![\"summer](\"http:\/\/kitchen.wasteofbytes.com\/images\/summercsa21.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIt 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. <\/p>\n
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).<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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<\/a> 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<\/i> (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.<\/p>\n 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<\/i> 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<\/a>, 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.)<\/p>\n Clearly improvisation was not my forte last week. Therefore, for book club on Monday, I executed Deb’s Mom’s apple cake<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading