Bacon delivery system

You have probably already heard of kale. It has been very popular of late. Some people like to bake it into a crispy chip-like snack food. Others like it sauteed, collard-green-style. Regardless of how you cook it, in our opinions it is a highly underrated vegetable. It's a dark leafy green, and despite our high-quality illustration, it looks nothing like broccoli.

Kale was no mystery to us, but we were damned excited about getting some. Already knew what we wanted to do with it. Because sauteed kale is an excellent excuse to cook bacon.

So one night, after we got The Kid to bed, Brian cooked the kale while I did something extremely productive and not at all a waste of time. A few minutes later, when the kale was done, Brian comes over and asks a question I always love to hear.

"Would you like a glass of wine?"

So we popped open a bottle of wine, one thing led to another, and not a shred of kale or crumb of bacon survived the night. I think Brian may have licked the bowl.

Sauteed Bacon Kale

Ingredients:
lots of kale, chopped
6 strips bacon
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/8 cup lemon juice
1 tsp-ish sriracha
generous pinch of red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste

Steps:
1. Fry up 4 strips of bacon
2. Remove bacon from pan, add last 2 strips of bacon, cut up into little bits, and fry 'em up until extra crispy
3. Eat first 4 strips of bacon
3. Add chopped kale to pan
4. Once kale has wilted, add vinegar, lemon juice, sriracha, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. Cover pan, and cook until tender (about 15 to 20 minutes)

The mysterious case of the disappearing green garlic

We are both quite familiar with garlic. There is little we cook that does not have garlic. Green garlic is simply the young shoot of garlic that, if it were left to mature, would turn into the big bulb of garlic that ends up in your marinara sauce. It has a milder garlic flavor, or so the literature informs me. It looks a little like this:

Garlic is garlic, so we chopped it up nice and fine, and tossed it in the slow cooker to make roast beef and French onion soup.

Slow Cooker Roast Beef and French Onion Soup

Beef roast - any size you want

Beef stock

1 large Vidalia onion

2 bulbs green garlic

2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Steps:

1. Mince garlic into small pieces

2. Chop onion - you can use whatever size onion you'd prefer, but Brian and I use strips of onion about 1-2 inches long

3. Toss roast, onion, and garlic in slow cooker. Add Worcestershire sauce, and fill remaining space in slow cooker with beef stock

4. Cook in slow cooker until roast beef is falling apart

This recipe is flexible. If you want more soup, use a smaller roast. If you want more beef, a larger roast. You can adjust the amount of onion, garlic, and Worcestershire sauce as needed.

The fresh green garlic was amazing in this dish. It's a recipe we've done before, with regular garlic. The green garlic was indeed milder, and added an almost delicate note to the broth, without being overpoweringly garlicky. If you can get your hands on some green garlic, I highly recommend it in this dish.

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 turnips were the first to go

First to be devoured were the turnips. And let me say, turnips, when prepared well, will always be the first devoured.

We took lovely shots of all of our vegetables before and after cooking this week. However, as a result of some technical difficulties or possibly just some technical stupidities, we lost most of our pictures. In the place of photos, please enjoy these lovely artist's renderings.

I have never had turnips before, that I am aware of.  Brian, however, has, and could hardly wait to get his hands on them.  With only a few simple ingredients, he turned them into these.

Here's how (this one's easy):

Sauteed Turnips

1 Tbsp butter
Turnips

Step 1: Sautee turnips in butter.

Done!

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.

Welcome! We are two brand-new members, as the title of the blog would suggest, of a local CSA. This is our first time participating in a CSA (what a CSA is), and we are looking forward to quite a few aspects of it. Obviously we are looking forward to eating fresh, local produce, to providing support for small-scale local farmers, and to the ease of simply picking up our vegetables, instead of planning dishes and actually selecting our own vegetables. Really, that's a lot of work.

We're also looking forward to a few other perks:

• Cooking more and eating healthier. We've already bought these vegetables. Not eating them would be almost literally throwing away money. We've invited these vegetables into our home, to harass us, to mock us, to jeer and nag every time we open the fridge until we actually, at last, consume them and savor the quiet.
• Saving money. Sure, we paid up front for our share of the produce. That's the idea. Share in the bounty, share in the risk. But the drive to cook more and the drop in our weekly grocery budget just might put us ahead.
• Adventure! Kohlrabi. Celery root. Tat soi. These are foods I don't think I've ever eaten, much less prepared. And we are determined.  We will not be defeated by some sort of cabbage.

So join us as we try some new things, share a few old favorites, and talk food.