CSA: A Bi-Weekly or Weekly Venture?

Everything consumed in time for Box 2!

For years, we've picked up a weekly CSA box on Saturday mornings from the first weekend in May to roughly the end of January. As our farmer predicted, by year three, we had a system to either eat everything or freeze or can that which we did not consume in a week's time. We did well. Our friends would marvel at how we, two people, managed to eat so many veggies.

Well, those days seemed to be over last year. With the purchase of a quarter cow and half of a pig (to be eaten by the omnivore in the family), we found ourselves with loads of roots and greens that ended up being chicken treats by week's end. Additionally, our gardens have grown exponentially in the past half decade, and when we bought a house in the country, we had hoped to someday be much more self-sustainable.

It seemed the time had come to downsize our CSA box, but we have commitment problems hence no children, no addition to the house...you get the idea. Even downgrading our CSA order seemed so daunting, but we took the leap (sarcasm intended for those of you who can never figure out my sense of humor!).

Well, on May 10th a CSA box was delivered to our normal pickup site, and we weren't on the receiving end. Admittedly, we felt a bit deflated. We doubted our decision. Then, May 17th rolled around. What a joyous occasion to see overwintered spinach and parsnips, freshly dug sunchokes, thick pink stalks of rhubarb, and the bright spring green of sorrel. Heavenly.

We think we made the right decision as this past Saturday, the 31st, we picked up our second box and were able to fit all of our new veggies in the fridge because ... get this: all of our other veggies had been consumed in the past 2 weeks. Regardless of how this first month went, we're going to keep track of how often we run out of veggies too early, how often the chickens are benefiting from our lack of consumption, and how much our gardens are contributing to our overall eating plans. We want to be decision-ready come 2015's order.

Something I made last week that was springy, healthy, and entirely local was Sunchoke-Parsnip soup, adapted from our very own Harmony Valley Farm newsletter. Here's how I made mine:

3 sunchokes
4-5 parsnips
2 Tbs. olive oil
1.5 tsp of salt
1 Tbsp butter
2 Tbs. chopped ramps (onions would work too)
1 quart water
2 cups fresh spinach
1 Tbsp lemon juice
ground black pepper, to taste

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cut parsnips and sunchokes and put them into a baking dish with oil and salt. Roast for 30-45 minutes, or until vegetables are tender 

2. Melt butter in a small saucepan. When the butter has melted, add the ramps and saute. Add the roasted parsnips and sunchokes and water and bring all to a simmer. Simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Remove from the heat and stir in the spinach. Once the spinach is wilted, transfer all to a food processor and blend until smooth. Adjust the seasoning and serve.

Makes 4-6 servings.
Nutritional information per cup:
Calories: 113
Carbs: 10
Fat: 8
Protein: 2
Sodium: 28
Sugar: 5

An Under-the-Weather Thanksgiving Weekend

All of our plans after a family Thanksgiving on Thursday have been thwarted by illnesses. Bright and early Friday morning, we realized we'd have to cancel my family Thanksgiving, and by last night, it became clear any plans of Christmas-tree shopping or friendly gatherings at our place would have to be postponed. So much for our idealized four-day weekend.

So, now we're on a mission to get better by tomorrow's workday. I've personally been out-of-school for meetings and such so often that I can't justify a sick day tomorrow unless I am unable to physically move.

First up: a juicy concoction. Today, I juiced spinach, ginger, oranges, and Granny Smith apples. Not the prettiest juice, but full of the Vitamin C and other cold-fighting goodies that I need.

Next up: Deborah Madison's Sick Person's Soup. Here's the recipe: http://foodforearthlings.net/delicious-dieters-or-sick-persons-soup/
Deborah Madison's Soup Cookbook is wonderful, and I turn to this recipe at least once per fall/winter to help me or Andy out with preventing and/or conquering an illness. The ginger, cabbage, and spiciness are all so healthy in combination with the warm broth.

And throughout the weekend, we've been pushing Ginger Tea and Green Tea. Luckily, we usually have both ginger and Green Tea on hand.

What about all of you? How do you push through a cold? How do you prevent one in the first place?

Be well.

My friend Deb and her wonderful Cabbage Soup

With a generous dollop of sour cream and freshly ground pepper!

Deborah Madison is the bomb, or rather, the bombess (?). Seriously, if you don't have Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen, please buy it. We swear that just as we navigate towards deep reds at the liquor store, you'll no doubt find your fingers reaching for this cookbook whenever you're in the mood for a comforting bowl of soup or you need to use a bunch of a veggies up in one cooking adventure. Just take a look at the series of posts we put up last harvest season. Deborah Madison came up more than once then, and we're sure she'll come up more than once this year.

Tonight, we quickly whipped up a double batch of her Green Cabbage Soup with potatoes and sour cream. As always, we didn't quite have the right ingredients in the fridge, so we made our adaptations with what we found at home, plus garlic, of course. Here's our doubled version of  Deborah's (yes, at this point, I feel like we're on a first-name basis!) creation:

Ingredients:
1 small green cabbage, preferably Savoy
4 Tbs. of butter
1 bunch of mustard greens, boiled before added to the mix (our addition)
3 large leeks
6 potatoes, with skins
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1 head of garlic, minced (our addition)
sour cream or yogurt
tops of celeriac (though Deb uses parsley or dill)

Directions:
1. Thinly slice the cabbage and mustard greens. Boil a pot of water, add the cabbage and greens, cook for a minute, and then drain.
2. Melt the butter in a soup pot (Debbie had 2-3 Tbs. for a single batch, but we wanted to cut out fat). Add the leek and potato, cook for a minute or two, and then add the cabbage and greens and salt. Pour 10 cups of water over the top.  Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Taste for salt and pepper.

3. Ladle the soup into bowls, then add a dollop of sour cream or yogurt, a sprinkling of your herb of choice, and a final grinding of ground pepper.

Get a nice beverage, and have a toast to Ms. Madison for her wonderful soups, and a toast to yourself for a job well done! Enjoy.

Per 1 Cup Servings: 103 calories; Total Fat, 3.5 g; Saturated Fat, 1.7 g; Cholesterol, 9 mg; Sodium, 258 mg; Carbohydrate, 17.6 g; Dietary Fiber, 2.5 g; Sugars, 1.6 g; Protein, 2.6 g

Eating Seasonally: Practice Makes Perfect

Recently a friend asked, "How do you use all of your CSA box and garden?"  This wasn't the first time a friend or family member has wondered that. After seven years of membership, we have worked out a system. We 100% build our weekly menu around the box, and one big way that we use an armful of vegetables is in a weekly soup or salad for lunch. Today, we made a lentil-and-curry based soup. Typically, we start with a base, such as this, and then we look through the refrigerator to find vegetables that will meld well.

Tonight, we each devoured steaming bowls of this new creation, topped with sour cream. So delicious that we decided to make the recipe permanent, right here, on our blog. Of course, living with a CSA box and a huge garden doesn't always lend itself to replicating recipes ingredient-by-ingredient, so this will always remain a skeleton, unless the stars and veggies align next fall, and we find ourselves with the same exact ingredients and happen to remember this specific mix on that day.

Here's what we used:
3 carrots
4 cups of escarole
2 cups of dry lentils
6 cups of water and vegetable broth mix
3 potatoes
1 small head of cauliflower
1 head of garlic
2 leeks
2 Tbs. butter
2 Tbs. curry paste
1 lemongrass sprig
3 tomatoes
sour cream (optional)

Directions:
1. We heated the butter in a soup pan and added the leek, garlic, and lentils. We allowed this to cook for a couple of minutes.
2. Then, we added the broth, tomatoes, carrots, and lemongrass. We brought it to a boil.
3. Then, we added the rest of the ingredients, except for the escarole, and let it cook until the lentils were tender.
4. We added the escarole at the end, let it wilt, and then served it up for dinner. It was wonderful topped with a bit of sour cream.

It made 13 cups. We each had one cup for dinner, and we stored the rest in Ball jars (1-cup in each). We'll have an easy, go-to lunch for the rest of the week.

Dinners will consist of plant-based ingredients, both from our box and from our garden. Whatever isn't used by the end of the week will go in the freezer. Eating seasonally definitely takes planning, but once you get the hang of it, it is easy ....and dare I say, fun!?

Vegetable Chowder

Walking from the car to our front door is becoming a challenge. The wind gusts slap our faces in the blackness of the 5:00 sky. Upon opening the door, our wet shoes are taken off, leaving clumps of snow scattered on the welcome mat. Gloves, hats, and jackets hang over the backs of chairs, leaving yet one more sign that winter is indeed here.

The Christmas tree looks beautiful, so once cozied inside, winter doesn't seem so bad. Even better, soups are always filling the house with smells of earthy roots and dried herbs. Tonight is no exception. Tonight is Vegetable Chowder Soup Night.

Here's our recipe, adapted slightly from Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen :

2 cups milk
3 Tbs. butter
5-6 cups of water
1 rutabaga *
2 cups carrots
3 blue potatoes*
1 large onion
8 cloves of garlic
1 turnip*
6 stalks of celery or one diced celeriac*
lovage
sprigs of dried thyme and parsley
salt and peppercorns

Instructions:
1. Bring milk, lovage, parsley, onion, garlic, whole peppercorns, and thyme to a slow boil. Remove from heat and cover while preparing the vegetables.

2. Chop vegetables into large and attractive pieces.
3. Heat butter over medium to medium-high heat in a large soup pot. Add vegetables and saute for roughly 5 minutes or until they are warm.

4. Stir in flour and water. Bring to a boil. Once at a boil, simmer, slightly covered for 15-20 minutes or  until vegetables are tender with a slight crunch.
5. Strain milk and add to a blender. Add 1-2 cups of vegetable mixture and puree until smooth.
6. Return pureed mixture to the remaining vegetables. Heat for another 5-10 minutes to incorporate flavors.
7. Serve warm over Parmesan toasts.

* Vegetables could be interchanged with other seasonal root vegetables.

For one cup servings: 132 cal; 4.3 g fat; 2 g sat. fat; chol 11 mg; sod 184 mg; carb 21.1; fiber 4.4 g; sugar 9.5 g; protein 3.7 g; Vit A 254% DV; Vit C 48% DV; Calcium 11% DV; Iron 4% DV

A Cheesy Week: Cheese and Broccoli Soup

We're really into cheese this week, I guess. Our last post was about homemade Mac 'n' Cheese, and now the very next day, I'm writing about Cheese and Broccoli Soup. Not good for the waistline, I suppose, but super comforting as Daylight Savings Time has ended and the cold temperatures are lurking.

Our Harmony Valley cheese share is biweekly for much of the year, but as vegetable peak season closes, our CSA schedule fluctuates, so we received cheese two weeks in a row.  Another reason for the increase in creamy, gooey, cheesy recipes.

This soup is another from Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen. I have to say that the finished product was the best Cheese and Broccoli soup I've ever had.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 pounds broccoli
sea salt and ground pepper
3 Tbs. butter
1 onion
1 celery stalk
1/2 pound of diced potatoes, peeled unless organic 
1 garlic clove
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 tsp. marjoram, 1 bay leaf, 1 pinch of dried thyme
1 Tbs. flour
1/2 cup cup cream
2 tsp. Dijon-style mustard
2 cups grated cheddar cheese
rye or whole wheat bread, toasted

Instructions:
1. Chop the broccoli trees. Cook the florets in boiling water for about 3 minutes. Drain and reserve the liquid. Rinse broccoli  florets under cool water and set aside.
2. Melt the butter in a soup pot. Add onion, potato, celery, broccoli stems, garlic, herbs, and cayenne pepper. Cook over medium-high heat for about five minutes, stirring occasionally. Add 1/2 tsp. salt, flour, and 3 cups of reserved water from the broccoli (saving any extra). Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer, covered, until the potato is tender (about 10-12 minutes). Add cream and/or additional broccoli water to thin the soup. During the last few minutes, add the florets.
3. Remove the bay leaf, puree the soup, and return it to the pot. Stir in the mustard, and add pepper and salt to taste. Just before serving, add the cheese. Do not allow the cheese to boil.  Serve with toast.

We melted a slice of mild sheep cheese on our toast...because we didn't think we had enough cheese yet this week! :)

Therapy in the Kitchen: Squash and Pear Soup, plus Plout-Apple Crisp

Life has been a roller coaster lately, and so dining out has been plentiful as have homemade goodies baked for us by our friends. Today we realized our refrigerator was busting with food, ready to vomit out bags of veggies and fruit at its first opening. Our little feather-footed Bantam, Ani, died this morning, and so, we decided to go to therapy ~ cooking together, side-by-side, in perfect matrimonial harmony in the kitchen, whipping up soup for the freezer, applesauce for later this winter, and freezing veggies we realized we wouldn't get to eating fresh this week. Oh - and we added to our dessert collection ~ a fresh pluot and apple crisp.

Below, I have included the recipes for a Squash Pear Soup and our Pluot and Apple Crisp. 

Squash Pear Soup
 (we have adapted this from Deborah Madison's recipe in Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen.)

Ingredients:
5 cups of squash
5 pears
3 Tbs. of butter
10 cups of vegetable stock
1 medium onion
1/2 cup of good, white wine
2 inches of ginger, grated
a generous pinch of cinnamon

1. Cut the squash in half. Remove and save the seeds and guts.  Roast the halved squash and peeled pears at 425 degrees on a baking dish or roasting pan. If squash are dry, add a bit of water to the pan. Brush with oil and season with salt. Bake for about 1 hour. You may have to turn the pieces over once or twice.
2. Once the squash is roasted, scrape off the skin and add it to saved seeds and guts.Also, reserve the liquid in the roasting pan.

Making stock

3. To make a stock, bring the 10 cups of water to a boil. Add the seeds, guts, and skin. Add the ginger and a 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Bring to a boil, lower to a simmer, and cover for 20 to 25 minutes. Strain and save liquid.
4. Then, melt the butter in your soup pot. Add the onion and saute over medium-low for about 10 minutes. Add the pears, squash, stock, and the reserved liquid from the roasting pan. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat and simmer for 25 minutes. Puree all when finished.

We froze ours, but it's delicious right off the stove as well!

Nutrition Facts cup servings Squash and pear soup
Serving Size: 1 serving
Amount Per Serving
Calories	111
Total Fat	2.9g
Saturated Fat	1.4g
Trans Fat	0g
Cholesterol	7mg
Sodium	136mg
Carbohydrate	20.4g
Dietary Fiber	4.2g
Sugars	9.8g
Protein	0.9g
Alcohol	0.9g
Vitamin A 121% Vitamin C 27% Calcium    6% Iron 5%

__________________________________
Plout and Apple Crisp
Ingredients:
4 apples, sliced
8 pluots, diced
6 Tbs. brown sugar
3/4 cups flour
1 tsp cinnamon
4 Tbs. oats
4 Tbs. coconut (optional)
6 Tbs. butter
1/3 cup brown sugar

Directions:
1.  Put the apples and 1/2 of the sugar in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat for 10 minutes or until apples are soft.
2. Put the pluots in the baking dish. Then, add the apples.

3. Combine the flour, cinnamon, oats, butter, and the rest of the sugar. Blend until the mixture is crumbly.

4. Put the mixture over the apples. Then, sprinkle the brown sugar and coconut on top.
5. Bake at 400 degrees for approximately 30 minutes. To be safe, put the baking dish on top of foil or a cookie sheet in case the fruit spills over.

 

Oh~ and no fall-cooking day would be complete without applesauce! We froze a few bags of that too!

Ready to cook down.

Dump Soup

After seven years of having a CSA box and several years of having a garden, there have been numerous occasions when we've let produce go bad!  Over the last couple of seasons, we've found that throwing the cookbook aside and letting intuition take over is sometimes the best way to utilize all the veggies or fruit that we  have on hand.

Tonight, in the wake of the CSA season officially starting, the mad scramble to clear out our freezer in order to make room for the bounties ahead began. We raided our freezer and dumped its remaining bags of produce into a pot along with some dried lentils and curry powder to make a "soup of the week" to get us through Friday.

Years of experience have shown us that the following items  help in getting the most out of  our produce. Our palette lends itself to ethnic cooking, so for us, these items are very useful for us to have on hand:

• dried lentils
• dried cooking beans (black, red, etc.)
• wild rice
• quinoa
• chili powder (including cayenne and ancho peppers)
• curry powder

Tonight, we "dumped" the following into a pot:

• four cups of frozen cherry tomatoes
• three cups of frozen green beans
• two cups of shredded overwintered parsnips
• three and a half cups of green lentils
• loads of curry powder (to our liking!)
• roughly seven-eight cups of vegetable broth and water 

A general rule of thumb is to add two cups of liquid for every cup of lentils.

The nutritional information for one cup of this fast food is below:

Nutrition Facts homemade soup - 5/11/10
Serving Size: 1 serving
Amount Per Serving
Calories	200
Total Fat	0.1g
Saturated Fat	0g
Trans Fat	0g
Cholesterol	0mg
Sodium	156mg
Carbohydrate	38.3g
Dietary Fiber	9.4g
Sugars	5.2g
Protein	13.3g
Vitamin A 11% Vitamin C 37% Calcium    7% Iron 20%

If you're a first time CSA member or gardener, or you're still wondering how you'll use all of the produce you have, we encourage you to let your cooking inhibitions go, and just begin throwing food in the pot!  Usually the results are not only tasty, but good for you!

Garlic and Kale Soup

This Garlic and Kale Soup is fantastic! It's perfectly spiced, obnoxiously healthy, and super easy to make. Although this recipe isn't one of our own, we thought we'd share it with all of you. Most of the ingredients are moderately in season ~ meaning that most were either already in our fridge, freezer, or pantry.

According to Vegetarian Times, "Kale and garlic are good for the cardiovascular system; wheat berries are high in fiber; and shitake mushrooms contain eritadenine, and amino acid that speeds up processing of cholesterol in the liver."  Yay for healthy soups!

Garlic and Kale Soup
1/2 cup wheat berries
2 Tbs. olive oil
3.5 oz. shitake mushrooms, stemmed and thinly sliced (we bought these dry and rehydrated them)
10 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced (we used 2 whole heads!)
1/4 cup brown rice vinegar
4 cups vegetable broth
1 bunch kale, stemmed and coarsely chopped.

1. Either soak wheat berries in a large bowl of water overnight, or cook in a pressure cooker if you're pressed for time.

2. Heat oil in 2-qt. saucepan over medium heat. Add mushrooms, and season with salt, if desired. Saute mushrooms 10 minutes, or until beginning to brown. Add garlic, and saute 2 minutes more. Stir in vinegar; simmer until vinegar is almost evaporated,  stirring to scrape up browned bits from pan.

3. Drain wheat berries, and add to mushroom mixture with vegetable broth and 1 cup water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer 20 minutes. Add kale, and cook 10 to 20 minutes more, or until kale is tender. Season with salt and pepper, if desired.

Per 1-cup servings: 138 CAL; 4 G PROT; 5 G TOTAL FAT; 20 G CARB; 0 MG CHOL; 103 MG SOD; 3 G FIBER; 4 G SUGARS

Am I in Spain? ... Yummy Gazpacho!

On a hot August day, in the midst of summer heat and Wisconsin humidity (yes, it does get hot here!), there is nothing like a cold, fresh bowl of gazpacho, a piece of crusty cheese bread, and a nice glass of wine!

The following recipe is the combination of a collection of gazpacho recipes we've collected over time. Whenever we attempt to follow a gazpacho recipe, we fail because we're usually missing something. We try to use as many ingredients from our CSA box or garden as possible. It seems counterproductive to run out to the store to get a missing veggie when we have so many to choose from in the fridge or garden. Gazpacho is one of those dishes where freedom is everything!

Here is how we made ours last night!

August Gazpacho
Makes approx. 6 cups
2 cups of chopped tomatoes
1 cup of chopped pepper
1 cup green beans, chopped
1 jalapeno
1 med. onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves
1 cucumber, chopped
2 pieces of crusty bread (we used sourdough)
24 ounces of fresh tomato juice
1/4 cup minced parsley
1/4 cup olive oil (or more to taste)
juice of 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 tsp. dried oregano
2 Tbs. Worcestershire
salt and pepper to taste
hot sauce to taste

Combine everything except bread, jalapeno, garlic, and tomato juice. In a food processor, combine bread, jalapeno, garlic and tomato juice. Puree until everything is combined. Pour over veggie mixture. Mix to combine. Eat fresh, or refrigerate for one hour before serving (depending on your will power and appetite!).

We like ours with a nice, crisp white wine and some crusty bread!

Based on one-cup servings:

Nutrition Facts Gazpacho 8/16
Serving Size: 1 serving
Amount Per Serving
Calories	155
Total Fat	9g
Saturated Fat	1.2g
Trans Fat	0g
Cholesterol	0mg
Sodium	341mg
Carbohydrate	19.6g
Dietary Fiber	3g
Sugars	7.9g
Protein	3g
Vitamin A 39% Vitamin C 174% Calcium 4% Iron 8%

(courtesy of www.myfooddiary.com)