July 18 2010
2:04 pm
Cooking
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Week 4

It’s been a month of awesome fresh, local food! This has affected the quantity of vegetables we eat and the type of food we make. We’ve been pretty open about trying new recipes, asking friends or just googling, and they’ve all turned out amazing! It has taken a lot of commitment to cook (almost) every night and try to use the fresh ingredients. Especially because we know we’re getting new ones on Saturday.

For the most part it’s worked out, although we cheated a little bit this week with the green beans. I’m not a huge fan of them, we cooked them on two different days (still leftover from week 3), and gave the week four one’s to one of our friends.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself…

Week 4 share:
* 4 ears of corn
* 2 zucchinis
* 2 yellow squash
* 2 beets
* radishes
* green beans




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June 20 2010
11:31 am
Cooking, Uncategorized
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Argentina’s gifts: chimichurri and soccer

I definitely have World Cup fever! Argentina’s doing awesome, in spite of our hilarious coach… and the US is still hanging on!

But back to what I should be blogging about: food. Cooking with fresh ingredients, especially things we’ve never bought raw, is a bit of a challenge. We’ve been doing pretty well, though.

Ingredients used: Garlic shoot, beets, beet leaves, lettuce and strawberries.

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June 16 2010
9:16 pm
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5.5 miles

We have decided to embrace the “buy local” movement, just a tiny bit, and bought half a “share” of the Hindinger Farm Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). This farm is only 5.5 miles away from our apartment!

Basically, Ryan and I (and two of our friends–each share technically feeds a family of four) stop by the farm once a week and pick up a basket of fresh fruits and vegetables. These will obviously vary by the season/month, but have been picked fresh within a few days and are harvested using “Integrated Pest Management”. So, it’s not organic–it does use pesticides, but is more common sense and is better for the environment.

The EPA says:

    Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an effective and environmentally sensitive approach to pest management that relies on a combination of common-sense practices. (They) use current, comprehensive information on the life cycles of pests and their interaction with the environment. This … is used to manage pest damage by the most economical means, and with the least possible hazard to people, property, and the environment.

Anyway, so we’ve signed up, and I picked up our first share today!

Contents:

Note: remember to write down what they say they’re giving you… especially if you’re a novice like us! We are still trying to figure out what one of the vegetables are… and we learned through cooking the peas, that they were in fact peas and not snap peas. Luckily both go well in stir fry!
<–The whole share and our portion –>

  • * Strawberries (They have the Strawberry Festival this weekend, you can get some too!)
  • * Peas
  • * Green leaf lettuce
  • * Beets
  • * Unknown green veggie (tastes a little spicy) Edit: it may just be garlic whistle!

Storage:

I’m still learning about this, but apparently you can cut off the leafy part of the beets and use them like chard. Then you can put the root part into a plastic bag and it can store for weeks. Also, if you bake it in foil (for 45 minutes to 1.5 hours) it will stay in the fridge for 3-4 days.

Meal ideas:

  1. 1. Stir fry: rice, chili seed, ginger. Pork loin cut into thin strips, carrots, peas/snap peas, soy sauce, honey. Egg. Tried it today, and it was delicious. Thanks to Chef Ryan!
  2. 2. Beet Rosti with Rosemary. We’ll probably use the recipe from Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything”, but here’s on from the NY Times. Basically it looks like you just grate the beets, add rosemary, and then put in a pan with butter.
  3. 3. Strawberries au natural. These were so yummy we ate half right off the box.
  4. 4. Pea soup.
  5. 5. Spicy tuna with garlic whistle sandwich. We found this recipe, but basically I think it will add some yummy flavor to any sandwich.

Beautiful presentation, with some sake!

Up close, looks delicious…

Once we realized they were peas and not snap peas… 

Yummy strawberries for dessert