CSA Week 6

This week, our family share consisted of

• Choice of two items, Cabbage or Fennel
• Choice of two items, Kale or Collards
• Six heads of lettuce, green, red, or deer's tongue lettuce
• 1/2 lb arugula 
• 12 (!) crowns of broccoli 
• 4 heads and stalks of green garlic

I also picked up our first New Jersey blueberries of the season at the farmer's market. What will be done with this all is still an open question ...

Where do your pine nuts come from?

Pesto -- frozen into ice cube trays and socked away in the freezer -- is one of my key strategies for preserving basil, arugula, mint, dandelion greens, and pretty much any other flavorful green. But while I can get all of those greens (and cheese) locally, the nuts and olive oil that are indispensable in pesto are harder to find from known sources.

Therefore, the growth of "pine nut mouth," wherein pine nuts cause a bitter metallic taste in the mouth starting 1-3 days after consumption, and lasting up to a week. I experienced such a condition myself several weeks ago, and while it dissapated after several days, it not only took much of the joy out of eating and drinking anything, but has made me anxious about making dishes featuring pine nuts in the future.

What to do? Well, much of this phenomenon seems to be associated with nuts from China. The latest batch of nuts I bought from Trader Joe's says the nuts are a product of "Korea, Russia, or Vietnam," so perhaps I will fare better this time around. Also, for pesto at least there are other nut options, such as the Arugula-Walnut pesto I recently made  with excess arugula from the farm. Almonds and cashews also work reasonably well as pine nut replacement options, in my experience.

Zucchini Bread

As promised in the last post, my zucchini bread recipe follows after the jump

CSA, Week 5 (but the second post)

We're starting to get more summer vegetables at the farm this week, I was also able to pickup some asparagus and rhubarb at our local farmer's market to enjoy the last of the spring vegetables. This week, our family share included

• Lettuce (6 heads, choice of red leaf and green leaf)
• Choice of kale or collards (2 items)
• Choice of fennel and radicchio (4 items)
• 1 lb of swiss chard 
• 4 heads of broccoli 
• 4 summer squash (choice of patty pan or Cousa, aka Lebanese zucchini)
• Green garlic 
• 1 qt pick your own peas (snap or snow, mix and match)
• Herbs

I supplemented that with a few purchases from the farmer's market, including

• A Griggstown Chicken
• 2 bunches of arugula
• 2 Lawrenceville Bakery baguettes
• Cherry Grove eggs
• Rhubarb
• Asparagus
• Radishes 
• English Peas

What I did / will be doing with this bounty is after the jump 

CSA begins ... and with it an onslaught of produce

It's been a long time since our last post. Our CSA has been providing us produce for over a month now, and while it started slow the first couple of weeks, the four of us have now been trying to figure out how to use all of the vegetables and fruit -- and especially the lettuce -- so as not to produce more food waste. So to inaugurate what I expect will be the first of many similar posts,  we run down what our family share received over the last couple of weeks, and what we did with it. 

Saturday, May 29.

• 8 heads of lettuce (choice of deer’s tounge, romaine, and/or bibb)
• 2 lbs spinach
• ½ lb arugula
• 1 qt strawberries
• Choice of 4 items: kale, collards, red radishes, and/or bok choi

Saturday, June 5

• Choice of 2 items: kale and/orcollards
• Choice 2 items: scallions and/or french breakfast radishes
• 1 lb swiss chard
• ½ lb arugula
• (Spinach was already out)
• 4 heads of lettuce (choice of green and/or red)
• 1 qt PYO peas
• 1 pt PYO strawberries

And as a bonus, on Monday May 31 and again on Friday June 4, we were able to pick strawberries at the Chesterfield location of our farm (we are members at the Pennington location) for an extra 24 quarts of berries.

So what did we do?  See the details below the break.