I don’t like heat or sun.  I blame it on being a freckled pale person.  We must hate the sun as a form of natural defense.  So, I was a little sad to see our mid-June weather already in the 90s as we headed to the CSA farm for one of our work days.  Most CSAs have members do work days to contribute to the farming.  If you are completely unable to, you can pay an extra fee to avoid the labor.  Despite the hot day, we looked forward to doing our work day to learn more about the food we were eating.

The day started with picking root vegetables.  My oldest son, who had accompanied my husband, enjoyed helping with this part.  They pulled beets and carrots.  The carrots were small orange balls, appropriately called “ball carrots.”  Upon testing them, we found no difference in the taste.  They were delicious!

Later in the day, I arrived and helped cut some greens.  We picked arugula and endive.  I keep getting endive and radicchio confused, but I think I’m learning.   After the picking was done, we helped wash veggies.  THIS was the job to have on the humid summer day.  The CSA had a four-vat commercial sink set up, and we dunked the greens several times.  Then, we placed them in mesh bags to go for a spin in the dryer.  On my must-have list right now: a salad spinner or a mesh bag.  You can spin the moisture off of the greens to help them keep longer.

At the end of our shift, we bagged the veggies for the rest of the members and received our weekly share.  Big excitement this week: carrots and new potatoes!

Enjoy these pictures of the farm.   It is a beautiful place, with hills overlooking the Finley River valley.  The farm isn’t very big, which makes you appreciate how much food you could grow on an acre or two…not that we are getting any ideas.  We have a couple of acres that would be perfect for a huge garden, but I have a known history of not being able to keep anything alive (I call this my “black thumb” condition) and I remind you, the last time we had a garden, we even killed the supposedly ‘unkillable’ summer squash.  We appreciate that the CSA farmers have the knowledge and skills to turn their plot of land into food for so many families!

Enjoy these pictures:

Confessional note:  No, my son did not act like Farmer Brown all day.  He did get tired and hot pretty quickly and retreated to the porch to play Pokemon on his DS.  That being said, I think it was still important for him to be there and for him to get an idea that yes, food does grow out of the ground…it doesn’t just arrive on store shelves out of nowhere.

After eating a rotation of spruced-up salads, this week we enjoyed regular old salad.  In our CSA delivery, we had some mixed spring greens with very mild flavors, carrots, green onions, and radishes.  I add a farmers market tomato.  To top it, we whipped up my dad’s special recipe for ranch dressing.  If you want your ranch dressing at home to taste like restaurant ranch dressing, you need to alter the directions of the Hidden Valley Ranch packet.  Here’s the secret recipe:

1 cup mayo

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 cup milk

packet of Hidden Valley Ranch mix

Whip and chill!  It’s delicious, I promise.  However, I can’t promise that it’s good for you.  Just look at those ingredients!

When you hear about Chard Pie, it might not sound particularly tasty.  At least, not to my family.  When I baked it last night, my mother (who joined us for dinner) brought down some leftovers from the night before, in case anyone wanted a replacement meal.  The great news is that the Chard Pie was enjoyed by all, except the children.  My oldest son wouldn’t try it. Unfortunately, he is a little scared of sauteed greens after trying kale and radicchio.  I hope to win him over some day because chard is much milder.

You might be wondering why it isn’t called Chard Quiche.  It has a pie crust and eggs, so it’s very similar to quiche.  I think it’s not considered a quiche because the egg layer is fairly thin, and the chard has its own layer–it’s not mixed in with the egg.  I guess it’s like the apple of apple pie.

Here are photos of the Chard Pie whole and from the side.

We got this recipe from the Asparagus to Zucchini Cookbook, which I reviewed earlier on this blog (click on the title to go to the review).  I will definitely cook this again.

Micah’s Yummy Chard Pie

2 Tbs. olive oil

1.5 cups chopped onions

1 Tbs. minced garlic

1 large bunch chard (can substitute spinach or other greens)–stems removed and leaves chopped

6-8 eggs

2 cups milk or half & half (we had half & half on hand from cooking this radicchio recipe, so that’s what I used)

1 tsp salt

2 8-inch deep-dish pie shells (I used the refrigerated kind)

2 cups grated cheese (we used sharp cheddar)

1-2 Tbs chopped dill (we don’t like dill, so we skipped this)

Optional ingredients –anything you would enjoy in an omelet!  We added a chopped red pepper, which added a nice sweetness.  I added while I sauteed the greens.  We also add a cup of chopped ham, which I added after the eggs.

Heat oven to 400 degree.   Heat oil in large skillet over medium heat.  Add onions and garlic.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender (if using other firm vegetables, you might saute them, too).  Add chopped greens and cook, stirring often, until they wilt.  Turn off heat.  Beat eggs, milk, and salt in a bowl.  Spread chard mixture in bottom of pie shells.  Add cheese.  Pour egg mixture over top.  Add any optional ingredients and spices of choice.  Bake at 400 degrees for 30-40 minutes–make sure the eggs are firm, not jiggly, in the middle.  Makes 16 slices.

Yet again, we got the joy of venturing into new food territory as we sample our fresh beets from the CSA.  I tried a bite of a raw beet, and then roasted the rest using a recipe from Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food. We coated them in olive oil, added some salt and baked them.  They come out like a cross between a roasted vegetable and a potato chip.  I enjoyed the ones with the crispiness of a potato chip, while my husband liked the softer roasted ones.  Unfortunately, I can’t claim to be a beet convert.

New to our repertoire this week: peas in the pod.   We have eaten these before and look forward to using them in a salad or stir fry.

Note: Beets are messy!

In a previous post, I mentioned an inedible green that ruined our mandarin orange salad.  It turns out that was radicchio.  After our unfortunate first encounter, I decided to try it again–cooked.  Several things I read mentioned it being popular in Italy, added to pasta dishes.  Our CSA sends out a weekly newsletter, which included an interesting-sounding radicchio recipe.  So, we decided to give it a shot.  The result: 6 thumbs up!  Of course, I’m not sure we’ve fallen in love with radicchio itself, as I think the melted mozzarella and the heavy cream had something to do with its pleasantness.  Truly, in this dish, the radicchio’s bitterness is a nice complement to the rest of the flavors.

Here is the recipe:

BAKED RADICCHIO, ENDIVE AND MOZZARELLA PASTA
2 tablespoons unsalted butter (1/4 stick)
2 medium garlic cloves, minced
1 medium white onion, small dice (about 1 cup)
7 medium Roma tomatoes (about 2 pounds), cored and coarsely chopped
1 head radicchio (about 2 cups), ends trimmed and sliced crosswise into 1/2-inch strips
1 head belgian endive (about 2 cups), ends trimmed and sliced crosswise into 1/2-inch strips
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 pound penne rigate or ziti pasta
8 ounces fresh mozzarella, small dice (about 1 1/2 cups)
1/2 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 400°F and arrange a rack in the upper third. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat.
2. Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. When it foams, add garlic and onion, season well with salt, and cook until onion is translucent, about 4 minutes. Add tomatoes and let simmer until slightly reduced and thickened, about 10 minutes. Add radicchio and cream and cook until radicchio is wilted, about 5 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary.
3. Meanwhile, cook pasta in the salted water for about half the time recommended on the packaging and drain. (Do not rinse.) Set aside.
4. Once the sauce has finished simmering, combine it with the half-cooked pasta and mix until the pasta is evenly coated. Place the pasta mixture in a 13-by-9-inch baking dish and sprinkle the mozzarella and Parmigiano over top. Place in the oven and bake until the mixture is bubbling, the pasta is al dente, and the top is golden brown, about 20 minutes.

Note:  The sauce and the pasta can be prepared up to 1 day ahead and refrigerated in separate containers. To assemble, heat the oven, pick up the recipe at step 4, and bake the mixture until it is heated through and golden brown (which may take a little longer than 20 minutes).

This was  a nice change of pace to the salads we’ve been eating lately!  I’m so glad the CSA shared this recipe.  It’ll go in my recipe book as one to eat again, especially if we have more radicchio in our green bag special.

Upon seeing our green bag special full of mixed greens this week, my husband joked that it wasn’t food, it was just weeds plucked from someone’s yard.  I think this bring up a good discussion of what we call “food.”  We are not accustomed to seeing the wide range of lettuces and greens we have been receiving, so to us, this doesn’t look like food.  However, think about the wide range of crazy things we eat.  Blue candy, pink cereal, banana-flavored pudding, sliced white bread, margarine that’s colored yellow just so it looks like butter…and so on.  These are things our ancestors wouldn’t have recognized as “food.”

In the book In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan recommends eating only foods that your grandma or great-grandma would recognize as food.  Our ancestors would probably recognize these vegetables that are new to us.  So, we’ll learn and grow.  I can now name a wider variety of greens than I could just a month ago.  Instead of that fructose-laden rainbow we are used to, we are eating the more natural rainbow of green peppers, red beets (new in our bag this week!), white onions, and purple eggplants.

Oh, and my husband really was just kidding about the greens.  He’s looking forward to tonight’s salad.  I discovered that mustard greens are super yummy!  I’ll report on the beets after our first experience with them.  I can’t recall ever having eaten one before.

Tonight, I had ambition plans to freshen up the leftovers of the tasty salad I made last night.  I don’t know its official name, but I found the recipe by Googling (Googleing?  Which is correct?) the words lettuce, ramen noodles, and mandarin oranges. Other than those ingredients, you add some slivered almonds and a dressing made from equal parts sugar, olive oil, and vinegar.  Last night, it was great, and I even shared it at a family picnic.

Tonight, I added more greens so we could finish it off for dinner.  Unfortunately, I picked the wrong batch.  Instead of the tasty Romaine lettuce, I grabbed something much more bitter and much less edible.  It must be a type of green that needs some sort of cooking to be edible.  We all tried to eat it, and some bites were great, but whenever we got a bit with the bitter green, it just wasn’t edible.  So instead of this Ramen Noodle Salad:

Here

is

what

we

ate

for

dinner.

Yes,

it’s

wrong.

So

very

wrong.

But

it

was

delightful:

Dinner!!

On the plus side, we got more protein than we would have if we had eaten the salad.