Archive for August, 2010
We learned many lessons from our participation in a CSA:
* Radicchio is pronounced ra-dick-ee-o instead of ra-dish-ee-o.
* We don’t like beets.
* Sugar snap peas taste like candy.
* Washing, storing, preserving, and preparing fresh vegetables can be a lot of work.
* Fresh corn on the cob and fresh tomatoes are amazingly awesome.
* Greens come in a variety of types and flavors: some we like, some we could live without.
* Homemade salsa is a great way to use up a ton of tomatoes.
* Purple hull green beans turn green when you boil them.
* You can shred and freeze zucchini.
* Okra tastes great raw, but don’t try to steam it….it creates explosive slimy green goo!
* Zucchini cake is one way to get your children to ingest zucchini, but the amount of chocolate in it makes it ineligible to be considered a healthy foods.
* Don’t judge a vegetable by its looks.
* To really truly grow your own food and eat seasonally would be a lot of work.
* You can use a garment bag to spin lettuce in your washing machine to dry it; however, be careful if said washing machine is dripping fabric softener or your greens will smell “linen fresh.”
* You can lead your children to vegetables, but you can make them like them.
* Belonging to a CSA is a great adventure!
Vegetables can cause messes:
Posted in Thanks to our CSA, we tried these vegetables we had never eaten before:
* patty pan squash
* kale
* endive
* radicchio
* mustard greens
* beets
* sugar snap peas
* Swiss chard and rainbow chard
* fresh okra–when I first saw it, I had no idea what it was. I had only ever seen it fried!
Thanks to the CSA, we tried new types of familiar old vegetables:
* purple hull green beans
* egg tomatoes (which are a pink grape tomato–very yummy)
* yellow salad tomatoes
* lemon cucumbers (which are ugly little balls, but they taste great)
* blond cucumbers
* buttercrunch lettuce
* freckle lettuce
* ball carrots (little balls with plenty of flavor)
We used our vegetables to make many wonderful new recipes:
* chard pie
* white chard pizza
* homemade salsa
* endive or radicchio pasta bake
* ramen noodle salad
* zucchini cake
At first, we couldn’t decide whether these were a tomato, a cucumber, or a squash. Turns out, they are called “lemon cucumbers.”
I made a lot of great things this summer with our bags of veggies.
Chard Pie:
White Chard Pizza:
Veggie Wraps:
And here’s what my husband made with our veggies:
Very creative, Russell!