week 8!

We're finally getting around to using our meat share. On Saturday night we used the sausage on homemade pizzas and it was fantastic! We were so inspired, in fact, that we defrosted the rib eye steaks for dinner this week.

Heath used a basic salt/pepper/garlic salt rub and then marinated the meat for a bit in steak sauce before throwing the steaks on the grill. They were superb! Extremely moist and flavorful.

This week's vegetable share brought us swiss chard, green beans, green onions, chives, garlic and cherries! So, we decided to pair the rib eyes with a grilled potato, chive, mushroom and onion mix. The potatoes and chives came from this week's veggie share. It was a simple summer meal and it was delicious.

On a side note, we also put our CSA cherries to good use in a simple apple/cherry crisp. It's amazing how fruit, topped with a little brown sugar, butter and oats can taste so darn good!

[This post submitted by Thais]

a baptism by fryer

In our meat share this month, we and the Daigles divided our delivery of two (whole) mini chickens, some beef steaks, pork shoulder, beef patties, and a dozen eggs. A few nights ago, TK and I decided to grill up our whole fryer which is, essentially, a chicken that is butchered around eight weeks old. Cute right?

Well, not for long. In our attempt to cut up our bird, we realized early on that we had no clue what the heck we were doing. Our inexperience with meat - an entire body of meat, complete with bones, skin, and other things I don't even have the first clue about - was evident and humbling. I mean, I've prepared a Thanksgiving turkey a time or two, but this, for some reason was a new experience. One doesn't need to ponder the composition of a chicken's body or meat content when they buy boneless, skinless chicken breast from the store, packaged and ready to cook.

We commandeered what meat we could from this baby, doused it in some wing sauce, and put it on the grill. Served up with a salad made of mostly CSA veggies, we tasted - for the first time I can recall - chicken from a local farm, completely free range and unprocessed. I was wary of and didn't want to convince myself that the meat would taste better, just because I had been told and had read that it was supposed to. But chickens who live in open space, and are not fed garbage, or aren't "abused" - essentially "happy" chickens - must taste better, right?

RIGHT! It was scrumptious! This bird honestly tasted different from other chicken I've tasted before...more meaty, if you can imagine, more substance. We did feel a little like scavengers, pulling every last morsel off the bones after having cluelessly quartered it. Hopefully our next installment will include a larger chicken with more breast meat so that we can feast for a little longer. For now though, I am thankful for the meal this little whole fryer provided us.

[This post submitted by Sarah]

week seven!

This week, we saw veggies from Mike and Clare as well as Genesis Growers and Earth and Skye Farms. Our haul: carrots, beets, broccoli raab, napa cabbage, endive, microgreens, and garlic. My major challenge: finding a time of day when it isn't too hot to use the oven for roasting.

One of my hopes in participating with this project was to use food well. Which is to say, not to let things go bad before I use them, to be more intentional with my food consumption. I started gardening with my mom as soon as I could walk and my grandfather was a grower in California, so I've always felt a twinge when I've let something go bad. But something I've noticed about this season is how, er, precious the food seems. I find myself digging around, making sure that not even one lemony buckwheat sprout is lost. And, of course, when I'm not eating at home, I'm reading menus with avarice, trying to figure out new things I can do with my food at home.

I think all this attentiveness is good. Yesterday it was good like this:


[photo: some delicious kind of garlic scape, cucumber, basil, red bean, daikon radish, ginger-balsamic, clean-out-the-refrigerator-from-anything-we-didn't-eat-up-last-week tuna salad. multi-grain roll on the side.]

[post by Lisa]

week six!

Week six brought a lot more delicious, and salmonella-free, produce as well as our first meat share from Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm. Mike and Clare brought us kale, green cabbage, kohlrabi (one of my favorites!), lettuce, green garlic, and thyme.

The first meat share came this week and included 2 premium steaks (either ribeye, ny strip, or filet mignon), pork sausage or Italian sausage, a pork shoulder roast, hamburger patties, a couple of whole (small) chickens, and 2 dozen eggs. The eggs really were amazing. They had such a beautiful bright orange yolk, and I found them to be creamier and richer than any store bought egg I'd ever eaten. We also used the pork shoulder, put it in the crock-pot for the whole day, and made a really delicious Eastern Carolina-style pulled pork sandwich. Yep, Eastern Carolina-style which is vinegar based (instead of tomato), and instead of using bbq sauce you put coleslaw on the sandwich, delicious! We also cooked up the hamburger patties which were great, really high-quality meat. I'd love to hear what other people are doing with their meat shares!

big food big problems?

You can call it a fad, a craze, a flash in the pan, but I think the idea of eating locally is here to stay. Especially in light of the recent salmonella outbreak which now boasts over 1000 related illnesses, the largest ever salmonella outbreak, as well as the frequent meat recalls. By now we’ve all heard about the possible salmonella tainted tomatoes, or was it peppers or maybe cilantro or maybe basil that have affected people in nearly every state and in multiple countries around the world.

Receiving far less news coverage but equally disturbing was the 530,000 pound ground beef recall from a meat processing plant in Nebraska which took place just a few weeks ago. Maybe this recent recall received so little press because we are fresh off of the largest beef recall in US history, 143 Million pounds, which was linked to a firm in California earlier this year. The question that I’m wondering is, has our food gotten more unsafe or am I just more aware of this kind of news now.

weeks four and five!

[photo: garlic scapes at play]

So, the boxes for weeks four and five arrived like this:

week 4: kale, baby pac choi, kohlrabi, greens (mustard or turnips), lettuce, green garlic, basil

week 5: fennel, cabbage, potatoes or broccoli, mizuna, baby swiss chard, garlic scapes


***
I'm really awful at following recipes, so here's what I made this up for the fennel (sorry, no photo—we consumed it on the quick):


Alliterative Fennel, or
Figgy Fennel with Feta and Fronds

prep:
slice 2 fennel plants (bulbs, stems, and fronds—reserving fronds for later)
slice 3-4 figs into small parts
crumble feta (to taste)
pick 8 basil leaves from backyard patio—chop into bits

cook:
sauté fennel bulb and stem in your favorite oil until texture shifts
add fig to coat it in oil and warm it to temperature of fennel
add fronds and basil mix in for even distribution (for a minute or so)
garnish with feta

[post by Lisa]

not your nonna's gnocchi

I ran across a fun way to use beets, in gnocchi! They look beautiful and taste great too! I have to admit that I don't enjoy the earthiness of beets, but loved this recipe because the parmesan and ricotta balanced the strong flavor. If you love beets, use more than the recipe calls for.

Here is the recipe (makes 4 main-course servings):

3-4 small beets, trimmed
1 pound fresh ricotta cheese
1 large egg
3/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 1/2 cups flour, divided
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
2 tbsp olive oil
fresh rosemary sprigs, or bunch of basil, chopped
Additional Parmesan cheese, shaved
Additional basil leaves, to garnish

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Wrap beets in foil and roast until tender, about 1 hour. Cool 15 minutes. Slip skin off beets; discard skins. Coarsely grate beets. Place grated beets in large bowl. Stir in ricotta, egg, 3/4 cup Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. Mix in 1 cup flour. (Gnocchi dough can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate.)

Lightly dust baking sheet with flour. Place remaining flour in small bowl. Using a tablespoon as aid, scoop dough into small rounds; transfer to bowl with flour, roll to coat. To shape the gnocchi: hold a salad fork in one hand so the tip rests on the work surface at a 45-degree angle. Place a piece of the dough at the top of the tines with your free thumb in the center. In one gentle motion, quickly press and roll the dough along the tines to make groves in one side of the dumpling. The other side will have a small dent from your thumb, perfectly suited for holding a sauce. Transfer gnocchi to prepared baking sheet. (Can be prepared 6 hours ahead. Cover and refrigerate.)

Melt butter with rosemary or basil in heavy large skillet over medium heat. Cook until butter begins to brown, about 3 minutes. Add olive oil, set aside. Working in batches, cook gnocchi in large pot of simmering salted water, 3 1/2 minutes. Using slotted spoon, transfer gnocchi to skillet with butter, olive oil and rosemary/basil. Heat over medium heat, stirring gently to coat. Transfer to plate; sprinkle with additional Parmesan cheese, garnish with basil leaves and serve. (Paraphrased from Bon Appetit magazine, October 2004).

[This post submitted by Marissa]