Farm Meals...

As we wrap up week twelve of our CSA season I thought I should do another update as to how we have been using up our produce from the farm.  We have received some amazing boxes the past three weeks and some amazing meals have resulted!  I can't even begin to express how grateful I am to have found our farmers.  I love them!!  Here's a look at what we have received...

Week 10 - Cilantro, Collard Greens Cucumbers, Garlic, Green Bell Peppers, Jalapeno Peppers, Mixed Bag o’ Tomatoes, Purple Carrots, Sungold Tomatoes, Sweet Corn, Red Onions, Tomatillos, Yellow Watermelon

 

Week 11 - Broccoli, Cucumbers, Curly Parsley, Edamame, Garlic, Green Zucchini, Mini Watermelon, Mixed Bag o’ Tomatoes, Patty Pan Squash, Rainbow Chard, Sungold Tomatoes, Sweet Corn, Sweet Red Peppers, Yellow & Red Onions

Week 12 - Cucumber, Dragon Tongue Beans, Edamame, Garlic, Green Kale, Green Savoy Cabbage, Mixed Bag o’ Tomatoes, Purple, Rosemary, Sungold Tomatoes, Sweet Corn, Sweet White Onions, Yukon Gold Potatoes

The colors are amazing aren't they!!  Every week I get so excited because there is something new to discover.  And every week, there is something that also arrives that just plain overwhelms us...we've had many phases of this feeling this season.  First it was cabbage, then it was cucumbers, now...the tomatoes...SO. MANY. TOMATOES!!  But that's been OK, it has really challenged me to get thinking and not waste anything!  And I am proud to say that we have not thrown anything away!  Here's what we've done with the tomatoes so far...

Tomato and fresh Mozzarella Salad topped w/ fresh basil and drizzled with Sunflower Vinaigrette

This simple tomato salad was awesome with grilled organic grass fed beef burgers...so light and flavorful.  We also put tomato slices on the burgers themselves!   This only used up 2 tomatoes, though.  I needed to find something that would use up a lot more in one recipe.  So we moved on to salsa!  I've never made homemade salsa before but my mom has and shared it with us.  I can remember how fresh it tasted and wanted to try recreating it myself.  I used a recipe from my favorite cookbook Simply in Season as a guide and here is what we came up with!

Colorful, isn't it? I used an entire pint of sun gold tomatoes and three others from our bag 'o tomatoes that we received.  We also used cilantro, red onion, banana peppers, and green peppers...all from the farm!  This salsa was amazing...even the kids loved it!!

 

My husband fell in love with the flavors as well and devoured the entire batch (about 4 cups!) in only a few days.  So we will be making more of this again this week with our fresh box of produce.  

I used the extra basil and parsley we received to make basil pesto.  I used some on a tomato mozzarella panini sandwich that I made for lunch one day and saved the rest in the freezer for a pasta dish later in the fall.  

We had friends over for dinner last week and I put together these amazing veggie plates...using up the purple beans, more sun gold tomatoes, cucumbers and purple carrots.  I love the colors...very fall looking...

Inspired by a friend, I made a veggie stir fry one night and served it over organic jasmine rice.  I used up the broccoli, sweet onion, purple carrots, green cabbage, sweet corn, and edamame in this dish...

Using up the kale, we had sausage with sauteed kale served with potato cheddar pierogi's...this is a dish my mom made for us all the time as kids...minus the kale...it's a quick easy meal...and much more flavorful with my personal touch of added dark leafy greens!

I spoiled myself one morning after the kids went to school and made myself a rainbow chard quiche with sweet onion and garlic for breakfast...oh the goodness...and I served it to myself on our china just for fun...I'm worth it!

We don't always make meals with our farm box food...the past couple weeks we've gotten creative with some of it and tried making a few drinks.  A simple one I love is water infused with cucumber...

We couldn't eat our yellow watermelon fast enough so we blended this into a lemon watermelon smoothie!  We mixed 4 cups of chopped watermelon, 1 pint of good lemon sorbet, about 16 ice cubes, and a splash of water to get it all moving in the blender...this was a heavenly summer treat we sereved to the kids one warm evening we had a cookout! 

Clearly we have been incredibly blessed with amazing healthy food to create amazing healthy meals and treats!  We are so thankful for our farmers and their hard work...we only wish we lived closer to them so we could thank them in person, help work on the farm, or bring them some of our creations to try for themselves!

I would love to hear what everyone else is preparing with their summer produce!  What's been your favorite meal or treat you have made? 

Farm Meals...

We've flown through week eight and nine of our CSA season.  Our house has been filled with guests, which has given me plenty of opportunities to show off our farm box produce in the meals that I have made for them.  Here's a peak at what we received in our boxes...

Week 8 - Corn, sweet onion, yellow squash, zucchini, carrots, garlic, banana peppers, cucumbers, thyme, broccoli, nappa cabbage, sungold tomatoes, eggplant, and kale.

Week 9 - sungold tomatoes, broccoli, green beans, patty pan squash, zucchini, yellow squash, green pepper, beets, eggplant, heirloom tomato, garlic, cucumbers, carrots, sweet onion, and sage

One of the things I was looking forward to making was zucchini bread.  I was hoping for a big huge pile of them as was character of our farm boxes back in MI this time of the season.  But when we only received one more in last week's box, I was bummed.  I had enough zucchini to make one loaf but I wanted to make two.  So I got creative and made one of the loaves with one zucchini and the one lonely patty pan squash we received.  It turned out fantastic and the kids gobbled it up...we gave the first loaf to a family we were making dinner for.  Here's a picture of the loaf made with zucchini and patty pan squash...we ate it with strawberries and a dollop of homemade almond whipped cream...

The abundance of cabbage and cucumbers has been awesome!  My kids love cucumbers so we mostly just sliced them up to eat as snacks with the carrots, peppers, and cauliflower we also received.  But, I also made a wonderful cucumber salad w/ fresh dill to eat for lunch one day...it reminded me of a salad my mother used to make when I was younger...

Cucumber Salad

I was struggling with the amount of cabbage we've been getting.  I wanted to make a coleslaw with some but my husband has a negative attitude towards coleslaw based on childhood experiences of it always being loaded with mayonnaise, which he hates.  With that in mind, I tried a Carrot and Cabbage Slaw recipe I found online that had a dressing made out of white wine vinegar to pair with pulled pork sandwiches.  I served it up and put some on my sandwich, and he followed suit.  Turns out he LOVED it and used the leftovers in a sandwich wrap with the leftover pork the next day!  Hooray for adding new veggies into his diet!

Cabbage and Carrot Slaw

In keeping with my motto of "cook once, eat twice," the pulled pork sandwiches were made from a leftover pork tenderloin we grilled a couple nights before.  In the preparation, I used the banana peppers, scallions, garlic, and cilantro from the farm to flavor the pork while simmering.  I then made a homemade BBQ sauce, pulled the pork and continued simmering for a little while longer in the BBQ sauce...they were so good!

I also made a Chinese Nappa Cabbage Salad with peanuts, chow mien noodles, and black sesame seeds topped with a homemade vinaigrette dressing.  This was a great summer salad too that lasted us a couple days because the cabbage was so huge!

Chinese Nappa Cabbage Salad

I also made a huge pot of Autumn Vegetable Soup...my favorite soup recipe ever from my favorite cookbook Simply in Season!  It was made almost exclusively from ingredients from our farm box...we used the corn, cabbage, kale, green pepper, onion, tomatoes, garlic and parsley.  This is a great recipe for using up those veggies!!

Autumn Vegetable Soup

Another staple meal I ususally make when visitors are in the house is my "famous" burritos.  It's a great dish that serves a lot of people and I have never had anyone who has not liked them!  This time I was able to use the rest of the banana peppers from the farm in this recipe.  I chopped them up small, sauteed them, and then added to the meat and bean mixture and also simmered them into the tomato sauce that I pour over the top before adding cheese and baking.  We topped them with the shredded lettuce and the rest of the sungold tomatoes from the farm, which were a perfect sweet compliment to the light spice of the peppers throughout!

Burrito prep - sungold tomatoes and banana peppers from the farm, plus lettuce

Burrito Dinner w/ Spanish rice

After all the meals I was able to use cabbage in, I now only have two small heads left which will likely go in another batch of Autumn Vegetable Soup soon to freeze for later in the fall.  The last of the visitors are gone for the summer and school starts next week.  I am looking forward to getting into an even healthier meal and eating routine, minus the sweets, and including things like purple carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and peppers in the kids school lunches.  What a great example they can be to their friends eating fresh veggies from the farm instead of chips, crackers, or empty calorie foods. 

Thanks for all the great feedback, emails, and comments.  As always, if there is a recipe I didn't include that you would like to try, just let me know!  I would be more than happy to share it. 

Farm Meals...

As I promised, I am sharing some of the meals I will be making this week from our box of fresh produce from our CSA farm Driftless Organics. Last night was a winner for the meal and for maximizing what's in the fridge!  There were only a few ingredients in the entire dinner that were not a part of our CSA box.  I used the salad greens, broccoli, 3 weeks worth of radishes, red leaf lettuce, and strawberries.  That's five different vegetables and greens in just one meal!!  Plus I added some organic yellow onion so we ate 6 different varieties. Awesome!

For me, one of the hardest veggies to use in cooking from our box is radishes, and we get a lot of them!  Usually, a new bunch for several weeks in a row.  They have a wonderful color and crunch to them, but often come with a serious spicy kick that can linger for quite awhile in your mouth, especially organic ones, because organic anything always has loads more flavor than conventional varieties.  I do not know very many people that love mad amounts of radish in anything.  My kids won't eat them raw, the flavor is a little too much for their tender tongues.  So I decided to try something new and slice them up and saute them with caramelized onions...which everyone in this house will eat if I do them "just right."

I love the beautiful color in radishes...the deep pinks are so stunning and vibrant!  This radish preparation was a huge success!  All I did was slice the onions and radishes thinly and sauteed them in 1 tbs olive oil and 1 tbs butter (from grass fed cows), until caramelized.  My sweet husband grilled a beautiful barbecued pork tenderloin to pair with this.  However, the barbecue sauce he chose was super spicy so I improvised quickly and we turned this into a lettuce wrap meal, using the red leaf lettuce to cool down our mouths as we ate the pork!  Here it is...

Pork tenderloin lettuce wraps w/ caramelized onion and radish, steamed broccoli, and salad greens.

To round off this beautiful summer supper and to welcome both my husband and oldest daughter home from their 7 day absence I also made a gorgeous strawberry pie as a special treat using the strawberries from our farm box.  I am trying very hard to eliminate all packaged, pre-made foods from our diet and attempted a made-from-scratch pie crust instead of a store bought one.  The kitchen was too warm yesterday so it ended up being a flop but I had an extra one in the fridge waiting to be used up.  I will definitely try this again, though.  The pie recipe I used is a new one for me that does not use any Jello or boxed gelatin, which contain food dyes and extra sugar, as the pie base.  This recipe, from my favorite cookbook, Simply in Season, uses fresh strawberries mashed and cooked with sugar and cornstarch, which is used as the base thickener.  I LOVED it!  So much more flavorful and sweet...and healthier!

And of course, what is a homemade pie without homemade whipped cream flavored with a touch of vanilla??

So there you have it!  This is by far one of my favorite meals we have had in awhile.  It was so fresh, filling and healthy!  And it made my husband smile and sigh with contentment, which melts my heart!

Strawberry Pie
 From Simply in Season Cookbook 

1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
Blend in a saucepan

1 cup strawberries, mashed
1/2 orange juice or water
Add and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens and boils. Boil and stir for 1 minute. Remove from heat.

2 tablespoons lemon juice
Stir in and cool.

4-6 cups of whole strawberries (I halved some the of giant ones)
9 inch baked pastry shell, graham cracker crust, or shortbread tart crust
When cooked fruit is cool, gently fold in additional strawberries and pour into crust. Chill for 3 hours.