Wednesday, June 22, 2011

CSA 2011 - The Goods - Week Three


Subtitle:  I don't know what endive is.

Picked up our third farmshare box this week.  It's really different, being able to pick out the produce in advance.  Last year it seemed like such an adventure, finding out what was in the box and figuring out what to do with it.  This year is less so.  There are positives and negatives to both styles.  One negative is that this year it's a bit like flying on Southwest.  You ever do that?  There are no seat assignments, it's just a mad dash.  My farmshare is a bit like that.   I got an email when it was time to place orders for this week, and the email said that peas were limited, and only to select one type of pea (one bunch of peas?  one box of peas?) I don't know how peas are distributed, because I got no peas.  I got the email midday, was at work, spoke to my dear husband about which produce to pick and then before I left for the day went to make my selections and peas were gone.  So were a few other things.  So what I got is what I picked, and what I picked was nearly the full range of what was available.  This week, like last week, I chose endive.  Last week I was disappointed to not see it in the box, but noticed I had received 3 lettuces, rather than 2, so at least I got something in it's place.  This week, again, I didn't see endive, but an extra lettuce.   I got to Googling. 


When I think of endive, I think of what you see here: click here for endive's website.  Belgian endive? California endive? I think about spreading creamy cheese on it, and eating it like we're fancy.  

Apparently, though, this is also endive.


Slightly bitter, very crunchy frisee.  Fine.  I'm learning something.  So this week's salads have this.  Again.  I make up salads "for the week" on Tuesday night, meaning one each, for lunch, for the rest of the week.  Really, I do this because I don't want to store three big bowls of salad in the fridge.  This cuts it down to one, one and half big bowls of salad in the fridge, plus lunches.  It works ok, as long as we remember to take our salad every day, and no one has a lunch meeting.   Otherwise, the backlog is overwhelming.
  
While we're talking about lettuce, we got this too. Very big and fluffy.  The picture doesn't do justice to the size of the thing. 


 And parsley.  I plan on making falafel.


Pretty scallions, but the tops are cut off (both from the picture, and from the scallions).


Three zucchini.  Also a nice bundle of chard that I just failed to photograph. 


Cheese!


And eggs.  When I mentioned to my parents that we had an egg share, my mother asked how we get through a dozen eggs every two weeks, and I told her it was easy - that if we each have an egg white omelet over the weekend, that can use up 5-7 eggs, and maybe I'll make something and use up two, and maybe I'll do something that needs eggs as a binder, and use up one or two more, and hardboil a few for salads...and if I end up stuck, there's always the possibility of frittata.  They're gorgeous orange-yolked fresh local eggs (ignore the styrofoam carton)... but yeah, I'm falling behind.  So I wouldn't be shocked if there was a frittata this week.


So what do you do with extra eggs?  Any ideas on the zucchini?  Let me know what you'd do with it if this was your food. 


Also - you only have until end of day tomorrow (Thursday, June 23rd, midnight eastern) to enter the giveway for the very pretty, very easy to clean bowl covers from Sew Much Style


Click here for all the contest details and to enter to win.