YIKES! Greens, greens, and yet more greens

I love this time of year, but some weeks it feels a little overwhelming as our Community Supported Agriculture share from JenEhr Family Farm is bursting with fresh summer goodies. Our refrigerator was packed full of veggies today before I picked up a very full cooler more. So, after working all day at Sub-Zero and then all night at Delaney's I came home and used the new electric pressure cooker--a godsend--to make up some spicy pork and greens with Cottage Bacon from Willow Creek Farm and beet greens and swiss chard. I sauteed some onions with the smoky bacon in a little canola oil, then added some white wine, Frank's hot sauce, water, salt and the greens until it filled the pressure cooker. I cooked them down on warm until they were safely below the Fill line then steamed them for 5 minutes, tasted them, added more hot sauce, stirred and steamed for 5 more minutes. Voila, fini.

Next I sliced up several huge scallions and froze them because they're coming out our ears. Over the winter I'll add them to stir fry, soups, stews etc.

Then I steamed sugar snap peas, the last asparagus of the season and the first broccoli.

I've still got a huge bunch of carrots, a gigantic napa cabbage, the first yellow beans of the season and some kohlrabi and radishes to deal with, but I think I can now fit the rest into the fridge.

Tomorrow I'll make pesto with sorrel, mizuna and basil along with about a dozen scapes still waiting to be used. I'll freeze the pesto for use on pizzas in salads or on pasta over the winter.

I wish there was a way to save all the awesome salad greens for the sparse time during January and February, but since there isn't we'll just have to eat a few more salads this week or make some wraps with shrimp, rice and chilis. Yum!

What I love best about the CSA is I never know what's coming until we get it each week and then I get to be creative about what to use now, what to save for later and how to use the things I've never seen before.

A rarity for Wisconsin, the tomatoes are starting to ripen, so we'll be having lots of tomato salads with balsamic vinegar, mozzarella and basil, or with quinoa, cucumbers, parsley, cilantro and feta, or Margherita pizzas for dinner with fresh green salad. I can't wait to make salsa. We ran out way too early last winter because of the poor year for tomatoes so this year I'll be making loads and enjoying every sweaty minute while they process knowing we'll enjoy the heat of local salsa in the cold months of winter.

Besides, when I'm done processing I can go jump in the neighbors pool to cool off :)

Food, Wonderful Food!

Today is CSA day. I often want to take photos of the wonderful boxes of food that we receive each week, but that would become redundant at some point. What never gets old though, is photos of the people, vegetables and animals that make our CSA boxes complete. Cheers to those who help make our lives healthier, happier, and much more interesting! Today I took just a couple of photos at Jen Ehr Farm when I picked up our CSA box. You see, I didn't take nearly enough photos of the staff on the farm this year, and I sense several of them are about to move on to school or other endeavors, so I thank you all for sloshing through the mud, sweating through the heat and sun, and ensuring that each and every week the CSA customers have a beautiful, healthful share to enjoy. I know that this time on the farm will last in your memories forever. I hope that it has permanently changed the way you look at and eat food. I hope that some of you will choose the difficult path that Kay and Paul have chosen, which so enriches our lives that it is worth all the heartache, sleepless nights and financial worries that come with the territory. If you take nothing more with you, please go forward with the knowledge that you have contributed to a healthy, sustainable way of eating, and we are all better off because of your efforts. Bountiful Eating!

BLOG Day 1-Welcome! CSA Day

Thursday is CSA pick-up day, which is my favorite day of the week during CSA season. Tim and I share a CSA from JenEhr Family Farm with our friend, Robert von Rutenberg. This has been a particularly difficult year for many farmers. The drought and subsequent floods of 2007 were followed by a winter of record snowfall, a slow, cool spring, and now rain, rain and more rain. It makes me wonder why anyone would choose a way of life that is so dependent upon the weather. I'm extremely thankful that they do, though, because it allows us to continue on our quest to be dedicated locavores. I think for the farmers who do have CSAs, the CSA customers are critical during the lean years. If those same farmers chose only to sell at market or wholesale they would be in much worse shape financially. With the CSA at least they share the financial burden with the CSA members. Each week we receive a CSA e-newsletter reminding us to pick up our share and telling us what is in our box this week. The newsletter also has information about the farm, and recipes so we know what to do with some of the food we find in the box that we've never seen before. As I continue to build the website I'll be adding my own recipes that I've developed while playing with my CSA food. Some of what comes in our box I know wasn't on our dinner table while growing up. I've come to realize that my mother must have had an aversion to root vegetables, because I don't remember eating much in the way of beets (except pickled), turnips, parsnips, rutabaga, and many of the other wonderful things that give me such joy each week. I never look at the newsletter ahead of time to see what's in the box--that way it's like opening presents when I get to the farm and start transferring my box to my cooler. I love everything about the CSA, from farmers Kay and Paul, to pickup at the farm, to knowing exactly where my food came from and how it was grown, and best of all preparing and enjoying every last fresh, healthy, untainted, organic bite!