Quick, let’s get this two-week-CSA update out… only just ahead of tomorrow’s pickup.

There’s been a lot going on in this kitchen; we’ve been canning, pickling, and generally inhaling massive amounts of summer produce. I have learned that peeling peaches is actually quite easy, even if you don’t use the scoring-and-blanching method. (The kid loves peach, but refuses peach skins.) I have also chunked up what feels like a record number of watermelons. Two-year-olds inhale watermelons. Good for hydration, right?

Anyway, last week on the CSA: corn, chard, cucumber, cantaloupe, white potatoes, peaches, green peppers, zucchini (I think I could have picked yellow squash, but I like zucchini much better), tomatoes, eggs, and bread (Great Harvest challah).

The chard got creamed with some spring onions from the farmer’s market. Cucumber got refrigerator-pickled, along with last week’s cucumber. Zucchini was simply sliced, seasoned, and roasted; peppers joined tomatoes, last week’s eggplant, and some salsa for a tasty chicken dish. Corn is, weirdly, still intact in the fridge. I’ll probably boil it up and snack on it tonight, before tomorrow’s pickup.

And the week before that: zucchini, nectarines, eggs, cantaloupe, onions, eggplant, tomatoes, corn, green beans, bread (Breadery Grains Galore), and a bonus item; I picked Breezy Willow’s barbecue sauce. (Verdict: sweet and fruity.)

Nectarines, cantaloupe, and tomatoes were eaten immediately; green beans were blanched, seasoned, and served up in lunches; corn was boiled and eaten up. Zucchini was sliced, seasoned, and simply roasted in the toaster oven. I don’t remember what specifically happened to the onions, but we use onions up all the time; they probably got diced into something and sauteed.

I like to keep summer cooking quick and easy. With the warm weather outside, who wants to be standing next to a hot stove or oven? (Except when you’re canning. More on canning later. I keep saying that, but someday I’ll actually find the time to write that post too.)

Last week (week 7) in the CSA: zucchini, cucumber, peaches, corn, plums, garlic, blueberries, potatoes, eggs, and bread (Breadery Grains Galore). There should have been kohlrabi as well, but I swapped for more potatoes.

Fast forward a week and the zucchini and cucumber are still uneaten. I boiled the corn the very first night (fresh corn is the best; it dries out if you leave it in the fridge for too long) and it was fantastic. (Well, except for the one ear I got which hadn’t quite developed all of its kernels. Them’s the risks.) Peaches, plums, and blueberries disappeared in fairly short order as well. We boiled up the potatoes with some onion and Old Bay, to go with steamed crabs this weekend.

I’m reading over the previous CSA post and… I think the kale is still in the fridge too, actually. It’s probably still fine; kale is a hardy vegetable and I washed the leaves and packed them in paper towels, which is a great way to keep leafy greens for longer. Still, need to get to that.

Also, I didn’t get to do anything cool with the eggplant, because K decided to cut it into strips, batter it, and fry it. (He also battered and fried five cut-up tilapia fillets, an entire sliced jalapeno, and an entire onion. This is what happens when I leave him alone for an afternoon and tell him to make dinner. At least our kid loved eating the fried fish.)

Back to kale. Kale possibilities are endless. I usually like to saute blanched kale in bacon grease with garlic and onions, or cook it into a soup (ideally with beans and sausage), or bake it into chips. The weather being what it is, though, I think it’s actually an ideal time to enjoy a massaged kale salad. There are even some mangos in the fridge.

Now let’s just hope the kid will eat it. He’s developed a dispiriting habit of refusing food at home, saying, “I already eat that at school” or “I only eat that at school.” Kid, the food you eat at school is the same food I cook at home. [sigh]

I am eating a peach right now and it tastes like heaven. I always resented summer (heat, humidity, chokingly stuffy cars) but now I have a reason to celebrate it: these sweet, ripe, beautiful local peaches.

This is not a freestone peach, so it’s messy; the flesh is sticking to the pit in clumps and strands, and everything is getting stuck in my teeth. Also, my cubemate is doing a valiant job of ignoring the slurps and smacking sounds I’m making as I try not to let a single drop of juice escape to run down my arm. Peaches are not a graceful fruit to eat. But a fresh, summer-ripe peach is totally worth the inevitable assault on your dignity.

Mmm, peaches. I’m going to be haunting the farmer’s market for these.

Right, where was I? This week is week 6 of the Breezy Willow summer CSA. In the pickup:

Zucchini, green beans, blueberries, garlic, peaches(!!!), cucumbers, eggplant, three tiny heads of broccoli, kale, eggs, and bread (Great Harvest challah). I also grabbed another handful of sage and thyme, which are likely destined to accompany chicken in some way. (Hmm, it’s been a while since I made toaster oven chicken.)

I’ll probably steam the broccoli, and blanch the green beans and kale (all using the same pot of water; let’s not waste joules here). I like cooking vegetables and then sticking them in the fridge for later; I find that having cooked vegetables around greatly simplifies activities like packing lunches and assembling quick weeknight dinners. And, in a pinch, you can at least serve them alongside whatever fast food meal you picked up on the way home because you left work late / got stuck leaving daycare / just don’t have time or energy to cook. (No domestic goddess, me.)

The cucumbers will probably get pickled with the cucumbers from last week’s pickup, since I hadn’t gotten around to that. And the peaches and blueberries will take care of themselves.

As for the eggplant, no concrete plans yet. The eggplant possibilities are endless. We might grill it, if we fire up the grill this weekend (and if so that’s likely where the zucchini will get cooked too), or we could roast it for baba ghannouj (in which case the kale will get cooked then as well), or maybe I’ll try one of those crazy recipes from the Ottolenghi cookbook that we got for Christmas. The world is my oyster! Or my eggplant, anyway.

CSA membership doesn’t take any special amount of creativity; it just takes commitment. Cook, preserve, or freeze, it doesn’t matter. Just get the pickup out of the way; next week is coming, ready or not.

Last week on the CSA front: spinach, romaine lettuce, beets, cucumbers, yellow squash, mushrooms, blueberries, eggs, and bread (Great Harvest challah). It was also a “bonus” fourth week, so we got cheese; I picked Muenster (my favorite sandwich cheese). We were supposed to get spring onions as well, but I got to the pickup site late, and they’d run out; I got an extra box of blueberries instead.

See how the blueberry level is lower in one of the boxes? The kid got to them first. I don’t blame him; they were ripe and perfect and very sweet. I may have tasted a couple myself.

I’m pretty proud of how we managed to use up most of the pickup already:

Spinach, mushrooms, some eggs: cooked into (another) frittata
Beet greens: sauteed and mixed into a pasta bake with penne, sausage, cheeses, and tomato sauce
Yellow squash: sliced and grilled
Blueberries: eaten. Really, they’re just gone. I pondered making cobbler, but I turned around and there were only a handful left, so we just ate them all. I don’t think we even got around to washing them.

Still outstanding: beets and cucumbers. I plan to refrigerator-pickle the cucumbers tonight according to my mom’s recipe. The beets were roasted in a foil packet on the grill yesterday, so now they can be peeled, sliced, and served up in basically any way. We picked up some soft sheep’s cheese from the Ellicott City Saturday market that I think would go with them beautifully.

We also took advantage of the beautiful weather this weekend to stop by Larriland farm for some summer berry picking.

The red raspberries were abundant and beautiful. We sent the kid and his grandparents off to the blueberry bushes, where he stuffed himself, while we harvested two generous flats of raspberries. We picked some blueberries, too, but by that point we were starting to get tired and overheated, so there might not be enough for jam; I think I’ll just freeze whatever we don’t eat.

Anyway, I’ve bookmarked a recipe for a simple raspberry jam. I’ll let you know how it goes. I canned my first strawberry jam last week (also from harvested Larriland berries), and it was divine, so I’m pretty excited about canning at the moment. Now we just need space to store all these preserves.

A twofer this week — the last week of the spring CSA (ok, that was almost a month ago, sorry about that), and the first week of the summer CSA! Presented in reverse order.

To start off the summer, this is what we got in our pickup: mushrooms, kale, green leaf lettuce, radishes, beets, apples, asparagus, white potatoes, eggs, and bread (Great Harvest challah).

We ate the lettuce as salad greens pretty much immediately; salad greens are always the first to wilt in the fridge. We had the asparagus already, too, sauteed simply with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic. Almost everything else is still sitting in the fridge, though, because we ate out a lot this past weekend. (And whenever you go to the Stanford Grill, not only are you awesomely fed, but you can make two more meals out of your leftovers. More than that if you’re a kid.)

Nevertheless! The beet and radish greens should still be mostly okay, because the first thing I did when putting away the vegetables was to separate the greens from their root vegetables; otherwise, the beets and radishes will suck the life out of the greens. I’ll check the radish greens out tonight; if they’re still okay, I’m going to make some radish green pesto.

To finish off last spring, this was the farewell basket from Breezy Willow:

Grapefruit, romaine lettuce, beets, potatoes, apples, mushrooms, kale, eggs, bread (Great Harvest sourdough), and a bonus item. I picked the pickle relish (over the apple bbq sauce and the horseradish mustard). Oh, and there was a bunch of asparagus, too, but I forgot it. Alas.

We did manage to make it completely through this pile, but we had two extra weeks in which to do it. Well, except for the pickle relish. Still looking forward to that one. May have to get some burgers on the grill.

(This is actually from last week; yes, I’m a week behind. But I’m making this week’s pickup tonight, so I figured I’d better get this one out before I had to do another two-week catchup post.)

Week 10 was a doozy. It took up most of our kitchen table.

We got kale, two shares of apples, a bunch of rainbow carrots, a head of Romaine lettuce, a bunch of radishes, three Vidalia onions, cucumbers, eggs, and bread (Great Harvest honey wheat).

The honey wheat was perfectly decent. I would ordinarily go for a more adventurous type of bread, but alas, if you get to the pickup site five minutes before closing, your bread choices are pretty picked-over. I don’t blame my fellow Miller Library CSA members — I go for the interesting breads first myself. This week maybe I’ll get there in time to get the Great Harvest parmesan sourdough, if they have it. Oh parmesan sourdough, tangy and chewy and shot through with rich veins of cheesy goodness, how I love you.

I am ashamed to say that most of this pickup is actually still in our fridge; we had a really busy week, full of yardwork and Mother’s Day activities, and so for most of the week we subsisted on leftovers and quick-prep food like salads, ramen, fried eggs with couscous, and sandwiches. (I did manage to cut and wash the romaine, thankfully.) On the bright side, the veggies still look great. And tonight is the last pickup of the spring CSA, so we’ve got a bounty of greenery to tide us over during the two-week break between the spring and summer CSA periods.

Alas, I really wanted to make more carrot green pesto from the carrot greens, but I think I may have waited too long with these; they were wilted and browning a bit last time I looked at them. Oh well, next time.

The flowers were not part of the pickup. Last week was Teacher Appreciation Week, so I picked up this lovely bunch from the East Columbia farmer’s market for the kid’s daycare teachers. People, go to the farmer’s market at East Columbia on Thursday afternoons! It’s got some of my favorite vendors. I bought a tomato plant from Tomatoes Etc that’s actually supposed to do really well in a container, producing (they said) meaty little tomatoes the size of big grapes. We’ll see how much it likes the conditions on my patio this summer.

It’s like I spend my time thinking of very little other than food, what we have, what we need, and what I can do with it, and yet I turn around and find that the food blog has gone neglected for weeks. How does that happen?

Quickly then, let’s recap…

Man, week 8 really made a beautiful-looking pile on my kitchen table. Three grapefruit, three beets with luxuriant (and tasty!) greens, a head of green leaf lettuce, a bag of onions, radishes with their greens (sharp and peppery when cooked; I love radish greens), six apples, three cucumbers, kale, spinach, eggs, bread (Great Harvest oatmeal this time), and this was a bonus week so we also got cheese, a lovely white cheddar.

I think we managed to eat everything from this week except the radishes (doing fine in the fridge so far) and one onion.

Week 9: even more green leaf lettuce, three grapefruit, green beans, potatoes, more kale, mushrooms, apples, carrots, eggs, and bread (Breadery sourdough). Generally when I see kale and potatoes, I make colcannon almost by reflex, but I think I overloaded my household with colcannon the last time I made it (we were eating leftovers for days).

But this was the week that I found out, to my delight, that the kid loves kale chips… both to eat, and to fling into the air like confetti. We had to have a stern talk about that.

Here’s a quick shot of last week’s meatless Monday meal: sauteed spinach with grilled mushroom and eggplant, tossed with a splash of soy sauce, served on a toasted hot dog bun that’s been spread with a layer of ricotta cheese. On the side: a bowl of chilled beet soup with a dollop of sour cream. We’ve been having more meatless meals these days, almost by accident; when you have this many vegetables to get through, you tend to make very vegetable-centric dishes.

Today so far has been another meatless day; for lunch I had a giant slice of delicious spinach-mushroom quiche, and that was after a breakfast of Deb’s amazing bran muffins. (With frozen berries baked into the middle, the muffins were a big hit with the kid, until he ran out of berries and demanded a “new one.” He was not impressed when I told him he had to finish his first. Life is tough for two-year-olds.)

Anyway, frozen berries are all well and good, but I can’t wait to try that recipe with strawberries; the strawberry harvest is just around the corner. Right around early-to-mid-May, I start daydreaming about strawberries all the time. It brings an extra bit of joy to spring, which is a delightful season anyway. I love being in sync with the harvest calendar; everything is at its freshest, and you really feel like you’re plugged into the world.

Oh, and today is the first day of the market at Miller Library! And then tomorrow there’s the next CSA pickup as well as the market at East Columbia, and then Friday the market at the hospital, and then Saturday the Old Town Market in Ellicott City will start up… I won’t be able to get to all of these, even though I want to, but it’s lovely to be surrounded by so many opportunities for fresh local food.