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.

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!)

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!