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...

I have really been enjoying our CSA this summer.  The variety has been amazing and the flavor of the organic produce we are getting is unbelievable!!  The color is amazing and each week we are introduced to something new grown this season on our farm.  It's been several weeks since I have shown pictures of our weekly bounty so to catch you up, here are some snapshots of what we have been receiving.

Week 4 - Broccoli, green beans, purple cabbage, snow peas, cauliflower, yellow squash, celery, red leaf lettuce, fennel, red and white scallions, green garlic, dinosaur kale, and mint.

Week 5 - red leaf lettuce, salad greens, broccoli, snow peas, green beans, carrots, golden beets, yellow squash, zucchini, garlic, scallions, cauliflower, parsley, and basil.

Week 6 - corn, cabbage, cauliflower, green beans, broccoli, sweet onion, garlic, carrots, yellow squash, cucumber, salad greens, zucchini, parsley, and cilantro.

Week 7 - green beans, carrots, broccoli, nappa cabbage, cucumbers, eggplant, garlic, banana peppers, zucchini, yellow squash, sweet onion, corn, golden tomatoes, and thyme.

I have been able to make some fabulous meals out of this produce!  For the most part, I have been able to come up with uses for everything...except the cabbage...I'm having a hard time keeping up with the cabbage!!

Here's some of the many dishes we have been eating.  Some are basic meals we all make from time to time but are kicked up a notch by adding fresh herbs, like Naan Pizza and Homemade Spaghetti and Meatballs, where I used the basil in the sauce and as a fresh topping!  I love basil.  It is by far my favorite herb. 

I also made Lemon Chicken Pasta and tossed in 1/2 cup of chopped flat leaf parsley.  This was a perfect summer recipe.  It's a very light, refreshing, and flavorful dish for a warm night that can be served hot, at room temperature, or cold the next day for lunch.  For our dinner, we ate it at room temperature.

 

I also made a basic meatloaf for dinner one night a couple weeks ago when it wasn't too terribly hot out.   This is one of the few meals I make, surprisingly (since it's such an "old school" dish), that the entire family will eat and lick their plates clean.  This time, though, I  used A TON of fresh herbs...basically, everything that was left in the fridge...parsley, basil, rosemary, and thyme...all from the farm (except the thyme).  It was by far the best meatloaf I have ever made...and everyone else agreed.  My oldest daughter kept trying to figure out what was different! 

This isn't the most attractive picture of a meatloaf since it isn't cooked...I forgot to take a picture after it was plated...but you can really see the fresh herbs throughout. I served this with purple potatoes and broccoli (also from the farm!)...

Once we got digging into the greens and veggies things really started to get interesting!  One of our favorite "farm meals" yet this summer has been Thai Chicken Lettuce Wraps w/ Peanut Sauce and Curried Cauliflower and Snow Peas served over warm basmati rice.  OH. MY. GOODNESS.  This was such a flavorful dish!!  And there were enough components to it that the kids could customize their lettuce wraps to their liking!  In this one meal I used our red leaf lettuce, cauliflower, snow peas, cilantro, garlic, and scallions...and it was so filling...and healthy!

I'm also a huge advocate for cooking once and having enough to change up and use for future meals.  Not only does this save time for future meal preps, it creates creativity when cooking.  I don't always have an idea of what I'll do with extra food, but if I don't want it to go to waste...then I need to come up with something!  Last week I made a HUGE salad out of our remaining spinach, kohlrabi, and purple cabbage.  A couple of nights later, when we still had half a bowl of salad left, I sauteed the whole thing in a little olive oil, added some apples, maple syrup, and a touch of apple cider vinegar and served it as a side with grilled pork tenderloin.  We also used corn and salad greens from the farm for this meal as well!

I still have pork tenderloin and sauteed cabbage leftover, so to give it a third life I am going to make pulled pork sandwiches with homemade BBQ sauce and top them with the remaining purple cabbage slaw tomorrow.  That will be a perfect Saturday lunch for my hubby!

And last but not least, I made a beautiful pasta salad the other day to put a dent into some of the single veggies that have come in over the past couple weeks.  In this salad is zucchini, yellow squash, red pepper, golden tomatoes, broccoli, yellow peppers, and fresh mozzarella.  I tossed it w/ a Sunflower Salad Vinaigrette using the sunflower oil produced by our farm as well.  This has been an awesome lunch filler and light late night snack.

So as you can see, it seems like A TON of produce.  But it doesn't take much to create a delicious meal using fresh foods or even transform recipes that our mothers and grandmothers have passed down to us that they used to make!  If any of these meals look good to you, or you would like to try one of the recipes I used, send me an email or leave a comment and I will email it to you right away.  And I would love to be inspired by you and what you've been cooking up in your kitchen this summer.  The best way to be successful in nourishing our families with whole foods is to share our success and encourage one another!