Share Pickup - Week D

Last week's share from the CSA was "Week D." I was happy to see that it was a bit lighter on the greens, though the salads have been nice:

• 2 ears of sweet corn
• 1 bunch carrots
• 1 head of romaine lettuce
• 1 white onion
• 1 red onion
• 1 bunch turnips
• 1 large yellow squash
• 1 large zucchini
• 1 bunch parsley
• a few pounds each of peaches & plums
• and, of course, my weekly share of 1/2 dozen eggs.

Much of the carrots went into baby food for Sydney, now frozen. Of course I made another batch of chipotle mashed turnips, but I also managed to throw together some new recipes: stuffed zucchini, chickpea tabbouleh and bran muffins with peach & plum filling. I'll add links to this post once they're up.

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Cookdaddie's First Interview (w/ TinyPlayground)

Adrienne over at TinyPlayground asked me to share some of my experiences as a new father. You can check it out here.

TinyPlayground is a great resource for tips, lists and product recommendations drawn from Adrienne's personal experiences as well those of her close friends. Check it out! Continue Entry»

Make Your Own Salad Dressing!

Since we started receiving our weekly share from the CSA, we've been eating a lot more salad than usual. The vegetables are so fresh and tasty, that making your Wednesday and Thursday lunches from a chunk of it seems like a logical decision. It also frees up room on the counter and in the fridge. We usually add in some hard-boiled eggs, kidney beans or chunks of cheese to give the meal some extra protein, but a good salad really needs dressing. We stopped buying packaged dressing some time ago, and, unfortunately, there has been some lag time before I started to learn how to make my own well. For a while it was just about pouring some olive oil, vinegar and some dried spices on top.

Thankfully, The New York Times' excellent food column The Minimalist focuses on salad dressing this week. (If you're not familiar with Mark Bittman, take some time to check out his blog, Bitten.) Bittman breaks it down to this:

a salad dressing contains three things... a fat, an acid and something else. While it may seem too general, it's not. Oil, vinegar, salt & fresh lemon juice is the most simple example he gives, but you can experiment by using different oils + different vinegars + different spices and/or sweeteners. The Maple Thyme Dressing I put together recently follows this equation as well.

So if you're getting a lot of greens from your CSA, or if you're looking to enjoy more healthful meals, save some money and make your salad even more delicious by making your own dressing! Of course, making your own dressing is fun too. Just don't forget to dress the salad right before eating it. If you're taking your salad with you to eat elsewhere, old, clean spice containers make the perfect vessel for transporting your tasty concoction.

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Pickled Beet Stalks

Disclaimer: I am posting this recipe the day after creating it. I have no idea how these pickles will turn out, but I hope it will be delicious! The recipe was born out of a need to free up some space. I usually chop up beet stalks and saute them with the leafy greens, but these stalks were huge. From look of it, beet stalks also pair well with Prosciutto and/or Gorgonzola cheese... neither of which we had in the apartment. But we did have vinegar...

Pickled Beet Stalks/Pickled Beet Tops

• 1 bunch beet tops
• 4 cups vinegar (red wine, cider or white)
• 1 tsp black peppercorns
• 1 dried chipotle pepper
• 1/2 white onion, thinly sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, whole

*Amount vary depending on how much beet stalk you have. This was enough for 2 16 oz Ball jars.

1. Sanitize your jars and tops by submersing in boiling water.
2. Wash your beet stalks and trim them so that they are about 3/4 inch shorter than your jars.
3. Bring the vinegar to a boil - add the chipotle pepper and peppercorns. Let simmer, covered while you...
4. Pack the beet stalks into the jars. Tuck in the garlic and onion. Pack it in tight.
5. Pour the vinegar into the jars (good idea to use a funnel!), covering the stalks, but leaving about 1/2 inch space.
6. Put the lids on and close tightly, but not too tightly.
7. Submerge the jars in boiling water to seal. You'll need to leave them in for about 15 minutes. Keep an eye out for when the bubbles stop escaping from the jars.
8. Remove the jars and store in a cool, dark place.
9. About 4 weeks later... enjoy! (Hopefully!)
   

If you try this recipe or have any tips, please email me or add a comment.

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Share Pickup - Week C

We were traveling last week and unable to get our share from the CSA. Thankfully our friend Ben was able to pick it up and put it to good use - including a sour cherry pie!

The third share was the biggest one yet:

• 1 head romaine lettuce
• 1 head cabbage
• 1 bunch kale
• 1 bunch spinach
• 1 red onion
• 1 white onion
• 1 bunch beets
• 1 bunch radishes
• 1 bunch carrots
• 1 bunch cilantro
• 8 peaches
• 1 1/4 lbs plums
• And of course I picked up my share of eggs - 1/2 dozen
  

The red onion and cilantro came in handy: we had a ripe avocado that Syd the Kyd had tasted and liked, left most of us to us, and so we enjoyed fresh guacamole before dinner.

A good chunck of the share went into salads, much like the salad from Week A. The radishes were bit harsher than before, so I heated up some red wine vinegar with peppercorns, poured it over sliced radishes and let them sit in the fridge overnight. This was a really nice addition to the romaine, carrot and roasted beet salad. Even after partitioning four large salads, there was leftover romaine, carrots and fridge-pickled radishes.

There was one problem with this week's share: size! While this really wasn't a problem, I did have to find some way to get some in the fridge and some preserved, while wasting as little as possible. I had an idea... aside from the cabbage, the biggest amount of space was being taken up by the beet tops. I do enjoy the greens fresh or sauteed in some garlic, but the stalks were especially long. My solution: pickled beet stalks

In a few weeks, I'll know if my idea worked.

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You Can Always Rely On The Tartness Of Plums

Sydney was a bit put off by the tartness of the plums we fed her:
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Baby Firsts: Peas & Carrots , Bananas & Plums

It's common practice to wait three days between introduction of new foods to a baby. The reason is if the baby has an allergic reaction, you're able to identify which food caused it. It's also common practice to abandon this practice with second and third babies after your first born had no reactions at all. Being the fourth-born in my family, I'm quite sure my mom was giving me whatever she had on hand at the moment.

Still, we're sticking with it for now. Sydney had a finger serving each of carrots and bananas. She seemed to like it at the time. Sydney went crazy for her first full meal of solid food, and she enjoyed her second solid food: blueberries. I blended up some organic New Jersey-grown berries and stirred it into her cereal. The only down-side was the crib-staining spit-up. When our CSA share included carrots and peas, I was optimistic. First we tried the peas: boiled them for a few minutes, chopped them up, and... rejection. She managed to eat some, but clearly did not enjoy it (see the video below). Her reaction to the carrots was pretty much the same. The good news is that she was not allergic.

Why the rejection? Babies have sweet-tooths. Humans are hard-wired to seek out carbohydrates & sweet foods because they contain more easily-accessible calories. Calories are units of measurement for energy. Energy is good. But so are peas and carrots. And they go together nicely, as Forrest Gump once pointed out. Sydney did enjoy her bananas and plums, and, again, no allergic reaction. I'll be putting together the first real recipe for Sydney soon: combining carrots with a date to give it a bit more flavor. More to come!

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