representing Denison Farms!

'ello guvna

I've been enjoying my farm share for a few weeks now, it's such fun each Wednesday pickup day to see what's in the box! I do so love surprises.

Granted, the e-newsletter already told me each night prior, but it's still exciting.

Between kale, baby lettuces, spinach, zucchini, cucumbers, bok choi, strawberries, turnips, beets, swiss chard, sugar snap peas and some other treats, I'm enjoying a wonderful variety of lovely, locally grown treats.

Small aside - I *am* feeling almost overloaded each week - anyone else having trouble with the volume? I split my share with two other ladies, too! I also don't eat at home very much, so I need to work on that.

This week we got a tidy little box of spinach, cukes, zukes, yellow squash, turnips, sugar snap peas, broccoli and cherries.

I received turnips about 2 weeks ago as well and let them fall to the wayside until the following weekend, when I went to my parents' and decided to look up a "turnip salad" recipe to make on the fly.

I had read about turnip salad right when they arrived, it was described as being similar to coleslaw.

I also read that the fresher the turnip, the better - in this instance at least - because they tend to lose their sweetness as time goes by.

I may have missed the boat on optimal sweetness, and coupled with the fact that I had no apples to shred (just applesauce! it was an ehh substitute), the turnip salad was interesting, to say the least.

The end result was shredded 'nips, apple(sauce), olive oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper.

It totally had a horseradish zing to it - good call, Nick!

My mom enjoyed it, I was on the fence.

I'll definitely try it again, and follow the recipe properly instead of somewhat jerry-rigging it, and hopefully I will find a new fave slaw!

I had fun with kale in week one, having never gone out of my way to try it before.

It's a crunchy, firm leafy green from the cabbage family that contains more good stuff than most of its counterparts - it's got major antioxidant properties and is supposed to be anti-inflammatory, as well as being very high in beta carotene, vitamin K, vitamin C, lutein and calcium. Dreamy!

I simply sauteed it in olive oil with some freshly ground salt and pepper, and I loved it! (Dave was kind enough to nibble, but it's not his bag)

It maintained its crunch and sort of "held" some of the oil, and I found myself hooked. Not hooked enough to go procure myself some more, but I still think about it fondly...

There are plenty of other ways to enjoy kale, and I almost think I made it "wrong" in that a lot of people boil it first, but I'm too lazy and impatient for that.

To continue jumping through the veggies, I had bok choi a few weeks back but left the gd farm share at work over the weekend (in the fridge of course). As a result it was sadly wilty come Monday.

Not wanting to waste, I washed it regardless, cut it up, and threw it in my soup for lunch! And it was great! More bok choi, please!

Alright, that's it for now. Apologies for my low-rent approach to such beautiful food, but I'm not really a cook :(

I like quick, cheap and easy! So attempting to step outside of that via the farm share, as well as work within it, is a fun little experience!

Thanks and toodles

Turnips done right!

So this week I have to say the pull from the CSA was a bit boring. We got a bag of turnips, frisee, garlic scapes, kohlrabi, lettuce, mustard greens, radishes, and scallions....Tom/Allison (Tallison) and us decided to split the vegetables up in complete bunches instead of halving everything...we got the turnips, they got the kohlrabi, we go mustard greens, they got lettuce, etc. I was sad to see the kohlrabi go since it is a new favorite, but Tallison is not to be trifled with. Also, on a side note, The Alleged Farm newsletter was really bizzare this week and basically is 4 paragraphs of the guy complaining about plastic being wasted in those little pieces that go under a dress color when you buy it in the store so they look more attractive on the clothes rack. Great.

So today I decided to tackle the turnips; Paul was working until 7 and that means dinner is whatever I make! So turnips...what the hell do you do with a turnip? What is a turnip? It's a root that is related to radish and cabbage...or something. I dunno, look it up on wikipedia. I tried a piece of one raw and while tasty enough I was looking for something a bit more daring. I popped open "How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian" and it suggested "Brazing and Glazing" turnips (or any root vegetable for that matter). Basically this involves chopping the turnips into chunks after peeling them and then putting them into a pan with some butter, white cooking wine, salt and pepper...let it boil then simmer for about 15 minutes covered...then uncover and turn up the heat and let all the liquids boil off. You end up with delicious tasting turnips. They naturally have a mild "horse radish" taste mixed with a bit of fat and salt it works out very very well! Mixed it all with brown rice and it made a great side, I'll definitely make this again!

I decided to use the mustard greens in a salad but I didn't try them first so wasn't really thinking as I grabbed a handful and mixed it with some arugula from our garden. Surprisingly mustard greens taste a lot like mustard! So the two flavors clashed a bit and made for a mouthful of some very strong tasting lettuce...never again will I say that salad is bland/boring! Luckily we had some romaine Dole pre washed mixed whatever in the refrigerator so I mixed that in and that balanced it out. Made for a decent salad although in the future I would throw in the mustard greens or the arugula, not both.

So we were able to use quite a bit but still have a few random things left...I guess if we can't think of anything interesting to make tomorrow I'll just cut up whats left and throw it into a stirfry (where random vegetables go to die... deliciously).

A Cabbage Called Kohlrabi

So tonight I have decided to take on my first post. Yes, you heard me correct, I am a...blog virgin. After catching up on the season premiere of Top Chef on the trusty DVR, I was inspired to take the proverbial bull by the horns (kohlrabi by the roots?) and work up a kick ass dinner with our first CSA food share from The Alleged Farms (www.theallegedfarm.com/csashare.html). I have known a few people who have taken part in food shares in the past, and they always mentioned that they did not use the veggies in time before they went bad. That will not be us!


I started out with a basic salad using the leftover lettuce from the salad that Nick made (see blog post 1). I really wanted to work with the kohlrabi because a) I had never heard of it before and b)anyone who has tried it has raved about it. Washed, peeled and sliced, I added it to the lettuce along with walnuts, quartered fresh strawberries from Bowman Orchards (www.bowmanorchards.com) and sliced apples and topped it off with some poppyseed dressing. Yum.




For the main course, we made wheat pasta (nothing special) and used the basil, arugula, parsley and the garlic scapes (the curlicue part of garlic that is tough, but delicious and has a more mild garlic taste) and put it through the food processor with some olive oil, crushed red pepper, lemon juice and parmesan cheese and voila! Pesto...of sorts. Now I can't take credit for this concoction - the good thing about The Alleged Farms food share is that you get a newsletter with every shipment and it includes some basic recipes and ideas for what to do with the stuff they are giving you. Their website is also really good for recipes, but we haven't ventured that far yet. We tossed our pesto with the pasta and it was delicious.

The only bad side was we couldn't finish our bowl of pasta because Nick and I were both too full from the awesomeness that was our pre-pasta salad. Leftovers it will be, and I bet it would even be really yummy cold. I was pretty impressed with myself - the only thing we have left is about 1/2 of the kohlrabi (which I julienned and put in the fridge for tomorrow's meal), the beet greens and the scallons. If all goes well, I'm going to make an apple kohlrabi slaw with sauteed chicken with scallions and beet greens and we will be done with all of our veggies by this time tomorrow. No waste this week for our hungry compost bin...

First bag of goodies

We (that being Paul, Tom, Mollie, and I) decided to create a multi user blog to share our experience with buying a share in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. What is a CSA? Basically you pre pay for veggies from a local farm and get a bag of whatever is in season once a week for about 5 months. We thought it would be a great way to support local farms, get some organic veggies, and learn to prepare vegetables we have never seen or heard of before.

So this is my first post and my first time blogging in about 6 years so I'm a little rusty!

Paul and I split a share with Tom and Allison and got our first batch of vegetables today. We got arugula, basil, beet greens (swiss chard sorta), bok choi, garlic scapes, kohlrabi, lettuce and parsley in our bag and hastily split it up 50/50. No knife was handy so Tom and I quickly negotiated...he and Allison would retain custody of the bok choi and Paul and I would be the proud owners of a crazy purple alien looking vegetable known as kohlrabi.

Got home and did the most logical thing...made a hasty salad! Took the lettuce (not iceberg...not sure what it is exactly but very nice subtle taste and texture) and mixed it with a bit of arugula. The arugula was the strongest tasting arugula I've ever tasted...alone it was almost to strong to eat. Ripped it up and mixed it with its less strong tasting cousin and washed it all up. It tasted great, we were very pleased!

By far the most interesting veggie is the kohlrabi we got. Neither of us have ever had it before and haven't a clue what to do with it. I'll post a picture once I figure that out...either way I threw the picture up on Facebook and I think it generated more replies then anything I've ever posted before. So I'll be sure to do a bit of research and make something interesting with it....