Adventures with food

We got another CSA box this week. This week's box included salad greens, red oakleaf lettuce, asparagus, spinach, green garlic, dill, rhubarb, garlic scapes, strawberries and kohlrabi. Some interesting stuff, huh?

Kohlrabi is certainly something I'd never seen before. Kohlrabi is German for cabbage turnip. Apparently it tastes like broccoli stems. It's used a lot in Indian food. Here's a pic.

Thank goodness for the Internet, so I can figure out what the unfamiliar vegetables are....and so I can find recipes! I've yet to get a vegetable in my CSA that I don't like, so I'm excited to try another new one.

With all the green leafy vegetables we have, I've been trying to figure out new ways to prepare them. I discovered a great way to prepare spinach. A smoothie! Yep, it probably sounds really weird, but you honestly can't taste it.

Spinach Smoothie
Blend:
1 1/2 cups fresh spinach
1 banana
1 apple
1/2 cup canned pineapple
1 cup vanilla yogurt
And some ice cubes

The smoothie is green, but it's delicious. Dave even told me he wanted one of my smoothies today. Dave generally likes the food I make him, but it's not too often that he asks for certain items.

Tonight I made an asparagus casserole. I'm not going to say "hot dish"...sounds too Minnesotan. But the dish was creamy, the asparagus crisp and overall delicious...just like a hot dish should be. Haha. I modified a recipe I found online with what was in my kitchen.

Asparagus Casserole
1 lb fresh asparagus, chopped
6 strips of bacon
2 T butter
1 1/2 cups crushed Ritz crackers
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup (plus 1 can milk)
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

In saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Add cream of mushroom soup and water. Stir. Add cheese. Cook until cheese is melted and mixture is smooth, stirring occasionally. Separately cook the bacon and chop into pieces.

In casserole dish, add layer of asparagus, followed by bacon, crackers and soup mix. Repeat layers. Top with crackers. Cook at 350 for 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

J.B.

Veggie fun! CSA week 1

We got our first CSA box of the summer season yesterday. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Basically, we bought a "share" of a farm for the summer and we get a box of their produce every week throughout the summer. The farm is in SE Minnesota, so all the vegetables are grown locally. They also grow their produce organically. It's amazing how yummy such fresh food tastes. Since it's early in the season, we got a lot of different types of lettuce. We also got radishes, cilantro, asparagus and spinach. As more vegetables are ready for harvest throughout the summer, the contents of our box will increase.

I love trying new ways to cook the vegetables and trying new stuff. Yesterday I made radish cilantro salsa. After letting all the ingredients sit overnight, I have to say that it's really good. Except I made it a little spicy. Tonight I made pasta with asparagus sauce. Dave wasn't too happy that I was making him something so out of the norm, but it was pretty good, although a little bland. It definitely doesn't beat asparagus wrapped with bacon and cooked on the grill. We still have more asparagus, so there is time left for some of that deliciousness. We only have a week to eat up all these goodies. We get another box next week!

J.B.

Don't forget to vote on what gender you think Boo is. You can guess here.

What is this thing? Take 2

(source: taste.com.au)

That, my friends, is a celariac. And it was one of the vegetables found in or CSA box this week. It's also known as celery root. Apparently, its flavor is a cross between celery and a parsnip.

Unlike the romanesco broccoli, I have tried celariac once before, but I've yet to make something with it. My sister, Becky, made me celariac and potato soup once and it was so delicious....so I might get that recipe from her or I might try this celeriac apple potato soup recipe. I also got potatoes and onions in my CSA and I still have a few apples from the orchard.

If you know of any good recipes that use celariac, send them my way! Thanks!

Update: I made the celeriac apple potato soup last night and it was awesome! Dave had three big bowls and he gave it 5 out of 5 jalapenos -- and he usually doesn't like soup for dinner.

And now that we've tasted it raw, I'll tell you that celeriac has the flavor of celery, but a consistency close to a carrot. It'd probably be yummy on a vegetable platter with dip.

J.B.

What is this thing?

In our last CSA box, we found this....

(Source: Wikipeia)

Our first question: What is this thing?

We had no idea what it was. It kinda looked like a cauliflower. It kinda looked like broccoli.

My second question: If I have no idea what it is, how do we cook it?

My first task on Mission Identify the Vegetable was to look up the newsletter from the CSA. Thankfully, the newsletter identified the vegetable for us. It's called romanesco broccoli. But it's sometimes called Roman caulifower or broccoflower or coral broccoli. It's a form of cauliflower.

But the mission wasn't quite accomplished. I still had to figure out how I was going to cook this new-to-us vegetable.

So I thought about it a little bit....thought about how I like to eat cauliflower and broccoli. And what do both of those veggies taste good in?? Stir-fry. So I chopped up the romanesco broccoli along with some other veggies and I made chicken stir-fry for dinner. It was delicious.

You're probably wondering what does it taste like?

Only Dave and I know and we'll never tell!

Just kidding! When it was raw, I thought it tasted a lot like broccoli. But when it was cooked, I thought it tasted more like a cauliflower.

If you ever come across the vegetable at the grocery store or a farmers' market, I recommend that you try it.

J.B.

Adventures in food!

This winter (and next spring), my mom and I decided to buy a CSA share from Featherstone Farm. CSA stands for community supported agriculture. Basically, we bought a share in a farm and every couple of weeks we get to pick up a box with all the food that's been harvested on the farm.

There are a couple of great benefits to buying a CSA share. The vegetables are grown organically, so it isn't grown with pesticides or other chemicals. The vegetables are fresher and therefore have more nutrients than what you buy in the grocery store (veggies start losing their nutrients after they've been harvested). CSAs support the local economy. CSAs are also more sustainable -- the growing practices are more environmentally-friendly and because the food travels less distance (takes less energy) to get to my table. I feel good eating my CSA food, because I know it's healthier for me, healthier for the environment, encourages us to try new foods and it tastes great.

One of the fun parts of having the CSA is the variety of food -- trying new foods and finding new recipes. Our first CSA box had broccoli, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, red onion, parsley, mustard greens, spinach, leeks and squash. Actually, in this box, the only thing I'd never tried was the mustard greens and turnips, but it's still a greater variety of food that I'd buy in the grocery store. Featherstone Farm actually has some recipes you can find in their newsletter online, but it's also fun to find your own. This weekend I made Turnip and Leek soup and Yankee Pot Roast. For the Yankee Pot Roast, I substituted squash for the rutabaga. Who knew squash was good in a pot roast? It was! Both recipes were yummy -- Dave can attest, but these fresh foods have more flavor than what you buy in the grocery store.

I'm looking forward to our next round of food from Featherstone Farm -- arriving this Friday!

J.B.