Weird Pink Beets, also Marinated

So we've gotten a lot of beets over the last few weeks, and we'll be getting more in the weeks to come. Mostly we've been marinating them with this recipe. For a variety of reasons, one of which is that it's damned tasty. But the beets we got this week were a different variety. It may be odd, but this was the first time I realized that beets come in different colors.

Pretty colors.

And when these beets were cooked up, they looked like salmon. A lot like salmon. Which gave us an idea.

Next time we can find these salmon-colored beets, we will be using them to make a vegetarian nigiri. That's right, beet sushi. So stay tuned.

My favorite way to eat cucumber

You have probably seen a fair number of cucumbers pop up in the last few weeks. I am also casting my gaze into the future and can promise you many more cucumbers in the weeks to come. Pounds and pounds and pounds of cucumber.

You may not see a lot of cucumber recipes on this blog, and there's a very specific reason why. The vast majority of our cucumbers have been and will be eaten one way in particular. My favorite way, bar none, to eat cucumbers. Because cucumbers are delicious and amazing and positively divine served this way.

Without further ado, I present to you the best way to prepare a cucumber:

Sliced Raw Cucumber

Just remember - you saw it here first.

Pickled Cucumbers

Despite the title, this is not a recipe for pickles. At least, it's not a recipe for the kinds of pickles that you stick in a jar and leave in your root cellar, assuming you have a root cellar in which to put jars of pickles. Rather, this is a recipe for marinated cucumber slices, a little like the pickled beets we love so much.

This is a recipe Brian grew up with, and I must admit that it is a perfect summer recipe. The cucumber is juicy and the sauce is tangy, and the combination is light and refreshing.

Pickled Cucumbers

Ingredients:

Cucumber
Onion
Mayonnaise
White vinegar - half as much as mayonnaise
Salt and pepper to taste

Steps:
1. Slice cucumbers thinly
2. Slice 1/2 onion, also thinly
3. Mix mayonnaise, white vinegar, salt, pepper thoroughly, add cucumber and onion and mix until coated
4. Serve cool

Loot: Week 4 and How I Keep the Flowers Fresh

This week we found a lot of repeats at the farm stand. Not that repeats bother us, of course. Beets are still beets, whether they're the first beets you've eaten this summer or not. Beets, summer squash, lettuce, cabbage, and garlic scapes we've seen before this season. New this week were the green onions, mint, and cucumbers.

We got, of course, another beautiful bouquet of flowers as well.

The flowers have been lasting quite well, especially considering the fact that the air outside most closely resembles boiling soup. All I do to keep them perky all week is mix some sugar and some vinegar into the water, and change the water every few days.

What's left of week 3

All that's left of week three's loot, if anyone is keeping track, is the lettuce and the carrots. (The basil was actually used in a recipe from week two. I checked.) We did something very simple with the lettuce and carrots. It was fresh and delicious.

Seriously, it was just lettuce with sliced carrots on top. You could even get a little bold and throw on some salad dressing if you feel like it. If you can't figure this recipe out, I don't know how to help you.

Update:

The actual salad photo has been discovered. The people responsible for locating photos of salad have been sacked.

Scape Artist: A Deluge of Vegetables

I know I mentioned recently that all these weeks have been running together a bit, and that we're posting all of these photos and recipes after the fact. We get a lot of vegetables from the CSA, and while we have managed to eat it all so far, sometimes it takes more than a week to get through a week's worth of vegetables.

And sometimes we just throw the contents of our entire fridge into one dish.

Right around week three in the CSA we began getting squash and zucchini. A lot of squash (and zucchini). Well, between week three and week four, we found ourselves with several pounds of squash, as well as quite a few garlic scapes. (We still hadn't actually used the garlic scapes from week two yet, but they held up  very well, and we got more garlic scapes in week four.)

Side note: I am a huge fan of garlic in all forms, but before receiving them in my week two loot, I had never even heard of scapes. Garlic scapes are the curly flower stalks that grow up from the bulbs of some kinds of garlic. And they taste (surprise!) like garlic, but milder. They can be eaten just about any way that you would eat garlic, and some that you probably wouldn't, like raw, chopped, on a salad. Unless you'd eat garlic raw, on your salad, in which case I wonder about you.

The few. The curly. The scapes.

So Brian and I were looking at the small mountain of squash in our kitchen, pondering how we were going to consume it all, and suddenly, without a word, Brian leaped into action. He threw some olive oil in a pan, and began chopping, dicing, and slicing like a madman.

The dish that emerged from the frenzy in the kitchen used just about all our remaining vegetables (that week, anyway, we're never low on veggies for long these days), and thanks especially to the shallots and scapes, it was ridiculously delicious. We consumed every last ounce.

It's surprisingly simple, and can easily handle, apparently, very large quantities of squash.

Sauteed Squash and Zucchini with Shallots and Garlic Scapes

Ingredients
Shallots, finely chopped
Summer squash and zucchini, sliced
Garlic scapes, cut into 1-inch segments
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Steps:
1. Heat olive oil in a large pan
2. Sautee shallots in oil
3. Once shallots are translucent, add garlic scapes and squash
4. Sautee until squash is soft, add salt and pepper to taste

Turnip Puree and Other Lies

Brian decided to try something different with the turnips we got this week, so he made a turnip puree. A delicious dish that tastes and feels somewhat like a tangy, buttery, mashed potato.

The only time I've ever encountered a turnip puree was in a very fancy restaurant. It was the kind of tiny-portioned place where your serving of turnip puree is just a tablespoon or two artfully smeared on the plate underneath your very expensive ounce of steak. It seemed the kind of dish usually served with asparagus and mushrooms whose names I can't pronounce. Or, for some reason, with frisee.

Naturally, I assumed that turnip puree was something Really Fancy. And that being Really Fancy, turnip puree would be complicated to make. That it would require more than 3 ingredients.

Lies, all lies. Turnip puree is one of the easiest recipes we have tried.

Turnip Puree

Ingredients:
Turnips
Butter
Salt and pepper

Steps:
1. Boil turnips until soft
2. Put turnips in food processor, add salt, pepper, and butter to taste, and puree