CSA 2011: Week 24

The season is winding down now.  Last year at this time we had a TON of produce, but since the hurricane at the end of the summer our share hasn't been as plentiful.  (Still more than enough food for us, though.)

This week we picked 2 quarts of string beans, 4 quarts of sauce tomatoes, and a bunch of parsley.  Yes, we skipped everything else.  I took the parsley.  Mom always keeps the sauce tomatoes until they are ripened, and then they come home with me.

We each took a pound of the delicious lettuce mix.

I took this "spicy mix," which was basically like last week's braising mix, except with way better vegetation in it.  I particularly like the little round leaves that remind me very much of a purple baby bok choy.  (They might even BE that. Who knows? I do wish they would tell us...)  I stir-fried this with garlic and ginger and red pepper flakes.  Yum!

I took home the arugula.

I let mom have the spinach :)

The garlic had a sign (you can see the edge of it on the right) that said that this was garlic they had saved as seed garlic, but it didn't meet their quality standards for seed garlic.  Supposedly it is still tasty, but I had a hard time finding any big heads that weren't rotted out.  I got two halves of full size heads and two tiny heads.

Mom took turnips, because she still has radishes.  These were the only two choices.

Mom kept the lettuce.

I got 6 hot peppers that may be cherry peppers.  They're round and dark green.  I wonder where they pick these peppers from because they look like the same varieties as the PYO ones, but I don't know if that's where they take them from or what.

Can't believe the tomatoes are still coming!  Mom kept them this week.  I still have a bunch.

And finally...

...the broccoli.  Ah, the broccoli.  The broccoli which I realized we didn't take when we were already almost home and made my mom turn around to go get for me, because I love broccoli.  I ate one head with some ravioli for lunch.  I think I might stir fry the other one tomorrow with some garlic and ginger and have it with rice.  Yum.  So worth the extra time.

Our CSA pickups ended in the first week of November last year.  Let's see how it goes this year.  The last date has not been announced, but like the spring, they typically do it within about a week.

Stir-Fried Bok Choy with Roasted Peanuts

Not too long ago, I got bok choy from the choice group at our CSA.  I didn't really know what I wanted to do with it, so since it's Deborah Madison month, I flipped through her books for some ideas.  I decided on this recipe for Stir-Fried Bok Choy with Roasted Peanuts from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.  It made a nice, simple, surprisingly filling weeknight dinner.

The recipe is simple: bok choy, peanuts, a little garlic and ginger, soy sauce and some cornstarch to thicken it up.  Of course, as I was already stir-frying I reached for my soy sauce only to find that I had a bit less than half the amount called for, so I used teriyaki sauce for the rest. I thought it came out delicious anyway, maybe even better.  The peanuts gave it a nice crunch and red pepper flakes make everything better.

Deborah Madison's Multigrain Waffles

As I try to catch up on my posts, I'm realizing that I haven't been snapping as many photos as I'd like.  So I'm skipping ahead to this one - Deborah Madison's Basic Waffles recipe, for which I took the Multigrain variation.  I never would have turned to Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone for a waffle recipe, as I usually take it off the shelf looking for something to do with my CSA share, but it's a good basic recipe and I like the suggestions she makes in the Multigrain variation.

Deborah Madison lists in the ingredients: milk or buttermilk.  Well, since they interact a little differently with leaveners, I opted to use buttermilk and so swapped the measures for baking powder/baking soda so that there would be more of the soda and less of the powders.  For my "multigrains" I used a total of 2 cups of various flours: 1 cup spelt flour, 1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp cornmeal, 1/4 cup oat flour, 3 Tbsp wheat bran, 2 Tbsp teff flour, 1 Tbsp 7-grain hot cereal (dry).  As long as a reliable flour is used for the bulk of it (1 cup or 1/2 the flour), you can pretty much throw anything in there, which I like because I have so many less common flours that I don't have much to do with.  I'd like to try teff grains next time, as they are super tiny and add a nice crunch.  Millet or amaranth would be good too, as long as the amount of (literally) whole grains is kept small so as not to disrupt the balance of flour. 

There is no sugar in the recipe, so it can be used for a sweet or savory application - we opted for sweet, using some of the peach rum sauce I canned last year, which fully made up for the lack of sugar.  I froze the extra in a gallon bag with parchment paper between the layers.