Sweet Corn

One of the most labor-intensive crops to grow organically is corn.  Corn ear worms (those little worms that you occasionally find on the top of an ear) are preventable if you treat every single ear individually.  I recall going to our local organic farmers' market and finding a sign on the pile of corn that stated "Not Organic".  When I questioned the farmer, he explained that customers were so turned off by the worms (which are actually moth larvae) that he stopped growing it because no one would buy it.  He purchased his corn from a conventional farmer and sold it at his stand.

We have gotten lots of corn from Fort Hill Farm this year; a real treat for us.  The boys especially love sweet corn.  The first few ears were perfect...not a worm on them.  As the season continued, we found more critters crawling on our corn.  There was a little bit of revulsion from the troops, but my way of thinking is this:  Evidence of worms is proof that Monsanto and other bullying chemical giants did not have their tentacles on my dinner.

As for cooking corn, my favorite method is from the Joy of Cooking:  Bring a pot of salted water to a rapid boil.  Add the corn, put a tight fitting lid on top, and remove it from the heat.  Time for 5 minutes and serve.  If the corn is young and fresh, you can't beat it!

I Finally Have a New Grill

After much debate, we finally bought ourselves a grill.  You may recall our tragic grill story.  Many family members and friends insisted that Weber was the way to go, and I don't doubt their judgement, but our finances just don't justify the cost of a Weber.  Even though Rich only grills when there is an audience, I allowed him to make the choice.  He was the one who labored year after year keeping our old grill in operating condition, so he chose a Brinkmann, which has a great website that allows you to buy replacement parts cheaply and easily.    Plus, the grill was only $200 including tax.  Rich assembled it for me and even bought a cover. 

It is a bit overbuilt, I think, but it's really hard to find something simple these days. 

Here is a picture that shows part of the grill doing its magic on some Asian eggplants (notice that there is plenty of room for a glass of wine:

The eggplants were really very pretty, slender purple things, but Rich was thoroughly uninterested in eating them, so I did what I do with many of his vegetables:  I hid them.  (It occurs to me that if we stopped using the word "eggplant", and started calling them "aubergines" like the French do, eggplant might have a broader appeal.)

Rich's favorite dish in the world is Chicken Tikka Masala, the Indian restaurant mainstay.  I marinated chicken breasts overnight in yogurt and Penzey's Tandoori spice mix.  When I have more time and energy, I mix up my own spices.  It was, like, 80% humidity and 92 degrees out, so I was taking shortcuts, though.  In cooler weather I also make my masala sauce from scratch, but I used a jar of Patak's to prevent me from slitting my wrists in misery.  So anyway, I grilled the eggplant and the marinated chicken, diced both up, and tossed them in a pot of masala sauce.  I left some chicken out of the sauce for the kids, which they thought was delicious.  I also sliced some raw carrots for them.  Add some boiled white rice and homemad nan, and we had a great little meal. 

Rich ate a few chunks of the eggplant, but he was not fooled in the least.  Oh well.  I ate the aubergines, and loved them!

On Blogging

My family has been supportive and kind regarding my endeavor to write about our eating habits. They don't have to be. They could all just be resentful of the time I waste on the whole project, spilling their secrets, laughing at their food aversions, typing out crappy sentences with very little revision...

My brother, my mother and my husband are among my most faithful readers, although none of them will post any comments about my posts. I quit for awhile, in fact, believing that no one was actually reading. It's lonely to write without feedback.

I will admit that it is a bit quirky to allow my family to stand around hungrily while I photograph our food, but I think they all feel like they are a part of this project. Anyway, my darling husband was thoughtful enough to snap a shot of me snapping a shot of our dinner. My boys will be able to remember this episode clearly enough to bemoan the experience to their therapists many years from now.

Hiding the Zucchini

I know the title sounds like a 14-year-old boy's euphemism, but it isn't meant to be. I really had a lot of zucchini to eat, and had to hide it in other foods to convince my doubtful family to ingest it. If you read The Value of a Mother-In-Law, you'll understand my husband's aversion to the squash. The boys have no such excuse aside from being little boys.

Fort Hill Farm came to the rescue with a great way to hide zucchini from the zucchini-defiant: Chocolate Cake. It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Who would ruin a perfectly good chocolate cake by hiding zucchini inside?

But it worked. It was delicious. And we ate it all up.

Here is the recipe as presented by Fort Hill Farm:

Moist Chocolate Zucchini Cake
From The Cook’s Garden by Ellen Ecker Ogden

1 cup unbleached all purpose flour 2 cups sugar
1 cup whole-wheat flour 8 TBSP (1 stick) unsalted butter (room temp)
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder ½ cup olive oil
2 tsp baking soda 3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tsp fine sea salt 1/3 cup sour cream or yogurt
3 cups grated zucchini
*Add some Chocolate Chips for a real treat!

Position a rack in the center of your oven. Preheat the oven to 350. Butter and lightly flour a 9×13 inch rectangular pan.

Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. Using an electric mixer on high speed, beat the sugar, butter and oil together in another bowl until well combined. One at a time, add in the eggs, beating well after each addition. Gradually stir in the flour mixture, blending until just smooth. Stir in the sour cream or yogurt, then the zucchini. Spread evenly in the pan.

Bake until the cake springs back in the center, about 45 minutes. Cool completely over a wire rack.

Some things to note: I was staying at a rented beach house when I made this recipe. I only had white flour, I had no chocolate chips, I had no grater with which to grate the zucchini, so I chopped it very small, and the oven in the house had no discernible temperature settings- the numbers had been scrubbed off the dial, and the light did not turn on until the dial was turned to its highest setting (whatever that might have been). This recipe is very forgiving, because it was still very good, despite all the setbacks.

I did not take photos, but it looked just like a chocolate sheet cake with some very tiny flecks of green. Try frosting it to hide the green flecks. Or tell the kids they are "sprinkles".

Carrots

When I was young, my grandfather had a vegetable garden beautiful enough to be featured in magazines. It never was. My grandpa was remarkably humble and spoke with a thick Pennsylvania Dutch accent, a combined effect that made some people think he was simple. He wasn't.

Perhaps I am remembering his garden through the rosy-perfection vision of time; maybe it really was the tidy, well-organized productive plot I picture in my head. Such is memory. Grandpa didn't read much, having had a fourth grade education, but as a farmer, he knew what was good for the plants and what was good for us. I do know the garden held roses, zinnias, and marigolds that attracted beneficial insects to the beets, radishes, rhubarb, tomatoes (so many tomatoes!), cucumbers squash beans and carrots.

I remember my grandfather pulling up carrots for me. I was little, and always disappointed. They were not the Barbie-leg long carrots that we bought in the grocery store. They were short, stubby, knobby, and dirty. He would wash them with the garden hose, scrubbing them with his fingers, as knobby and dirty as the carrots themselves from all the hard work he did, and hand them to me to eat: unpeeled; greens still attached. I ate them because I loved my grandfather.

I now know that Connecticut's soil isn't meant to grow those perfect slender carrots we find at the supermarket. New England's stony soil forces the roots to bend and twist into shapes unbecoming a mass-produced carrot.

Fortunately, what seemed peculiar and repulsive to me as a little girl is a huge attraction to my little boys. Our carrots from Fort Hill Farm are gnarled and twisted. The boys have not allowed me to serve the carrot pictured here. Ironically, while it lacks the look of the long Barbie-leg carrots from the store, it reminds me of a beautiful dancer's legs: twisted and en pointe, ready to pirouette- formed by local, organic soil and a farmer who knows what is good for us.

The Value of a Mother-in-law

There are enough jokes about mothers-in-law floating around in our modern culture that one would think they have no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I, however, am fortunate enough to have a mother-in-law who can really serve a purpose. She has proven her helpfulness and generosity multiple times since the day I married her younger son.

One such example was the day when we came home with the box of vegetables to find lots of zucchini, yellow squash and eggplant: none of which Rich will eat.

I understand Rich's reluctance to eat anything from the squash family. I was there on the disastrous evening when he ended his zucchini-eating career. We were not yet married, but I was already cooking for him pretty regularly. That night, I had made the Moosewood Cookbook's recipe for stuffed zucchini. It was delicious! Then we headed out to a street fair in New Haven. Not too far down Chapel Street, amidst the street stalls all smelling of ethnic foods...Indian, Thai, Middle-Eastern, Greek...Rich became violently ill. He ran down a side street and vomited profusely next to someone's car. Then he threw up in a garbage can. I started driving him home, but we had to stop at a rest area on I-95 so he could again get sick.

I ate the same thing he ate that night, so I'm quite sure that zucchini wasn't the problem. But I do know that the last thing down is the first thing up, and it can ruin your taste for that item for years. Maybe for the rest of your life. This is why I still do not drink tequila. Or bourbon, for that matter.

My mother-in-law, understanding the predicament of having too many vegetables and too few people to eat them, suggested we make ratatouille, and she promised to help eat it. As you can see from the photo, we also had a green pepper, a tomato, a sweet onion, some garlic and a head of parsley to use in this endeavor.

We looked at the recipes on the Fort Hill Farm website for some guidance, but then my mother-in-law called her sister, a former restaurateur for advice. And so, using the following recipe with some adjustments, we created a tasty ratatouille.

Ratatouille- thanks to Beth Campbell and Moosewood Cookbook
3 TBSP olive oil

2 med. cloves garlic

1 chopped onion

1 med eggplant, cubed

1 tsp salt

1 med. Zucchini and yellow squash, cubed

1 med. bell pepper, in strips

fresh black pepper

1 cup chopped fresh tomato

fresh minced parsley

Heat olive oil in a deep skillet or Dutch oven. Add onion and sauté over medium heat for about 5 minutes.

Add eggplant and salt, and stir. Cover and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for about 15-20 minutes or until the **eggplant is soft.

Add zucchini, bell peppers, black pepper, garlic and tomatoes. Cover and simmer for about 10 more minutes, or until the zucchini and bell peppers are tender.

Serve hot, warm or at room temperature- plain, or topped with parsley
**Some varieties of eggplant cook much quicker than others, check often and don’t overcook.

The leftover ratatouille made a grade sandwich on crusty bread with mozzarella cheese. Of course, I was eating those sandwiches for several days.

Another Real Recipe With Measurements and Everything

Last week my Aunt Camille invited us to her house for a barbecue. Nothing big or fancy, but it's nice to get out and see family. I offered to bring some coleslaw as I had a head of cabbage in the fridge and not enough coleslaw eaters to use it in the house, and Aunt Camille said she had wanted to try a recipe she had seen on the Food Network. She told me where to find it on the website, and seeing as how it calls for both cabbage and fennel, which also came in the box this week, it seemed the perfect thing to make.

I should explain my aunt and uncle a bit. On the outside, they appear to be a bit of a mismatch. Aunt Camille is tall and blonde and always perfectly dressed and made-up. She laughs a lot, likes going to Atlantic City with the girls, is fond of fancy cocktails and new, unusual foods. I love getting together with her. When she is at a gathering with my tee-totaling family, I always know I have someone to help me polish off a bottle of wine. Or two.

Uncle Sonny, on the other hand, is old-fashioned meat-and-potatoes. He is reserved, hard-working, doesn't drink and would rather be fly-fishing and camping in Montana than be cooped up in a luxury hotel with nothing to do. My aunt and uncle have been married nearly 50 years, so clearly their differences don't matter too much.

The recipe that I was preparing for this barbecue was simple enough. I was a little unsure about the addition of fennel. I have never prepared fennel before, and fennel is definitely an acquired taste. I figured for sure, my uncle would not eat coleslaw containing fennel. In fact, any coleslaw that wasn't the classic mayonnaise-soaked variety that you get at the local diner probably wouldn't be appreciated by him. The sauce part was yogurt, not mayonnaise, and contained maple syrup. Hmm. In my mind, we are getting a little crazy with flavors here. I wasn't about to buy red cabbage, napa cabbage and the like when I had plenty of green stuff in my fridge already, so I substituted the wakefield cabbage, an heirloom variety with a funny cone-head shape (see the top photo) that came in the box. I also had some carrots from the farm share; an extra bit of serendipity, I think.

If you choose to try this recipe at the end of the post, I would suggest either using garlic powder or only 1 small garlic clove. Two minced garlic cloves was very strong. As it turned out, my uncle did not eat much of the coleslaw. No surprise. He picked out the cranberries, too. My aunt thought it was great, but Mom found it too garlicky. I don't know what Dad thought; he doesn't really comment on food either way. I ate a fair amount to be a good citizen, but as I suspected, there were too many flavors competing against one another and not necessarily complementing one another.

Perfectly Crunchy Slaw

Recipe from Giada DeLaurentis of the Food Network

Ingredients
• 1/4 small red cabbage, shredded, about 2 cups
• 1/3 napa cabbage, shredded, about 2 cups
• 2 medium carrots, peeled and grated
• 1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced
• 1 Belgian endive spear, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup toasted pine nuts or pistachio nuts
• 1 1/2 cups plain yogurt
• 2 tablespoons sour cream
• 3 tablespoons maple syrup or honey
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/3 cup chopped chives
Directions
In a large bowl, mix together the cabbages, carrots, fennel, endive, cranberries and pine nuts. In a small bowl, combine the yogurt, sour cream, maple syrup, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper. Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss well until coated.
Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour. Garnish with chopped chives before serving

Making Do

You may recall that the glass window on my grill shattered and ruined my dinner a few nights ago. I've been reduced to cooking indoors, which is never much fun in the summer. Tonight, though, Rich decided that it would be a great idea to build a campfire and cook out there. It's quite a hike to our backyard campsite from the kitchen. It's not miles, or anything, but compared to the short jaunt to the deck in which we can quickly fetch any forgotten items, it can be a pain. But I wasn't interested in eating any foods that would be prepared on the stovetop and in the oven, anyway, so I agreed to prep and pack a meal to cook over the open flame.

I had some hot dogs leftover from the London Broil au Glass Shards incident and some burgers that would be easy enough to cook on an open fire. Of course, there was the issue of vegetables. My fridge is packed with them, and we don't have time to take the night off from our green consumption. My solution was to slice up a zucchini, a purplette onion, some broccoli, and toss them with a little canola oil, some salt, pepper and herbs, and some leftover already-cooked potatoes. I have a vegetable basket meant to be used on the grill that would serve us well on the campfire grill.

I learned to cook on a campfire years ago when I worked at Camp Tepee. We were required to have a cookout with our "tribe". On my first go-around, I didn't know how to start a fire, didn't know how to cook on one, and couldn't imagine how I would go about keeping 12 little girls safe and occupied while trying to figure it out. Fortunately, I had a great outdoorsman of a boyfriend at the camp, coincidentally also named "Rich", who was able to help me out. As time went on, I became very adept and creative in my campfire cookery.

Being as confident as I am in my abilities, if I had my way, I would have been in charge of building the fire and arranging the cooking space. Rich set things up backwards with the campfire raging upwind of the grill setup. I didn't complain, but it did make cooking a challenge. I did need to interfere when it came to building an appropriately sized bed of coals under the grill. If you aren't familiar with cooking on a fire, you want to do it over a bed of hot coals. You can determine the temperature by putting your hand above the grill and counting how long you can hold it there. If you can only keep it there without feeling the burn for a second or two, it's really hot and good for searing meats. If you can keep it there for 4-5 seconds or so, it's a good medium. Much longer than 5 seconds, and you might be able to have a slow-cooked chili in a cast-iron pot. I directed my darling to build up the coal bed before we could get going.

When the meat was done, I got the vegetables going in the basket on a medium-ish location. They were delicious when done. I love grilled zucchini, and cooking over real wood makes a nice difference in flavor.

We topped off our meal with s'mores, the true campfire classic.

I Need a New Grill

So I was making beets for dinner, and if you read my last post, you know that there is a great deal of controversy surrounding the edibility of beets. I figured that if my guys were going to be happy at suppertime, I had better make something of the non-vegetable variety, so I chose a Teriyaki London broil on the grill.



Those who know me well know that I'm cheap. I prefer to say "thrifty", because it sounds like I'm not pinching pennies as much as being conservative with my resources. Rich and I have long been conservative with our resources. We have owned the same grill for 13 years. That may not seem like a very long time compared with other things people own, but we've talked to plenty of people who have replaced their grills after 5 years, or even 3 years. This includes folks who are very careful to cover their grills after each use and put them away in the garage for the winter. Some of these people are the type who buy top-of-the-line stainless steel grills and use them maybe once a month, and still find it necessary to replace them after only a few years.



I, however, am a year-round griller. I grill in almost all weather. I draw the line at blizzard conditions, but if the snow isn't falling, we shovel a path on the deck. The grill is on the deck, uncovered all four seasons. I'd never use it, otherwise. So this hunk of metal has taken quite a beating. Rich, my dear handy husband, has replaced the burners, the igniter, and other parts that I'm not smart enough to identify on several occasions. He has used stoveblack to spruce it up as well as disassembled the wooden handles and shelves to sand and stain them. We hate to go out and spend a fortune on something that we can revive, and we especially hate the idea of adding to the junkyard waste.



We had made up our minds this year to finally get a new grill. This one was becoming more and more problematic. It's been getting harder to find correctly sized replacement parts, and it is starting to rust through in some spots. One of the more fun problems was the hot spot that developed front and center on the grill. Flames were continually shooting up several inches right where my wrist needed to be to flip any burger or tong any hot dog. As much as I enjoy the experience of burning my arm hair when I cook, I figured it wasn't a viable long-term situation.



I was proven right about the lack of viability this week when I was making the Teriyaki steak. It was one of those days that was sunny, but rain showers kept coming every few moments anyway. I've grilled many times in the rain without any ill effects, so I wasn't concerned when I closed the lid on the London broil after searing it to be sure it cooked through. I stepped into the house to check the potatoes and grab a clean serving platter, and returned to the deck to find the glass front completely shattered, with glass shards all over the beef.

Keep in mind that I am cheap. I mean "thrifty". My first instinct was to wash the steak off like I do when the boys drop their lollipops in the dirt. Rich had the sense to make me throw the whole thing away. He supervised as I did, too. I know he is right. The 5 or 6 dollars I was tossing was nothing compared to the cost of a bit of glass lodged in the intestine leading to sepsis or some such icky thing. Incidentally, I know where my cheapness comes from. When I related the story to my mother, she said, (and I am not making this up), "Why didn't you just wash the meat off?"

Fortunately, we had some hot dogs in the fridge that I could make. Not quite the meal I had intended, but they made the beets go down easier for the kids.

Beets

Beets are a very controversial vegetable. There are those who hate them, and those who love them. My son Daniel, who falls into the latter category, upon seeing the massive bunch of beets in our box, requested that we have them that night. We didn't, primarily because beets were the one vegetable that weren't going to wilt and rot in a short period of time.

We also have some beet haters in this family. Zachary is one. Rich was one, but he's being a good sport when he's not singing "salad shooter" (see yesterday's post) and Conrad is not exactly a fan, either. I understand this attitude. I really do. I don't think I was willing to eat beets at all when I was a kid, but I'm not sure I even tasted them. My hatred of beets was related to their ridiculous color, their tendency to stain every other food on the plate that same magenta, and possibly my grandmother's favorite beet treatment: pickling in vinegar.

In addition to the beets themselves, I had the beet greens. After having said beets and greens taking up an inordinate amount of space in the fridge for a week, I decided I'd cook it all. I washed and trimmed the beets and popped them in a bot of water to boil gently until they were fork tender. When they are done, it is easy to just slip the skins right off of them. I sliced them and added a little butter and fresh parsley.

For the greens, I washed and chopped the leaves. In a skillet, I cooked a couple of slices of bacon, when it was crisp I removed it and added some diced onions. Once the onions were soft, I added a little water, a teaspoon of sugar and the beet greens. I allowed that to cook down until the greens were wilted and tender. I plated up the greens with the beets on top. The other side of the platter has some oven-roasted potatoes.

I made London Broil as a conciliatory gesture for my guys, for their beet-eating trouble, but that didn't turn out. More on that later.

It's Just Too Much

I am taking an intensive 2-week graduate level class, which is great, but it is seriously interrupting my ability to cook and plan meals around the vegetable mass in my fridge. The class is funded by a grant, and one of the perks is lunch being served each day. Not only am I not home to work on eating my way through all those greens, but I'm not packing them in a lunchbox, either. On top of that, I get home a little late to spend a lot of time on preparing tasty and creative meals.

Last night, when the kids and I got home it was nearly 6 o'clock, so I went with the easy standby of pasta and a jar of marinara. I jazzed up the sauce a bit with parsley and basil to help me plug my way through those big bunches of herbs. I also made a big salad with the head of red-leaf lettuce, some scallions and the hot-house tomato. The kids stared at the lettuce a bit, but after tasting it and determining that it wasn't bitter at all, they ate quite well.

Part of the problem with the excess has been my husband's physical difficulties in getting used to our vegetable enriched diet. Rich has been going around singing "Salad Shooter" every morning on his way to the bathroom. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, you can check out this link: salad shooter video I have to admit, there is a great deal of pressure in preparing and eating so many vegetables in a short amount of time. We aren't giving up. Tomorrow I'll tell you all about the beets!

Pizza!

My 93 year old grandmother complained about my lack of measurements on the Swiss Chard Au Gratin that I wrote about on the blog a few days ago. She did not actually read the recipe on the computer screen; we read it aloud to her. "How much cheese? How much chard? Write down the measurements! I can't cook that without the right amounts of everything. What the Hell is wrong with you?" she yelled. This abuse came from a woman who taught me to make pie with the vaguest directions I've ever followed:

"How much flour do you use, Gram?"

"You look at it and you can tell how much."

"How much cinnamon do you sprinkle on the apples?"

"Not too Goddam much, you know. And don't forget a little lemon juice. Not to much of that, either or it tastes like shit."

So this may be a good time to put my pizza dough recipe in a proper format for everyone. I use the dough setting of my bread machine. Add the following ingredients to the machine in this order:

1 1/2 c water

1 T kosher salt

2 T sugar

3 T olive oil

1 c whole wheat flour

1 c all-purpose flour

2 c bread flour

2 1/4 tsp salt.

When the dough setting is done, remove the dough from the machine and cut it into thirds. If you are not interested in making 3 pizzas, you can freeze the extra lumps of dough in plastic bags. Let it defrost in the fridge overnight and then let it rise on the counter the next day. With the dough you plan to use right away, roll it out or stretch it with your hands (remove your diamond rings so you don't puncture it!) until it fits on a 16" pizza pan. Top with sauce (not too goddam much!) and mozzarella cheese. Add any pepperoni or other good stuff you enjoy on a pizza. Bake it on the lowest rack in your oven at 550 degrees (yes, 550 degrees...it gives a nice crisp crust) for 9 minutes.

So far, I have not mentioned the CSA relationship to my pizza. I had a huge bag of spinach, and I needed to use some of it. I cooked 3 strips of bacon in a skillet, drained the excess fat and removed the bacon to a paper towel to soak up extra grease. Then in the same pan, I added a chopped purplette onion from the share. When it was nice and translucent, I popped in a very generous bunch of spinach. When all of it was wilted, I topped the pizza with the chopped bacon, the spinach and onions. Daniel, my 9 year old, especially raved about it. I served a salad on the side (all CSA veggies), but I didn't measure that at all.

In Which I Hide Bitter Greens in All Sorts of Foods, Part II

In my last post I lamented the arugula problem with my family, but I invented a way to use it, and by "use it" I really mean "hide it" in a popular food treatment. Here's the plan: my guys all love Indian food, although the kids don't know it, yet. If I don't tell them it's Indian, they eat it happily.

So I take some skinless, boneless chicken thighs and dredge them in a mixture of flour, a bit of salt, and a healthy dose of Tandoori Seasoning from Penzy's. I then fry them lightly (by lightly, I mean until they are browned, not completely cooked) in a mix of butter and canola oil. If you have an oven-proof skillet, that's the pan you should use. When all the thighs are browned nicely, remove them while you add some chopped onions (I used the purplette onions from the CSA). Normally, I would add some sliced red and green bell peppers, as well, but they are not in season in Connecticut, so I did not add them. When the onions (and peppers if applicable) are looking good and cooked, add in a can of diced tomatoes. I also added a whole bunch of washed arugula at this point. It wilted up nicely. Return the thighs to the pan, pop a lid on top and throw the whole mess into the oven at 3oo-325 degrees for about 40 minutes. Serve it on plain rice, and it is delicious. No one noticed the arugula, because the chicken was so tender, and it all tasted so good.

In Which I Hide Bitter Greens in All Sorts of Foods

My friend, Carolyn, who also belongs to the Fort Hill Farm CSA, once raved about how wonderful it was to get a huge bag of arugula. I smiled and nodded. I like a good arugula salad with Gorgonzola, balsamic vinaigrette and maybe toasted walnuts or sliced fruit on top. The peppery bite combined with some other strong flavors is great, but it's a little more sophisticated than my little guys can handle. Rich isn't too keen on that stuff, either. He likes his coffee light and sweet, and he likes his salads mild.

The big bag of arugula that we received this week was bound to be a challenge.

We received a bag of arugula in our first or second CSA week, and knowing that I would have eat salad around the clock to use the whole thing up, I searched out a recipe. It was "Pasta with sun dried tomato pesto, arugula and goat cheese" or some such clever and concise title. I had to go to the store seeing as how I had a box of pasta and a bag of arugula and hardly any other of the ingredients. A jar of sun dried tomatoes packed in oil cost $5. The tiny little log of goat cheese was $5.29. The recipe called for toasted walnuts, which I had to buy in a 12 oz. bag for $8. I wasn't sure how well the guys would like this stuff; I'm not sure I've ever tried sun dried tomatoes on the kids, so I bought a loaf of sourdough for about 2.50. So I basically had to drop over $20 to make a pasta meal, usually my low budget stand-by.

The recipe called for grinding up the tomatoes, a clove of garlic, the toasted walnuts, a 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese, some olive oil and salt and pepper in a food processor. Boil the pasta (I used rotelli) and reserve 3/4 cup of the cooking water to stir into the sun dried tomato pesto. While the pasta and the pesto are still hot, toss the arugula into it so it wilts. Put a slice of goat cheese on each serving.

As it turns out, my boys liked this way more than I did. The cost probably ruined it for me. I am terribly thrifty, and I hate spending too much on food. But really, I think there were too many flavors competing in this dish. I prefer a simpler fare.

I have another large bag of arugula, and I have to find a way to "hide" it again so that the boys will enjoy it. I have a great plan. I'll fill you in tomorrow!

My Favorite Sandwich (If you don't include burgers, pastrami or Philly steak and cheese)

We went to the carnival at our church last night, so I didn't cook at home. You know, support the church and all by dropping 100+ dollars on unlimited ride bracelets, carnival games, raffle tickets, pizza fritte (fried dough or "elephant ears" to those who don't live in the northeast), and food donated by the local restaurants. In the spirit of increasing vegetable intake, I chose the $4.00 eggplant Parmesan grinder donated by Mona Lisa here in Newtown. Fantastic! But that isn't the sandwich I am thinking about.

I figure that if I'm going to get through that whole big box of veggies before the next one arrives on Wednesday, I'm going to have to cook some for lunch, too. So today I made my favorite veggie sandwich with the purplette onions, yellow squash and 1 zucchini from my share. The recipe couldn't be easier. I slice one onion (or part of a large onion) a small zucchini, and yellow squash nice and thin, and I sautee them in a bit of butter and olive oil. I add a generous shake from the salt shaker, and and even more generous shake from the pepper shaker, and let it cook till it looks good: not too soggy, not too crunchy. Throw an appropriate amount of the mess onto a kaiser roll with a slice of cheese, and you have a delicious sandwich!

My favorite type of cheese for this sort of sandwich is the Land O' Lakes white American cheese from the deli (NOT the individually wrapped slice crap). I know American cheese sounds terribly lowbrow, but I think those who pan it based upon their experiences with velveeta and the like, are overly self-important and afraid to admit what's really good. But I decided to veer off of my usual course and use a bit of leftover goat cheese. Tangy goodness, different from the usual.

I was also lacking in the kaiser roll department, so I made do with a little bit of leftover sourdough sliced bread toasted up and buttered. When in doubt, add a little butter. Yummy sandwich!

By the way, if you find you've made more than will fit on one sandwich, it tastes just as good the next day heated up.

Anniversary Dinner

On any other anniversary or special occasion, I'd insist upon going out to eat, but this year, on the occasion of our 14th wedding anniversary, I decided we needed to eat at home, even if it meant that I'd be cooking. After all, I have a ton of vegetables in the fridge.

To make things at least a little bit special, I figured I'd feed the kids early so that Rich and I could have some quiet time while enjoying our meal. It's a little crazy, of course, because that meant I was cooking and cleaning up two separate dinners.

For the kids I made an oven-baked tilapia. I melted a little butter with some parsley and basil from my share, along with a little bit of garlic powder and salt. I poured that over the fish in a glass baking pan and topped it with a handful of bread crumbs. I baked it at 425 alongside some OreIda french fries for about 15-20 minutes. My kids love plain steamed broccoli, so I served that as their veg. Easy, easy, easy.

Rich and I needed something fancier, of course. One of his favorites is scallops wrapped in bacon. In fact, if you wrap anything in bacon, he'll eat it. At one point he was making bacon martinis. This is what I'm up against in trying to cook vegetables for this guy! At any rate, I pre-cooked the bacon a bit, skewered it around the scallops, which I had brushed with butter and lemon juice and seasoned with fresh-cracked pepper, and popped them on the grill alongside some baby bok choy. The bok choy was a hit a few days before, so I figured I'd use up the rest. A little ponzu sauce and sesame oil before grilling with a sprinkling of sesame seeds when it's done makes it so tasty! I didn't want to over extend myself, so I made some toast with some sourdough bread we had in the house to round things out. We are not, after all, on an Atkins diet. I was pretty pleased with the results, considering the fact that we had managed to kick a whole bottle of wine before we even sat down to eat.

Drinking while cooking has never worked out too well for me, and when it came time for dessert, I remembered why. I was taking the shortcakes out the oven and managed to touch my pinky to the heating element just long enough to singe off a good piece of skin. My always helpful husband exclaimed, "I can smell it!" Great. I was tough, though, and the show went on: a little more liquid general anesthetic and some homemade strawberry shortcake with freshly whipped cream (none of that canned stuff for me!)

A Brand New Batch

It's always a big treat to get the box on Wednesday afternoon. It's like getting a present. There are always surprises....that Farmer Paul sure knows how to keep us happy!

This week we got our first tomato! It's from the hothouse. I'm not sure if it is a brandywine or not, but it does have that pinkish color. Daniel was thrilled to see beets...he wants beets for dinner tonight. Our first zucchini and yellow squash are in this box, too. I'm guessing there will be a lot of that in the weeks to come. There's a massive bunch of parsley, too. I always have a use for parsley here and there. I'm glad to have it on hand.

Dinosaur Food

One of the coolest things about cooking the CSA share each week is that some of the vegetables are new, even to me. Unfortunately, I had lopped off the leaves of these kohlrabis before I snapped a photo. When I first removed them from the box, they looked like a prehistoric plant. An outsized radish, if you will, that, leaves and all, took up an enormous amount of space in my fridge. I had heard of kohlrabi, but if I'd ever seen one, I had probably dismissed it on looks alone.

Some reading taught me that "kohlrabi" is German for "cabbage turnip". Fitting. It tastes like a cabbage, looks like a turnip. To prepare it, I peeled it. The top half peeled rather easily, the bottom half (the root end) was rather tough and fibrous. The leaves, also edible, are suitable for sauteeing like any other type of green. I tasted a bit of raw kohlrabi. One possible preparation method is to shred it up and make a coleslaw type salad with it. It does taste quite like cabbage; some other time I might try that.

So after peeling, I diced up the insides, tossed the pieces with olive oil, salt and some whole garlic cloves and roasted it in the oven at 450 degrees for about 30 minutes, tossing them every now and then. It was easy until my oven broke. It's not a total disaster, I have a double oven: small one on top, large one on the bottom. I think one of the elements in the top oven just gave out, but that was the oven I was using. Of course I didn't realize it until the rest of the meal (grilled chicken breast in a marinade of garlic and Italian seasonings, buttered egg noodles with fresh parsley, and a few plain steamed sugar snap peas also from the farm) was nearly done. The kohlrabi just wasn't ready at dinner time, which kind of skewed the taste test results. Everyone was looking for a little dessert at just the time I was putting the roasted kohlrabi on their plates. Daniel said it tasted like cauliflower stems. I agree. Conrad ate quite a bit and said he enjoyed it. Zachary said he did not like it, but he ate his whole portion. Not a failure, but not a raging success, either.

Revolt

This morning my previously supportive husband suggested that we find someone to buy out half our CSA share for a quarter of what we paid so nothing would "go to waste". I tried to explain that nothing was really being wasted, that only a couple of things ended in the compost heap because I had been working and lacked the time to cook enough to use it all, and that now that school is out, I'll be much better at planning meals. But the reality is, how do we split a share fairly? Most veggies come in a single family size quantity. To split each item in half (1/2 a turnip for you; 1/2 a turnip for me) would leave two families with not enough to eat, but to divvy the vegetables by item (You get the rutabagas; I'll take the sugar snap peas)would certainly leave someone dissatisfied. My response was, " Absolutely not."

The revolt continued this evening when Rich came home from work and found out about the Swiss chard au gratin baking in the oven. "Are greens the only thing this guy grows? Why aren't there any tomatoes or cucumbers?" I tried to explain Connecticut's climate and the growing needs of those hot weather fruits, but again he demanded, "Why are there only greens to eat? I didn't sign up for greens!"

After a vodka tonic, he calmed down enough to try the au gratin.

Preparing the gratin wasn't difficult: I took a large bunch of rainbow Swiss chard (beautiful stuff!), chopped the stems separately from the leaves and sauteed it, stems first, with butter and a chopped onion. After the stems and onions were done, I added the chopped leaves to the skillet until they wilted. Meanwhile, in another pan, I melted butter and added a minced garlic clove, a cup of bread crumbs and some chopped fresh parsley. Setting that aside, I put the finished chard into a casserole dish. In the chard skillet, I started a typical white sauce: one tablespoon of butter, one tablespoon of flour, and 1 cup of milk whisked together over medium heat. I dumped that into the casserole with the chard, mixed in a cup of grated cheddar cheese, and topped it all with breadcrumbs. It baked in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, and it rested for about 10 minutes before serving.

All my guys, including my husband, looked askance at the stuff when it was served. Not a very pretty dish, but almost everyone liked it. Rich went up for seconds. Conrad discovered that it made his plain white rice more palatable. Daniel complained for a brief moment about the onions, but polished it all off. Only Zachary, age 6, wouldn't eat it. He kept calling it the "egg rotten" and preferred to have no dessert than to force it down.

There were no leftovers, and the revolt seems to have died down for now. We'll see how kohlrabi goes over tomorrow.

Getting Up-to-Date

Due to the end of work, as I mentioned before, I didn't spend a lot of time on my CSA share, neither planning and cooking, nor writing about it, so I do feel a need to share a few successes and failures before I plow ahead.

Week 2, I received a lovely head of "Chinese cabbage", according to Farmer Paul. Stop and Shop had the same sort of cabbage labeled "Napa cabbage". I know I've heard of Napa cabbage, but I'm not sure if I had ever tried it. One of the great things about the CSA is expanding my diet to include all sorts of things. I shredded the whole cabbage into a slaw, adding peanuts, Chinese noodles and sesame seeds and I tossed it with a dressing of soy sauce, sesame oil, and honey. It went over extremely well at Daniel's family birthday celebration. After my grandmother, parents, aunt and uncle went at it, I had an empty bowl to put away. Daniel and Zachary didn't want to try it; they were eating store-bought broccoli. Conrad enjoyed the slaw, though.

Another huge success was grilled baby bok choy. Farmer Paul stated that it was one of those serendipitous successes, as the shareholders love baby bok choy, and the farm was good at growing it. Count me among the bok choy lovers! I had some trepidation: there was a ton of it in the box. But I sliced each one in half (they ranged in size from 5 to 8 inches long, and 1-3 inches in diameter). After brushing each with ponzu sauce and sesame oil, I grilled them on medium just until they had some nice lines on them. They continued to cook and wilt a bit on the serving plate. I sprinkled a few sesame seeds on them just before serving. Daniel said they were too tangy, but the rest thought they were great! So for Daniel, I'll skip Ponzu, I guess.

The Beginnings

My first CSA pick-up was on June 10. I was still working at that point (I am an elementary school teacher), so I didn't have a lot of free time for planning and cooking extravagant meals. The end of the school year is a hasty, paper-work filled pursuit and count-down to field day. I'm usually lucky to get a box of mac n cheese to the table.

However, I had a wax-coated box full of veggies: mesclun salad greens, radishes, a quart of strawberries, a large bag of spinach, some broccoli raab...there was probably more, but I wasn't focusing on the what as much as the how.

The strawberries were gone in minutes. The mesclun salad was devoured quickly, too, as we are all good salad eaters. I sliced up a radish into my husband's and my salads each night. Rich pointed out right away, that he wasn't a fan of turnips. I replied, as patiently as I could, that these were not turnips, but radishes, and how in the hell could he know he wasn't a fan if he didn't know their name? He ate them.

Spinach was also an easy sell. My boys (both adult and child) were already used to me sneaking spinach into all sorts of meals. We had spinach on my homemade pizza, spinach layered into a lasagna, and, for Rich and me, a nice bed of spinach sauteed in garlic under our sesame-crusted salmon.

Broccoli raab, though, is another matter. My husband was quite clear some years ago on the subject of broccoli raab. "Too bitter. Vile. Why do people eat this stuff?" I wasn't about to let it go to waste after spending so much money. So I blanched it, chopped it, and made a nice pot of Italian sausages, onions, peppers and broccoli raab in the hopes that no one would notice the green stuff. Between all the savory flavors of sausage and onions and all, plus the big crusty rolls and melted mozzarella cheese, the broccoli raab went entirely unnoticed.

The second box also contained a fair number of greens, not a usual part of our diet, and therefore, not a usual part of my cooking plans. I struggled and (gasp!) had to compost some things that I could not use in time. But school ended last week, and I have gotten better at planning some meals around the veggies in the box.

The Background

A couple of summers back, I fell in love with a farmer. That's partially true. Paul was cute, if a bit shorter than I prefer. He had some cool glasses and he knew how to talk compost, aphids, blossom end rot and powdery mildew. He was enthusiastic about the idea of running his farm equipment on biodiesel made in my husband's kits. He met me without fail each week at the organic farmer's market in Sandy Hook Center. But what really made me fall for him were his tomatoes. Green zebras, Cherokee purples, the classic brandywines...I got to the point where I couldn't separate the man from the organic produce. It was true love.

And then my heart was broken.

Paul's farm venture was rather new. He was working farmers' markets to peddle his produce while working up to his real dream: Community Supported Agriculture. After two years of rendezvous in the Hook, he disappeared from my life. He had handed out CSA applications during his last October at the markets, but we were on hard times. There was no way I could afford to pre-pay for a season's worth of vegetables. I felt abandoned, and had to suffer for a year trying to get my sad, shady plot of earth to produce a few Cherokee purples as consolation.

As my family's finances slowly recovered, I decided it was time to join Farmer Paul's CSA. I went to forthillfarm.com and filled out the application, only to be placed on the waiting list. For two years. This winter, I got a letter, completely by surprise in the mail. I was in, as long as I coughed up 600+ dollars for the vegetables by June 1st. Expensive, yes, but there was no way I was going to the end of the list again while waiting to become rich folks.

So the following posts will be my adventures preparing meals for my husband (who, before marrying me, considered the pickle on his burger to be a suitable daily allowance of vegetables), my three sons (who, while far better veggie-eaters than most American children, still draw the line at anything that isn't broccoli, carrots, green beans or salad) and myself (who will eat anything but canned tuna fish). Wish me luck!