Despite last year’s CSA anxiety, I ordered up another share in Enterprise Farm and have been inundated with local, seasonal vegetables this farm. (This means that I have share in the farm, and once a week they send me a box of produce once a week). In a moment of what may be misguided ambition, I’m also subscribed for a winter share this year, which means my newfound veggie-using tricks will be made useful until Memorial Day.
When you have a farmshare:
- You rush home after work to spend an hour in the kitchen washing greens, sorting potatoes, and making soup. Soup becomes a theme in your life.
You sneak tomatillos into hashbrowns, swiss chard into guacamole, cabbage into smoothies, and turnips into pumpkin soup.- You immediately move 3/4 of the bunch of parsley into the “frozen veggie scraps bag”.
- You have a frozen veggie scraps bag. Perhaps your boyfriend threatens never to come over again because he thinks the bag is gross.
- You make your own vegetable stock. Bonus: this warms up the apartment without having to turn on the heat.
- You wonder if it was wise to have invested in a dozen mason jars, and immediately realize it wasn’t enough.
- Similarly, you realize your investment in a salad spinner was very, very wise.
- You beg people to take your bok choy, because you can’t figure out how to prepare it after multiple tries and in your head you call it “mock choy” because it mocks you.
- You wonder if giving people soup for Christmas is tacky.
- You really wish you hadn’t grown your own kale this summer, because now you have twice as much.
….or maybe that’s just me.
Favorite seasonal vegetable recipes? Anybody want any soup?
Please send ALL your parsley my way. Six guinea pigs can decimate a bunch in under twenty minutes.
We’re spoiled out here — we still have fresh-picked strawberries at our farmstands. Basil is still happily growing in the front yard.
Squash, potatoes, and nightshades would take kindly to being roasted.
Yums on the basil. Mine has all given up the ghost, though the rosemary is still kicking. I’ve been roasting sweet potatoes the last few days, but i still have a lot to get to! I made my mom promise not to buy any for thanksgiving.
Sweet potatoes are versitile awesomeness — you can even bake with those. I’m not a “soup” person, but I did see a ridiculously simple sweet potato ginger soup that I’m thinking of modifying by substituting the water for lemon ginger tea and the trace amount of sugar with honey. The original recipe calls for 1/4 cup of fresh ginger, which seems like a lot. I’ll have to tweak it a bit I’m sure, but I’m thinking that would be the only thing I’ll want to eat next time I have a cold (all that yummy antioxidant goodness wrapped in cozy comfort food). And you know, canning your own soup might be tacky for Christmas, but keeping a “get well soon” reserve would not be.
And oven fries are a yummy crowd pleasing incarnation of sweet potatoes, surely. And I hold nothing sacred for what “goes” with what meal — I’d be just as happy to eat those with breakfast as any other meal (I substitute french fries for hash browns when I build my own Grand Slam at Denny’s). Because why shouldn’t a breakfast sandwich come with fries? 😉
YES !!! Acorn squash in particular… cut in 2, scoop guts out, roast till tender, pour into each half a mixture of honey, brown sugar, butter, and microwave the halfs a couple of minutes to heat up the mixture. A side dish or main dish that tastes like a dessert. Recipe with proportions and details is on the web somewhere !
I do not have any experience with this particular sort of vegetable distraction. But anyone who gardens (I do) knows that things sometime ripen in large waves. One obvious answer is to share with others. They may be attracted in by the kitchen aromas. It may take some adjustment to get the correct flow through for you. It can also be a problem when when part/all of the eating group goes on vacation. But you have Italian genes, right. We were probably never meant to eat alone.
I’m doing my best to share! The week I accidentally got a whole box of kale I put it in vases around the faculty room.
Oh goodness this is funny, and so very true!
I am held hostage by the tyranny of vegetables!
I have a half share, summer only, in upstate NY. My fiance is vegetarian, I am now about 70% vegetarian. You are totally right-on and hilarious ! Getting overloads of kale, kolrhabi, turnips, beets, bags and bags of potatos in colors you couldnt imagine, carrot huge and tiny. Currently, I make my stock out of the veggie peelings, and then compost what remains of the boiled stuff, but I just might switch back to making veggie stock out of the main leftover veggies. Anyone want stock! In all colors? The veggie stock using a lot or red cabbage is too beautiful to use !
I found a way to use two turnips yesterday and was so proud of myself! I’m glad I use the scraps in stock, but wish I could compost as well. It’s tough to do that in the city, though Boston has been innovative in making it more practical.
Yeah, composting IS kinda gross and stinky… I do it outside. My fiance does it in her basement with little wriggly red worms employed. Very nice results after a while though.
Yes, worm bins are actually really easy, you can find plans for them various places, though sone of the gardening sites or Instructables.com might be a place to start. You can make them in little plastic storage containers and just keep it under the sink.