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.

Loot: Week 3 and How All These Weeks Are Running Together

This week at the farm stand we found more turnips, carrots, zucchini, summer squash, basil, more peas, lettuce, kale, and shallots.

You may have noticed that in the pesto pasta dish yesterday, there was fresh basil. Where did the basil come from, you may ask. It came from our week 3 loot. There are two possible explanations for this. One is that we're time-traveling vegetable-eaters, hopping week to week all summer to find the best ingredients for our favorite recipes. This is the cooler explanation, and the one I would prefer you believe.

The other explanation is that we're posting a couple of weeks after we are getting, cooking, and eating all these vegetables. And that some weeks, take-out sounds really good, so the vegetables are waiting (patiently, of course, because everyone knows that vegetables are patient) for us to get to them. Which gives rise to interesting combinations of vegetables that wouldn't be otherwise possible (you know, unless we went to the store and actually bought them).

For example, the garlic scapes from week 2 were photographed, mentioned in the loot post, and never discussed again. You'll see them pop up again in week 4, in a very tasty dish along with the shallots and summer squash from this week, and more garlic scapes and summer squash we have yet to get in week 4. So there you have it. Time-traveling vegetables.

My brother lettuce, and my other brother lettuce

Lettuce. What is there to say about lettuce? It's delicious when it's fresh, and fresh is really all we're looking for in lettuce. Fresh, and green. Crisp is good. It was all those things.

It probably has an actual name, but I'm not sure what that might be. Plain lettuce? Regular lettuce? It looks like this:

We also got arugula. Arugula is a peppery, slightly bitter lettuce, which looks almost nothing like this:

But lettuce, eaten raw, is very boring to write about. Just rinse and eat. So instead, try this dijon mustard vinaigrette we made this week, to eat on your lettuces.

Dijon Mustard Vinaigrette

1 Tbsp dijon mustard

1 Tbsp some kind of vinegar

1/2 Tbsp lime juice

Salt and pepper to taste

Olive oil

Steps:

1. Whisk together all ingredients except olive oil

2. Slowly whisk in olive oil until you have the volume of dressing you need

The Loot: Week 1

Our vegetable share for week 1 was surprising.  Having never been a part of a CSA before, we were not sure what to expect.  More specifically, we were not sure how much to expect.  Certainly, it was not this much:

What a bounty!  We have green garlic and chives, kohlrabi and turnips, arugula, fava beans, a head of lettuce, and the biggest bunch of kale I've ever seen.  Granted, I've never cooked kale before, so it's possible that kale simply comes in very large bunches.

We also have a flower membership.  Every week we will bring home a bouquet of fresh-cut flowers.  (This may or may not be the primary reason that I wanted to do this in the first place.)  This week there are sunflowers, orange poppies, and a lot of unidentified white, yellow, and blue blossoms.  The photo doesn't do it justice.