Sometimes I fantasize there’s a CSA Merit Badge for incorporating multiple sharebox items into a single dish. I had a four-bagger a couple months ago. One of the winter season’s final boxes included shitake and crimini mushrooms, red sorrel, a head of garlic, and a bag of Castle Valley Mill polenta. I guess technically that’s five items….
Category: ate it up
consumed
Pickleberries
This week’s pre-delivery CSA list had me prepped for more rhubarb—which was great, since I’d used up last week’s bundle making preserves Sunday. When I pulled back the lid on Tuesday’s box, though, there were strawberries instead. Superb. Sunday’s jam session had also cleaned me out of extra berries, so the switcheroo was a welcome one. I knew exactly…
Roasted Green-Garlic Hummus
It’s garlic that hasn’t graduated yet. Green garlic—or spring garlic—is simply garlic that’s pulled from the ground before the bulb of cloves matures and starts to dry. You’ll see it in the market and in your CSA sharebox throughout spring and summer, first as what looks like a scallion but smells like mild garlic; then…
Honey-Roasted Rhubarb
The fine folks at Greensgrow Farms recently asked me to guest blog for them on how my garden weathered our extreme winter. I lost four long-established climbing roses, every single perennial herb except some scraggly sage, about half my grapes, and the real heartbreaker: my prolific fig tree. On the bright side, well, my garden’s regained a bright…
Sting for your Supper
Stinging Nettles. What, you missed that day in Professor Slughorn‘s class? Though raw stinging nettles will indeed hurt you for a few minutes if you touch them with bare hands, you don’t need a magic wand or copy of Advanced Potion-Making to transform those-who-shall-not-be-handled into a terrific—and nutrient-dense—workhorse green. A couple-minute blanch is all it takes…
A Dandy Lunch: Spring CSA Frittata
Everything here was from the last couple shareboxes to arrive in the Winter Season (though we’re bound and determined around here to consider it SPRING): eggs, a wee red onion, portabellos, an aged, gouda-style cheese, chives, and the crown jewel, a bag of dandelion greens. So many CSAers I know don’t bother with the “weed…
Let them eat (parsnip-carrot) cake
Even those of us who love parsnips and carrots suffered a little root fatigue this winter. The carrots were a little easier to work through—so sweet for snacking (or soup or pancakes)—but the ‘snips required a bit more effort. I do love parsnips, but, right or wrong, they’re typecast for me, relegated to a supporting role…
Mrs. Peel’s Popcorn
Popcorn was off limits for most of my early teens. Seems like ten years, though it was more like four, which is still an insanely long time to wear braces. Some forbidden foods were not a big give-up—jelly beans and Jujubes never did much for me—but corn on the cob and popcorn? That seemed cruel….
Miso en Place
My meals are often made out of sequence. Well, partially made, anyway. On the days I work the closing shift, if I want to boost my odds of eating a better dinner than carry-out slices or a bowl of cereal or a scrambled egg or two (and believe me, that happens often enough), I have to…
There will be blood oranges
I know, I know. They’re not local. But here in southeast-PA’s Zone 7, no citrus is. With the short-seasoned blood oranges, ruby grapefruits, and Meyer lemons, though, I’ll stomach the carbon-footprint guilt. They just pair so beautifully with what is local and available now: Dark, leafy greens. Yes, even in the midst of the region’s…
Boxing Day 