-generation Italian-American living right here in Massachusetts) states that in Tropea, Italy, you can find red onion marmalade, and even red onion gelato!  So, after some searching, I did find a Tropea onion marmalade recipe here.  I haven’t tried it, but let me know if you do.

By the way, I have been diligently pureeing my zucchini and summer squash, pouring them in one-cup portions in a ziploc bag, and storing them in my freezer.  This will simplify my winter-time baking of these delicious and somewhat healthy Zucchini Brownies.  The recipe actually calls for two cups of grated zucchini, but since I always make half-batches, I freeze in one-cup portions, and I find that pureeing (rather than grating) the zucchini in a blender is easier and works just as well.  If your blender is a bit stubborn getting started on the zucchini, start with just a few chunks and a little bit of water, and when those get going, slowly add the remaining chunks.

• kale
• lettuce
• cabbage
• white beets
• broccoli
• summer squash
• cucumbers
• tomatoes
• garlic

I have so many cucumbers that I even resorted to researching how to freeze them successfully.  I came up with this Method for Freezing Cucumbers recipe and tried it out yesterday.  I’ll let you know how it turns out when I break them out of the freezer in the future.  The recipe calls for 12 (pickling) cucumbers, but I only had the larger cucumbers and so used about three of them.  After a little more internet research, I gathered that pickling cucumbers result in a crispier, more flavorful (due to their thinner skins) pickle than the larger slicing cucumbers, but either will work.

A member commented a few weeks ago that she, too, is on a “pickle mission.”  It was then I realized that I haven’t even tried making bread and butter pickles in all my CSA years.  So, I found this Refrigerator Bread and Butter Pickles recipe, which is very similar to the freezing method except for the addition of the spices.

So, don’t let those cucumbers go to waste…join me and start pickling!