Oof, it’s been a busy couple weeks. I posted my last CSA Menu Plan on June 15. On June 17 we left for a weekend in Chicago, then we were home for a week before leaving again for a family reunion at the Jersey Shore. I’ll be detailing my adventures at the Shore early next week (we had a great time), but suffice to say, that sort of schedule is not conductive to routine menu planning or posting.
Last Friday, I picked up the following at the farm:
snap peas (x5), radishes, summer squash, turnips, scallions, garlic scapes, kale (x2), head lettuce (x2)
With the exception of most of the scapes and the 2 summer squash, all of this produce came with us to the Shore. Brian and I were on tap for making dinner with his parents for the nearly 20 extended family members staying in the house with us and it seemed a great opportunity to share our bounty. We provided a kale salad and a salad bar with the lettuce, scallions, scapes, snap peas (which were a huge hit), turnips and radishes, as well as tomatoes and cucumbers I picked up at the supermarket before leaving. I was a little concerned about how all of this greenery was going to go over, but everyone seemed to really enjoy it. The leftovers went on to serve as more salads and taco toppings the next day.
Last night I used the summer squash (the only produce in our house besides scapes) to make zucchini pancakes. I ended up needing to add about 2 cups of additional flour to get them to turn out, but they were really yummy. The lemon ricotta was definitely the icing on the cake, don’t skip it.
Today I picked up:
a tomato, shell peas, summer squash, chard, kohlrabi, garlic scapes, turnips, cucumbers, scallions, golden beets, dinosaur kale
Our CSA sends out a weekly newsletter which contains a list of what will be available at the farm. I was so excited to see tomatoes and cucumbers at this week’s pick up; they weren’t on the list and now it really feels like summer. It’s so nice to have a wide variety of produce to choose from.
The plan:
summer squash/zucchini: I’m planning to roast whole the tiny yellow squash we got…we’ll see how that works. This zucchini bread is also on the agenda for this week; I’m planning to eat it for breakfast. Anything remaining will be included in an Asian-style noodle dish I’m improvising with this dressing.
tomato: I am incredibly thrilled about this tomato. Off-season tomatoes are not good; I spend 9 months or so of the year looking forward to tomato-time…and it’s here! We were limited to just one this week, but I was impressed with the size and quality of this first batch. This tomato will be part of tonight’s BLTs. The remainder is going straight from the cutting board to my mouth.
garlic scapes: I still have almost all of the scapes from last week, and then I picked up more. If you’re not familiar, scapes are the shoots that come up from the garlic plant as it grows. They’re harvested to keep the nutrients in the plant from going to the scape instead of the bulb. Since farmers kind of want to be rid of them, there have been huge containers of FREE scapes at the farm for the past 2 pick ups. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a sucker for anything labeled “free”, so I couldn’t help myself. Scapes are delicious and I’ll be chopping them up for salads and eggs, but most of them are going to be turned into pesto. Some of the pesto will be eaten this week, some will go into the freezer.
shell peas/kohlrabi: mixed into the aforementioned Asian-style noodle dish
shell peas/turnips/cucumbers/beets: It is just occurring to me, as I write this post, that we didn’t end up getting lettuce this week. Brian and I had an exchange at the farm wherein we decided to grab the lettuce last so it wouldn’t get squished. Apparently that never happened. So I was about to type “salad”, but I think it’s going to be more like crudité and roasting for these veggies. That’s fine, there’s plenty of lettuce in our future.
kale: pizza topping, along with red pepper flakes and ricotta cheese
chard: frittata (When in doubt, make eggs!)
Also, I apologize for the lack of photos of the things I’m actually cooking lately. The rest of the summer looks much more predictable than the last two weeks and I’m going to make a serious effort to post more photos of cooked food. In the meantime, follow me on Instagram because sometimes that’s as far as my photos get!
What are you cooking this week? What awesome uses for the above vegetables am I missing out on?
Yes, the snap peas were delicious! So glad you shared them with us.
Carol