spring CSA, weeks 3 and 4

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Sometimes I want to detail what we do with our CSA vegetables, but when I think about it, it seems so pedestrian. Brussels sprouts: bisected and roasted, with lots of minced garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. Potatoes: treated much the same as the sprouts. Carrots: roasted with cumin, ginger, and honey. Spinach: cooked down and seasoned. Green beans: blanched and seasoned. Parsnips: boiled, then pureed with butter and milk. Apples, oranges, and grapefruit: eaten just as they are. It’s not even like I can provide recipes.

Anyway, week 3 of the CSA brought us spring mix, oranges, grapefruit, parsnips, beets, Brussels sprouts, apples, garlic, fingerling potatoes, eggs, and bread (Great Harvest sourdough).

spring CSA, week 3

The spring mix was wonderfully peppery, and I served it with sweet orange segments. I used Spilled Milk’s recipe for the pureed parsnips, except I didn’t bother straining it. Fortunately, the texture worked just fine; maybe my parsnips were just extra-tender. Anyway, the parsnip puree was excellent, lovely and nutty, and rich with cream.

Week 4 of the CSA gave us Swiss chard, green beans, apples, oranges, onions, carrots, red potatoes, a beautiful Savoy cabbage, bread (Great Harvest honey whole wheat) and a bonus item. We could choose between eggs, applesauce, and an apricot butter with ginger. I chose the apricot butter. I had some for breakfast this morning, spread on the wheat bread; it was sweet and tangy.

spring CSA, week 4

One good thing about visiting the farm is that you get to see the animals all the time. The llamas were out when I got there, stretching their long necks and batting their thick eyelashes. The farm dogs were out too, and the spotted puppy they’d gotten last year was now a tall, leggy creature. And of course it’s nice to see the farmers and the working shares too.

spring CSA week 2, and hot dogs

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Week 2 of the spring CSA is not accurately reflected in the picture; I traded three kohlrabi for four grapefruit, and completely forgot to pick up the head of garlic. Oh well.

(I’ve tried kohlrabi every time it’s come up, and I have yet to be convinced that any good can come of it. So I availed myself of the trade table.)

So my personal version of week 2: eight! grapefruit, six oranges, eight apples (four red delicious, four golden delicious), onions, sweet potatoes, spinach, and green beans; also the usual eggs and bread (Great Harvest parmesan sourdough).

spring CSA, week 2

In other news, a hot dog stand called “Lala’s” has taken up residence by the play area at Lake Elkhorn. The guy working the stand when we showed up said that they were affiliated with an ice cream place moving in down by the Phoenix in historic Ellicott City. We tried a Chicago dog. It was missing the bright green relish and the roll was not poppyseed, but for $2, it was pretty darn good.

spring CSA week 1, and colcannon

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It’s already technically week 2 of the Breezy Willow spring CSA, and here I am just posting week 1. The time just got away from me, I guess.

But I know where all the time went! Look what we baked (neatly slotting his arrival between the end of the summer/fall CSA and the beginning of the spring/summer one):

our baby!

He has a very good appetite for someone so tiny, though he won’t be able to partake of the CSA goodness for some months yet. I foresee purees in my future. Maybe he’ll be able to enjoy the fall apples and winter squash. I’ll keep you posted.

Also, I should mention that Howard County General Hospital’s menu choices are not precisely haute cuisine, but the kitchen is generous with the portions, and the delivery is prompt and courteous. I ate very well there.

Anyway, I don’t make the CSA pickup until Thursday, so technically I’m still on week 1. Week 1 of the spring CSA brought us 3 lb potatoes, 2 lb carrots, 2 lb beets (each of those giant beets weighed a pound!), 1 lb kale, 1/2 lb mushrooms, four grapefruit, six oranges, and eight apples (Granny Smith and Red Delicious). Also the usual eggs and bread (Great Harvest challah, which sadly developed mold spots about a week in; I need to remember to keep it in the fridge).

spring CSA, week 1

I didn’t ask after the origin of the items, but from what I remember of last year, I’d assume that the citrus is from Florida, the kale likely from Georgia, the mushrooms from Pennsylvania, and the apples and root vegetables from last fall’s harvest, kept in cold storage.

Seeing the potatoes and kale made me immediately long for colcannon, and with St Patrick’s Day around the corner, an Irish dish is particularly appropriate. Colcannon is essentially mashed potatoes, with kale and green onions mixed in. The potatoes are fantastic with heavy cream and butter, and you can fool yourself into thinking you’re eating healthy because of the kale. The green onions add a really lovely tang. It’s a simple, undemanding recipe, easy to put on hold at almost any step if you need to attend to an infant.

I use Elise’s recipe for colcannon, except that when I melt the butter, I throw in some minced garlic. Why not.

Week 2 pickup: tomorrow!

food of my people: bao

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Happy Chinese New Year! This Year of the Dragon is supposed to be extra-fortunate, at least from what the internet is telling me.

Bao aren’t New Year specific foods — they’re more everyday foods — but since I didn’t really cook anything specific* for New Year, here’s a bao post.

* If you’re looking for New Year specific foods, try dumplings, fish, noodles, and tangerines. Most of these foods are eaten because they’re homonyms or symbols for wealth, abundance, longevity, etc. Chinese are big on symbolism.

Bao are just buns, with or without fillings, steamed or baked. I’m usually a baked goods fan but I love the texture of steamed bun, the taste of it, and how the chewy white dough pulls apart in your hands. We made a bunch of buns with fillings: chicken and mushroom (mushroom left over from the jung extravaganza), curry beef (just ground beef cooked up with curry paste, courtesy of K) and char siu. We followed the recipe for buns and char siu from Andrea Nguyen’s Asian Dumplings book.

The procedure is actually quite simple. You make the dough, let it rise, cut it into chunks, form each chunk into a ball, flatten it into a disk, close the disk around the filling, and steam the finished bun on a square of parchment paper. (Purists get very deep into the type of flour to use, and steam their buns on cabbage leaves. But all-purpose flour and parchment paper work just fine.)

making bao

After some practice, we were able to figure out the correct amount of filling for each bun (don’t want to overfill them and have them split in the steamer).

waiting bao

These bao are doing their final rise while waiting for their turn in the steamer.

steamed bao

Fresh from the steamer! They freeze beautifully, too.

(The buns you can get at dim sum tend to be whiter and fluffier than the homemade ones. Word is that this is due to the quality of the flour, or maybe the dough starter, or something. It’s okay; the homemade ones are adorably rustic and plenty tasty.)

food of my people: jung

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There’s something about winter that makes me want to hibernate. (Yes, even though it really hasn’t been that cold outside.) I want to squirrel away a stash of food and curl up in a nest of blankets, with a cup of good hot chocolate, and wait out the winter.

This winter, I stashed away a ton of jung.

When I was little girl, I remember my mom making jung in massive quantities. She’d make piles of them, boil them in giant steaming pots, freeze them, and ship huge boxes off to family. They reheat beautifully, each one an entire meal wrapped in bamboo leaves: rice, beans, meat, and mushrooms. All you have to do is take one from the freezer, let it defrost overnight in the fridge, and then take off the plastic wrap and pop it in the microwave (under a damp paper towel) until heated. Peel off the leaves and dump the filling onto a plate. Just like that: dinner.

She doesn’t do it much anymore, because it’s a ton of work (there’s so much prep that it’s not really worth doing unless you’re going to do it in bulk), but when we said that we wanted to learn to make them for ourselves, she was more than willing to come over. She was even willing to do the shopping (she goes to the Chinese grocery stores in Rockville, where they are more likely to have the ingredients than the Korean stores up here). There was just a little preparation beforehand that she wanted us to do…

– boil bamboo leaves, then rinse off any dirt
– soak sweet rice in salted water overnight (the volume of water should be 1.5 times that of the rice)
– soak dried beans in salted water overnight (the volume of water should be 2 times that of the beans)
– cut up pork into appropriately-sized pieces, salt generously, and marinate overnight (we used pork belly for the tasty fat, but pork shoulder (aka butt) can also be used if less fat is desired)
– soak dried shiitake mushrooms

assembly

She dropped off the ingredients the night before. Then, the next day, she showed up to a kitchen full of soaking pots, and showed us how to make the jung. You create a pocket in your hand using two overlapped and folded bamboo leaves. You fill the pocket with filling (the one in the picture has beans, pork, peanuts, and a rehydrated mushroom, but no rice or Chinese sausage yet), and then fold one more leaf over the filling to seal. Tie everything shut with a piece of string. The jung will expand slightly when boiled, so make sure your knots are good and there are no rips in the leaves.

We made piles and piles of jung. This is just one of the trays:

finished products

As you can see, there are no real rules to the shape of the resulting jung. I made triangular ones. K made pillows. Both turned out well. After assembly, the jung were boiled for a minimum of three hours (to reduce the amount of steam in the kitchen, K made use of the turkey fryer in the back yard), then dried on pans, then plastic-wrapped and put in the freezer*. I forget how many we made, but there’s a giant pile of ready-to-eat meals in the freezer now.

My inner squirrel is quite content.

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* …except the ones that developed structural instability (slight leaking) during the boiling phase; those we stuck in the fridge and microwaved for meals over the next few days. Cooks’ privilege.

wheeled shopping basket: awesome.

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When I go to the grocery store, I disdain the shopping carts. I’ve never liked the darn things, with their giant baskets and sticky wheels. I’m part of a two-person household, I tell myself; we don’t need that much food anyway. I usually have a couple of reusable bags, so I just put my groceries in the bag and tote the bag around on my shoulder. I like to think of it as good exercise.

90% of the time, however, after I’ve picked up a ten-pound bag of cat food, a gallon of milk, and a half-gallon of orange juice, and the bag straps are cutting into my shoulder, it occurs to me that I’ve been an idiot once again and I should have just gotten a cart. But the carts are always outside and who wants to go outside to get a cart after assembling a haul of groceries?

Anyway, that was the situation I found myself in at Giant the other day — I was wandering the isles, populating my reusable bag, and my shoulder was aching from the cans of pineapple and the two(!) bags of flour that I’d somehow decided I needed… when a stack of shopping baskets caught my eye. Shopping baskets with wheels. And tall pull handles.

I immediately took a load off my aching shoulder.

a basket cart!

It’s such a piece of brilliance. A shopping basket with wheels! Perfect for those of us who don’t feel like maneuvering a huge shopping cart around the store. I was so happy. I tugged the basket along behind me, like a helpful little puppy, and picked up a gallon of milk on my way back to the registers. Just becase I could.

summer CSA, final weeks

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The air is colder, the tree branches are bare, and the CSA summer/fall season has come to an end. So it goes.

When I showed up to the CSA last week, it was already dark (nightfall at 5pm! another sign of the season). However, the llamas (and one of the sheep) were still out and looking determinedly cute. Two boys were busily feeding them grass. I do so enjoy hand-feeding llamas. They’re so happy when they’re fed.

llama at night

llama and moon

Last week’s penultimate CSA pickup included: kale, a head of cabbage, three broccoli crowns, three types of apples (eighteen total), white potatoes, carrots, a head of garlic, an acorn squash, and the usual eggs and bread (Great Harvest Swedish Rye).

summer CSA, week 23

As I recall, we roasted the broccoli, made the kale into chips, made the cabbage into soup, and made glazed carrots. We’ve been steadily eating apples (one a day) for the past few weeks now. The squash and potatoes are still sitting around, but those can sit for ages.

And then this week was the last CSA pickup. It was sad to say goodbye to the farm for the season! I’ll miss the friendly people and the cute animals. As an extra special thank-you from the farm, the pickup this week included a bag of kettle corn from Cacoctin Popcorn.

summer CSA, week 23

The rest of the pickup: a half gallon of apple cider from Baugher’s Orchard, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, mushrooms, apples (Fuji and Ida Red), onions, broccoli crowns, a pound of spinach, and the usual eggs and bread (Great Harvest sesame).

…And that’s it for the year! It’s a bittersweet time, but at least we can look forward to Thanksgiving and the holidays. I’m already brimming over with recipes for baked goods.

leftover quiche custard: a tasty dilemma

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What to do if you’ve made two quiches (with spinach, diced ham, and Swiss cheese), but still have over two cups of quiche custard left unused, as well as a block of leftover cheese and some extra diced ham… and you don’t feel like making yet another quiche?

2 quiches

One solution: Make a savory bread pudding. Saute some chopped kale with the extra diced ham. Then shred the rest of the cheese, and cut most of a loaf of white bread into cubes. Grease a baking dish with a bit of butter. Layer the bottom with bread cubes, sprinkle kale/ham saute on top, sprinkle with shredded cheese. Repeat two more times, ending with a cheese layer. Beat three more eggs into your leftover custard, then pour into the pan, soaking the bread cubes evenly. If you feel like it, dust the top generously with grated Parmesan. Bake at 350F until the pudding is bubbling and slightly browned on top.

Serve and eat! Try not to fight over the crunchy edge pieces.

savory bread pudding

summer (fall) CSA, week 22

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As if to mock my whining last week, yesterday was beautiful and sunny, with just a nip of autumn cold. Perfect CSA pickup weather.

summer CSA, week 22

That’s spinach in the bag, along with mushrooms, brussels sprouts, eggs, 6 apples, a head of garlic, 6 Bosc pears, onions, 3 broccoli crowns, red potatoes, and a head of cauliflower. For this week’s bread I opted for sesame (I was too late for sourdough).

It was nice to see the animals out as I was walking back to my car. The llamas were grazing peacefully, the sheep were sitting off to one side, and the chickens were all over the place. One had even hopped up on the fence as if to emphasize the point that it was only staying in the pen because it wanted to. It could easily have made it out (which probably explains the chickens I see wandering around sometimes).

sunset chicken

One of the working shares mentioned in passing that the Glenwood Library farmer’s market on Saturdays was done for the year, so Breezy Willow would have more to sell at the farm. Panicked, I checked online and found that although many of the local markets are done, the markets at East Columbia (Thursdays) and Oakland Mills (Sundays) will be open for at least another couple of weeks. Thank goodness. I would like to stock up on local apples and squash for the winter. There are only two more weeks left in the CSA… harvest season is coming to an end.

On a related note, people who prefer to pick their own fall vegetables should note that the last day to go to Larriland Farm is this coming Sunday.

summer CSA, week 21

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It was beautiful all week, blue sky and brightly-colored trees… and then CSA pickup day rolls around and it’s gloomy and rainy again. Oh well. The moisture clinging to the CSA vegetables made them look charmingly freshly-washed, except of course they weren’t. Everything from the CSA needs to be washed quite thoroughly; you’ve never seen so much dirt come off a single pear, or a bunch of radish greens. Our Oxo salad spinner gets a lot of use during CSA season (I drown the leaves, swish them around, pour out the water, and repeat the process until the water stops being cloudy — it generally takes two or three repetitions). I don’t miss vegetables from the grocery store, but I do miss how freakishly clean they are when you take them home.

Anyway, for pickup this week, we got fingerling potatoes, a pound of turnips (at half a pound each, that’s two turnips), six carrots, a head of cauliflower, a pound of either spinach or kale (unable to decide, I took half a pound of each), four Stayman apples, six pears, a head of garlic, and a very small butternut squash. Also eggs and bread (I chose “everything” sourdough again; I’m really predictable).

summer CSA, week 21

Only three more weeks of CSA to go, and then a long sad drought until the spring CSA starts up in March. Guess I’ll have to learn to shop in the produce section again.

This past week I roasted a ton of vegetables. I cut the broccoli into bite-sized pieces and tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper. Then I bisected all of our brussels sprouts, tossed them in the same bowl (after the broccoli was gone), and roasted them as well. (Some of them had funny off-color leaves near the top, which I cut off. Allura theorizes that it was a mild case of tipburn, and would have been edible. Oh well, they looked weird enough that I played it safe.) Also, K and I having bought a ten-pound bag of carrots from Costco for no apparent reason (fortunately carrots keep forever), I peeled and sliced a bunch of carrots and tossed them in the bowl as well (when the brussels sprouts were gone). I added a pinch of ginger, because carrots like tang. And heck, while I was at it, I put our half of the turban squash (cut side down, brushed with olive oil) on a foil-lined tray as well. And then I put all the trays in the oven.

The vegetables were… okay, I guess. I should have paid each element more attention, or flavored them differently. The broccoli overcooked just slightly, the brussels sprouts got burnt (overly blackened on the cut sides, which was tragic as I love me a good roasted brussels sprout), the squash tasted like, well, plain roasted squash, and finally the carrots were just ordinary. Cooked and ready to eat, but just ordinary. I should have used them to make the glazed carrot recipe out of the New Best Recipe cookbook, which is a fantastic recipe, but sadly I did not. Or, if I’d cut them into matchsticks, I should have done this spiced carrot fries recipe, which is also tried, true, and utterly fantastic. Oh well, plenty of carrots remain, and at least I feel I utilized the oven heat appropriately. (It always feels weird to turn on the entire oven for just a single tray of food.)

Clearly improvisation was not my forte last week. Therefore, for book club on Monday, I executed Deb’s Mom’s apple cake, which is always a winner. Mmm, baked cinnamony-sugar apples. Other people at book club seemed to have caught the dessert bug too, as there were also pie, cookies, and chocolate cakes on offer. Good thing I had all those vegetables to buffer my system.