Simpaug Farms CSA: Week One

Three-quarters of today’s haul. 

It’s my favorite day of the summer: open season at our CSA! Earlier this morning I collected the contents of our crate – three cloth sacks full of gorgeous greens, with dirt still on the radishes – and then spent the afternoon cleaning and trimming and drying and storing all of it. Because I’m a crazy person, and that’s what the first day of the season is all about.

My plan is to catalog what we receive each week, and to note our plans for cooking, eating, and preserving it. So, let’s get started.

What’s In This Week’s Share: Week One

Vegetables

• Broccoli – 16 ounces
  Storage Instructions: Mist the unwashed heads, wrap loosely in paper towels, and refrigerate. Use within 2 to 3 days.
• Snap Peas – 16 ounces
  Store in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. Use within 5 days.
• Spicy mixed salad greens – 8 ounces
  Store loosely in a plastic bag in the fridge; use within 5 days
• Rainbow Chard – 8 ounces
  Store in an air-tight plastic bag with as much air removed as possible, for up to five days
• Red Leaf Lettuce – 10 ounces
  Line a food storage container with paper towels; separate the leaves and place them in the container, wrap loosely with paper towels, and place in the crisper drawer – check daily to discard any spoiled leaves; will keep for a week
• Squash – 32 ounces
  Refrigerate in a perforated plastic bag for up to a week
• Pointed cabbage – 24 ounces
  Store in the crisper drawer for up to a week
• Kale – 10 ounces
  Wrap in paper towels, store in a zip-top bag in the refrigerator
• Fennel – one 3.5-oz bulb
  Store in a plastic bag in the fridge for up to 10 days
• French Radishes – 7 ounces
  Top and Tail the radishes, place them in a mason jar of cold water, and store them in the fridge. Change the water daily.
• Scallions – 5.5 ounces
  Store in a quart-sized mason jar with the white bottoms submerged. Change the water daily, and they will continue to grow.
• Garlic Scapes – 10
  I store them loose in the crisper drawer and trim the cut ends weekly; they keep for months

Other

• Eggs – one dozen

What To Make With This Week’s Share

I’ve ordered the list of produce in order of perishability, so that governs how we’ll consume it.

Frozen Stir Fry Mix
This is a super-busy week for Clay, and my parents are in town for the week to work on a big house project. We won’t have a lot of time for big cooking projects, so I’m taking a short-cut and creating two family-sized packages of stir fry vegetables to freeze for easy weeknight dinners for July. They will include:

• Broccoli
• Snap Peas
• Onions and Carrots from the pantry

When it’s time to make the stir-fry, we’ll add in a fresh bell pepper and all of our seasonings, and serve it over rice or noodles.

Chopped and ready for a Mandarin Chicken stir-fry

Salad
I bought a bag of the farm’s spicy mixed greens last week, and we made a splendid salad. We’ll repeat that pattern this week, with the

• Spicy Mix
• French Radishes (roasted with carrots then sliced into coins)
• Yellow Squash (peeled into slender ribbons)
• Green Pepper and Grape Tomatoes from the market

We’ll mix the fresh veggies with a big batch of creamy Green Goddess dressing made with our homemade yogurt, fresh lemon, and the GG salad mix from Penzey’s. It should yield four servings as a meal or eight as a side.

Radishes in a jar if fresh, cold water.

Pork Tenderloin with Braised Chard and Roasted Fennel
When I think about pork sausage I smell fennel and rich earthy greens, so we’ll create a whole meal around those flavors. We’ll use:

• A pork tenderloin from the freezer
• Rainbow Chard
• Scallions
• Fennel
• Garlic Scapes

I’ll chop up one of the scapes and stuff it into deep slashes in the pork, to impart a lovely garlicky flavor during the roasting process. We’ll quarter the fennel bulb and roast it in the same pan with the pork, and braise the chard with a few of the scallions and another of the garlic scapes.

Fennel Bulbs remind me of woven carpets.

Vegetable Lasagna
I made a fabulous vegetable lasagna for Easter that I’d like to reprise – one-third of a box of lasagna noodles in a loaf pan makes a solid meal for four with leftovers. We’ll use:

• Kale, chopped very finely
• Scallions, chopped
• One Garlic Scape, puréed
• Two Zucchini, sliced into very thin coins
• Shredded Chicken, Basil Pesto, Tomato Sauce, and a variety of cheeses from our freezer/fridge/pantry.

Coleslaw
Clay’s favorite summer condiment is coleslaw, so he’ll use ingredients from our pantry and a couple of carrots to turn the Pointed Cabbage into his favorite treat. (Then he’ll probably make pulled pork to go along with it.)

Breakfast BLTs
To power us all through a week of construction work at the house, I’m counting on bottomless pots of coffee and tea, and a hearty breakfast to start each day. We’ll make bacon and egg sandwiches on fresh bread, spread with a tomato pesto and topped with the red leaf lettuce for crunch.

And that should take us through the week. Stay tuned for how it goes!