CSA Week # 9

Corn
Eggplant
Purslane
Onion
Bell pepper
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Yellow zucchini
Cucumbers
Beans

Fruit:
As you can see, a shit ton of peaches and nectarines

Cucumbers!  Other people have trouble thinking of what to do with eggplant or zucchini, but my produce of struggle is cucumber.  There’s so much of it, and yet a little goes a long way.  I’m starting to really try to expand how I think of cucumbers.  For instance, I’m looking towards using them to make cocktails tonight.  Ideas are most welcome.

Prepping

1) I was ready to take the leap into making my own sandwich bread.  I had eggs and milk in the fridge to use up, so I went with a recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian that used both.  Bittman focuses his bread recipes on food processors, but since I have a weak, ancient, delicate food processor, I just did it by hand.  Kneaded the dough, put it in the bowl for a couple of hours while doing other stuff so it could rise.

Lunch

Went to the farmer’s market and got one bread roll and one heirloom tomato.  Made a sandwich with these, plus some of the CSA cucumber and fromage blanc. And one of the peaches.  Deli salads were all half off at the grocery store, so I bought a bunch to go with sandwiches, and had some pasta salad.

Dinner #1

1) Put the dough in a pan, and the pan in the oven for 40 minutes.  Pulled out a loaf of bread.  Squeed in excitement.

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CSA Week # 8

Corn
Zucchini
Cucumber
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Jalapenos
Bell peppers
Onion
Eggplant

Fruit:
Watermelon
Apples
Plums
Peaches
Necatarines

This was the week of extremes.  I spent much of my day cooking on Saturday, but then the rest of the week kicked back and made simple dishes out of laziness.

Lunch

1) We had a bunch of nectarines left over, and they were starting to get wrinkly by Saturday, so I chopped them up, coated them in cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, black pepper, salt, and chili powder.  Tossed them in the skillet.  It only took like 5 minutes to cook.  They were awesome.

2) Grated one of the giant zucchini, chopped up an onion, and scrambled all that with four eggs and some garlic and chili powder.  (Plus salt & pepper, of course.)

3) Toasted sourdough bread and sliced a tomato.  Ate some eggs over this, but the rest were leftovers.  Had some of the nectarines, but a lot were left over.

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CSA Week #6

Eggplant
Corn
Parsley
Zucchini
Tomatoes
Onion
Potatoes
Purple peppers
Cucumbers

Fruit:
Peaches
Plums
Cantaloupe
Nectarines

Since we skipped last week, due to Netroots Nation (I let someone else have my CSA), I’m just going to skip week #5 in general and go straight to #6.  There is therefore only two dinners that we got out of this, though they created a lot of leftovers that I’m still happily eating.  I’m adding the music I listen to while cooking, in reference to the last CSA post and suggestions of how to make cooking more entertaining. 

I saw this link on Twitter the other day, and I have to say that the annual moaning about too much zucchini never made sense to me.  I’ve never had anyone dump a bag of zucchini on me, though they’re welcome to do it.  I have trouble imagining such a thing as too much organically grown garden zucchini.  Granted, I am a vegetarian, and so zucchini is the sort of thing I can eat piles of, because it makes a great meat substitute in all sorts of food, including pastas and Tex-Mex dishes like squash enchiladas.  (Which I’ve been dying to make, but am having trouble cobbling together the peppers for the sauce, or finding canned sauce in NYC.)  Which is why I raise an eyebrow when someone whips out the, “I like zucchini, but” line.  If it’s overabundant in the summer and you’re a meat eater, just eat more vegetarian dishes, right?  Vegetarians find it hilarious when meat eaters worry that our diets have less variety, since most meat eaters eat mostly beef or chicken, with occasional forays into pork or fish. 

Dinner # 1

1)  Thanks to the people who suggested keeping veggie scraps and using them to make broth.  Now I have a growler of broth in my fridge, and it’s a much quicker way to cook with veggie broth than using bouillon.  I used some to make potatoes.  I sliced potatoes and onions, tossed them into the pan with salt and pepper, and then poured veggie broth and mustard on.  So delicious.

2) Made the cucumber salad with a soy and ginger dressing from the Bittman book, since it worked out so well last time.

3) Riffing off another Bittman recipe, I cooked the eggplant, purple peppers, some garlic and some onion together, throwing in one green pepper for good measure. 

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CSA Week #4

Callaloo
Corn
Parsley
Green beans
Cucumber
Zucchini
Red potatoes
Tomatoes
Onion
Eggplant
And our fruit share started:
Peaches
Pluots
Cantaloupe

Let’s talk briefly about how to make cooking fun instead of mindless drudgery.  Cooking is a lot more creative and usually less stressful than doing other kinds of housework, like scrubbing stuff on your hands and knees.  Still it means a lot of doing stuff like chopping and mixing that can be, on their own, kind of boring.  No wonder it sometimes feels easier to skip it and go to a takeout place instead.  And of course, the whole point of this CSA project isn’t to make anyone feel guilty about getting takeout!  I do that a lot myself.  But the point of the project is to use the community to share ways to achieve the goal a lot of us have of cooking more, healthier, and, if you can, using more sustainable produce. 

Folks—-okay, female folks—-have been finding ways to make cooking more relaxing and entertaining since roughly forever.  There’s a reason that kitchens are the places many people gravitate to at social events, because many of us are conditioned to hanging out and having fun chatting while preparing food.  But if you don’t have a bunch of people around to entertain you, there’s other things you can do.  I use cooking as my time to really listen to music, which is great, because it’s so easy to get caught up in your life and forget to take the time to enjoy music.  Or listen to new stuff.  A lot of people, myself included, have taken advantage of laptop computers and will do things like catch up on blogs or Twitter feeds while cooking. 

Share your strategies in comments!  Sadly, I have no way to make cleaning up the kitchen fun, but I still see it as an opportunity to listen to music or catch up on podcasts.

Dinner #1

1) Still had cucumbers and beets left, so started by making a quick tomato cucumber salad, with some basil from my fire escape herb garden.  Basil (cut up with herb scissors), cucumber, tomato, a little olive oil, vinegar, a little dried oregano, salt, pepper, shake it up.

2) Sliced up roasted beets, nuked ‘em.  Served them with the yogurt sauce that I made with the purslane.

3) Took some onion rolls, toasted them, and made sandwiches with the last bit of cucumber, more tomatoes, and delicious horseradish cheddar. 

Time: 30 minutes, but I was moving real slow, because I was feeling lazy.

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CSA Week #3

Beets
Red potatoes
Corn
Broccoli
Purslane
Basil
Zucchini
Green beans
Onion
Garlic
Tomatoes
Cucumbers

Let’s talk a little about leftovers. Some of us love them, and will happily reheat a plate from the night before for lunch, or even breakfast.  Some of us seize up with dread at the very idea.  Some us fall in between, depending on the dish.  How to become someone who can eat leftovers, which is a practice that saves you money, encourages you to cook more, saves time, and means you’re that much less likely to use your lunch or even breakfast time eating less healthy food purchased from fast food joints?

Start by thinking of Thanksgiving.  Everyone knows how to turn Thanksgiving dinner into leftovers, and there’s two reasons for it.  One is there’s so much food that you kind of have to get creative.  Two is you’ve made a bunch of simple, separate dishes that can be remade into different forms.  The latter is what you want to look towards when cooking on a regular basis.  Don’t mix all your food together—-assemble only on the plate, and keep the leftovers in their own dishes in the fridge.  This way, you can mix and match, making entirely new foods instead of just eating leftovers. 

Back home, I knew a lot of women who would use Sunday to make a huge, elaborate piece of meat and some beans on the side, all to be reused in lunches and dinners for the rest of the week.  Sunday roast could be eaten straight with beans and cornbread.  Then it could be reworked in fajitas, sandwiches, omelets, you name it.  Parts could be used for soup.  Same with the beans.  Vegetarians can apply the same principles.

For this, your best friends are simple carbohydrates and perhaps eggs.  What was a simple dish last night can be eaten over toast or mixed into eggs for breakfast. (I do this with squash mixes all the time.)  If you had a stir fry before, why not eat it the next day over pasta, instead?  Stuff that’s a tad wet can be rolled up in a tortilla with beans, and stuff that runs dry can be the filling of a sandwich.  Pasta sauces should be kept separate from the pasta and used later to flavor vegetables or even on sandwiches.  Feel free to share your strategies in comments.

Lunch #1

Didn’t have much besides World Cup going on Saturday, so thought it a good day to work through some of this food with a good stir fry.  Before I went to the gym, I started pressing the tofu.  When I came back, I started up the rice cooker, and showered.  When I got out, I cooked the tofu (with some green onions), browning it a little first.  In went some cabbage, the cauliflower, and the Thai-ish basil sauce I made the night before.  Threw the green beans in last, cooked it just a little longer and then served it over rice.

Time: Straight cooking and chopping, 15 minutes.  Obviously, it works better if you just prep stuff ahead of time.  Got most of the dishes done while it cooked.

Leftovers: This made basically three meals’ worth, so I was able to eat some for lunch later on.

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CSA Week 2

Cabbage
Basil
Yellow zucchini
Cucumber
Beets
Green pepper
Tomatoes
Green beans
Onion

I want briefly, because I know it’s going to come up, talk about the issue of privilege.  Yes, I have a lot of privilege living in Park Slope in Brooklyn (though I don’t belong to the Park Slope CSA—-but I’m super lucky to be a member of the Ditmas Park one.)  But I don’t think that should mean this project is not worthwhile. Privilege has uses besides being something to sit around feeling guilty about to no one’s benefit.  You could use it to give back by reducing your carbon footprint and helping out local farmers.  In addition, a lot of the vegetables you have to learn to work with in CSAs are the ones that are cheap at the grocery store (like greens are in the South).  Learning to cook with cheap vegetables can save anyone money.

Two privileges I don’t have: a dishwasher or a lot of counter space.  However, I grew up without the former and I have basically never had the latter.  I promise you that neither is a deal-breaker.  Dishwashers basically save no real time, if you learn how to wash dishes properly.  (Use the stove to dry pots and pans.)  The key to getting around no counters is to have lots of mixing bowls to dump chopped vegetables in. 

I do realize this project doesn’t do anything to address the massive problem of food deserts or the inability of people to break out of a sedentary lifestyle.  But it does help address another obstacle for modern people who’d like to cook more, which is,  “How on earth do I turn all those raw ingredients into actual food?”

As per the request last week, yes please leave ideas and comments and your own adventures in comments!  Everyone could use more information.

Now, on to the program.

Dinner-ish #1

I still had zucchini and basil left over from last week, and the basil was looking kind of wilty.  So I decided just to cook it up and store it for later.  It was Saturday morning, which means the farmer’s market is super close to my apartment, so I ran over and got some onions.  Organically grown onions are a major reason that I think that it’s just not right to say that the farmer’s market is always too expensive.  I got two purple onions for $1, and when they’re organic, they’re way more potent than the ones at the grocery store.

I cooked the zucchini and onions with some garlic.  Got the zucchini brown, added in canned chopped tomatoes, making a tomato sauce.  Tomato sauces are one of the best things to make if you’re cooking ahead of time, because they often improve their flavor sitting in the fridge a day or two.  So many pasta sauces on Sunday for Monday night dinners—-then all you have to do is cook the pasta and reheat the sauce.  With fresh basil, always toss it in at the last minute and cook it for a second.  I recommend making your life easier with fresh herbs by buying a pair of herb scissors, or folding the herb over and using a pair of real scissors to cut it up over the sauce. 

Time: 15 minutes, during which I got the dishes done, too.

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With all the food blogging I’ve been doing lately, and all the great discussions we’ve had about some of the social, political, and cultural obstacles people face when it comes to cooking as frequently as we’re often told we should for our health and well-being, I thought it might be an interesting project to take all this interest in eating locally and cooking more and get into some practical application blogging.  I joined a CSA, which is short for community supported agriculture, here in Brooklyn.  Brooklyn has a whole bunch of these, but they’re becoming common all over the country.  In Austin, I used a company that allowed you to dabble, buying the CSA package one week but not the next if you wanted.  Here I’ve gone all in.  And I plan to use Saturdays to blog what I got and what I did with it.

CSAs can be daunting, because you often get a bunch of vegetables you have no idea how to cook.  I know I was daunted, but reading food blogs, as well as getting a copy of Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food gave me way more confidence.  Joining CSAs doesn’t just encourage a culture of support for local farmers, it encourages a culture of support for cooking with seasonal food, reducing demand for imports that consume great deal of fossil fuels.  I’m not one of those fanatics who thinks that it’s possible to go all local or all seasonal, but I’m very focused on the value of reduction and making some changes in the right direction.  I’m hoping this project makes the possibility of joining CSAs seem more within the reach of others.

A few notes before we begin.  I’m a pescatarian—-someone who eats seafood but no other meat—-but that’s on a very occasional basis.  On a day-to-day level, I’m basically a vegetarian.  But if you’re not, this project can still be of value to you.  Even people who eat meat can benefit and contribute by reducing their meat consumption dramatically, and by shopping locally.  A lot of stuff I do here can be modified to include meat, but there’s also no law forcing meat eaters to eat meat at every meal.  My carnivore boyfriend has shifted to a vegetarian-when-Amanda-cooks diet.  In addition to a lot of the standard stuff Bittman recommends for a basically stocked kitchen, I have an extensive spice rack, and I keep one of those big jars of minced garlic in water in my fridge.  If you can get this cheap, it’s well worth doing that instead of buying and mincing garlic, which is a pain in the ass.  I found I cooked a lot more when mincing garlic stopped being a chore I had to complete.  I also have jars full of vegetarian bouillon to use to spice up grains, but if you’re not a vegetarian, chicken works well.  On my fire escape, I grow basil, thyme, and parsley.

Okay, enough with the prelims!  Lets start the CSA Project!  Below the fold, because of the prelims.

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