CSA Week 21 - The Last of the Season

The only left over veggie I had in the crisper from week 20’s share was a bell pepper. That was a very good thing because the last week for the Gorman Produce Farm Community Supported Agriculture was quite a lot:

• 2 green bell peppers
• 2 pounds sweet potatoes
• 3 garlic
• 2 baby lettuce
• 1 butternut squash
• 1 bunch kale
• 1 bunch chard
• 1 bunch watermelon radishes
• 4 snack peppers
• 1 bunch turnips

The turnips and watermelon radishes were about the same size. I’m going to cook the green tops too!

The garlic and peppers are pretty enough to be a centerpiece.

And the lettuce is a melding of gentle green curves.

I am going to miss the weekly trek to the CSA and the bounty of fresh veggies. It is going to take some focused attention when I go grocery shopping next week to buy a similar range of vegetables in the produce section of the grocery store; the CSA has broadened my palate. Now it is up to me to sustain the improved eating habits that have developed over this summer and fall.

CSA Week 15

Week 15 of the Gorman Produce Farm CSA - it’s another week of great food!

There is a little bow wave of garlic, potatoes, and winter squash from previous weeks - but those foods keep for weeks and months. I did make a fabulous custard with leftover baked butternut squash this past week; mixed up in the smoothie maker with just a little honey, baked into a light consistency custard, and then drizzled with maple syrup just before being eaten. Yum! I’ve also enjoyed the small purple potatoes in stir fries (only 2 at a time to not get too overwhelmed with calories. We made a bit batch of spaghetti sauce to have made good use of some frozen tomato sauce I’d cooked when I was overwhelmed with tomatoes a few weeks ago.

The big surprise to me this week is that sweet potato leaves are edible!  Evidently they can be used raw or cooked.  I’ve going to try them both ways and, if I like them, go ahead and cut the leaves from the sweet potato on my deck to enjoy; supposedly it is a good thing to do a few weeks before the sweet potato harvest.

I traded the poblano pepper for an additional bundle of Dinosaur Kale since I enjoy kale chips so much.

Notice that I got all yellow tomatoes too!  They’ll look beautiful with the red leafed lettuce.

Note that I’m using my own bags rather than bringing any plastic produce bags into the house. It feels good to avoid items that will become trash (or recycle if they stay clean).

CSA Week 12

It’s hard for me to fathom that we managed to eat the entire week 11 share from the Gorman Produce Farm CSA except the potatoes and garlic - which will easily keep. I even cleaned out some things I had frozen from the weeks I was not in town earlier in the month: the squash, cucumbers, and fruit beety.  I was surprised at the amount of tomatoes we consumed. The large yellow ones looked beautiful and tasted excellent atop chili.

Now we have another week - another large crop of tomatoes (there were no yellow ones in the bin by time I got there….but the large red ones will be just as good). I traded the 2 poblano peppers for 2 banana peppers. I did get 2 jalapeno peppers and plan to make homemade salsa.

CSA Week 11

It takes a lot of focus to not have tomatoes left from the Gorman Produce Farm CSA share each week. This I made tomato sauce with all the tomatoes that were left (the roma tomatoes). I am perfecting my technique; the steps this week were:

• Cut the tops off
• Put in a food processor
• Puree - skins and all
• Cook until about the right consistency for sauce adding seasonings if designed (basil and garlic were my choice)

 Everything else I had left will last without refrigeration: potatoes and garlic.

This week there are a lot of tomatoes again. The new type of tomato in this week’s share was yellow (I got 4 of them along with 1 red one in the 3 pounds in this week’s share). The yellow tomato I ate with yogurt on top last night was pretty and tasty. I’ll eat the heirloom tomato for my next ‘tomato as a side dish.’

The beautiful peppers are in a range of colors. What a way to add flavor and color to a meal!

The spaghetti squash will work very well under chili that my husband is going to make (using up some of the tomato sauce I am accumulating).

This upcoming week is going to be a ‘good eating’ week!

CSA Week 10

I started out Wednesday morning making tomato sauce with all the tomatoes left in the crisper since I knew there would be more in this week’s CSA share. I ended up cooking all the red round tomatoes and about half the cherry tomatoes with onions (also from the CSA) and garlic and dried parsley (dried from the CSA share early in the season).  I even added some orange peel I’d dried from organic oranges from last spring!  My husband commented that the concoction smelled good.

I did pretty well clearing out everything else. The only items left from last week were a few potatoes.

As I expected there were a lot of tomatoes in the week 10 share. The heirloom tomatoes have become such a favorite that I swapped the jalapeno pepper for two more! They are delicious sliced and lightly salted. I got the black cherry tomatoes rather than the sun golds I had selected in previous weeks. And the poblano peppers were swapped for another eggplant.  Half of one of those eggplants was grilled with orange ginger sauce last night.

The potatoes were purple skinned/white flesh and small enough to be great for roasting.

The watermelon was big enough to require a second trip to the car! My daughter has been getting watermelon from her CSA in Tucson for weeks and the newsletter for them this week had some advice for using watermelon rind - either marinating it or using it in stir fry. I’ll post about my experiments in a week or so.

Lots of good eating in this week 10 CSA share!