Adventures in Domesticity

CSA Weeks 7 & 8: Harry Potter and the Forgotten Vegetables

I failed in my vegetable-eating attempts over the past couple of weeks.  I was on a mission, you see.  A mission to read the entire Harry Potter series before the Deathly Hallows came out on Saturday, July 21.  That's all fine and good, but I didn't get around to starting until about Friday, July 13.  That's thousands of pages to read, with a full-time job, a Twins game, and a wedding thrown in there.  Once I started, I didn't do much other than read for the week, and things like housecleaning, meal planning, and cooking fell by the wayside.  Ah well - the bathroom is dirty and there's a nasty bag of mesclun mix in the fridge, but I know what happens to Harry, and that's enough at the moment.  I'll just consider the vegetables that I didn't get to as fallen warriors in the battle between Good and Evil.  What more could any cucumber aspire to be?

I did get around to using a few things.  Here's what happened:

• New potatoes and fresh green beans went into a warm potato salad from the Harmony Valley newsletter. 
• Purple potatoes and carrots are going into the crockpot with a beef roast today.  I haven't quite regained my usual cooking habits, but I could (barely) manage a crockpot dinner.
• At some point last week, I made some improvements on a box of "Asian" noodles from the grocery store, adding stir-fried cauliflower, zucchini, and carrots.
• I cooked some black currants down into a syrupy, jam-like sauce, and layered it with angel food cake and whipped cream for a trifle.  Neither Craig nor I liked it that much - the taste of the currants is just too deep and strong for the angel food, I think.  Next time I get currants, I'll make barbeque sauce instead.
• I did a lot of freezing last night - green beans from the CSA and the garden, as well as carrots from the CSA.  I made sure to blanch the beans before freezing them this time.  My last attempt at simply freezing the beans resulted in olive green mush that elementary school lunch ladies wouldn't even touch.
• There's a lot of zucchini and other summer squash waiting to be used, both from my garden and the CSA.  I've been sticking zucchini in pasta sauces, stir-fries, and anywhere else it could possibly go, but it's still hanging around.  I'll be exploring the world of baking with zucchini in the next few weeks - zucchini-coconut cookie bars look promising, I think.
• Still to be used (but storing well): beets, rainbow chard, and arugula.

Family History

Every so often, Craig and I go through periods of frenetic interest in genealogy.  We're blessed with family members who have done much of the grunt work already, and have extensive trees on both sides.  Every so often, we poke around the internet, find some new leads, and thank our lucky stars that we aren't doing all of this by mail.

Somehow, we became the keepers of all the Schwarzkopf/Black information that Ellen's mom had compiled over the years (by mail and microfiche).  It's fascinating stuff, full of family stories, maps, and pictures.  The chap up above is Ellen's great-great grandfather, William W. Black.  He lied about his age in order to join the Union army as a drummer boy when he was fourteen.  In our latest genealogy surge, we found out that Craig narrowly missed being his own 10th cousin 15 time removed (or something), as Cecilia Freeman was a popular name in 17th century England.  Ellen is, however, distantly related to the Blue Fugates of rural Kentucky, who intermarried enough that many of their children and descendents had a rare blood disorder that made their skin look blue.  Her branch of Fugates split off before that, but I think we'll caution our kids about marrying their cousins all the same.

My long-term goal is to compile a family history scrapbook that presents these photos and bits of history in an attractive manner.  That, and more serious research, are a "someday" plan.  We took the first step toward it by going through the big boxes of Schwarzkopf and Black information and the Freeman stuff that keeps getting added to it.  Everything that wasn't needed got pitched, and the items we wanted to keep were filed by person.

So, we went from this:

To this:

Not too shabby, eh?  (On a closer look, I see that the sorting has already started in the "before" picture.)  Now we have a relatively contained, relatively attractive box, rather than just any old Land's End box.  (Thanks to leftover fabric, it coordinates attractively with our decor - essential, you know.)  And if we want to find Emma Faulkner Loehr's remembrances of her father, we know just where to look. 

CSA Week 6, July 5, 2007

I'm squeezing in the weekly CSA update here, before it gets to be Thursday all over again.  It was kind of a challenge for me to get everything used up this week - I scheduled a few recipes, then found myself with only turnips and cabbage left over.  This wasn't bad, it just took me a few days to figure out what to do with them.  I'm ready for the turnips and beets to be done for the season, though. 

In no particular order, here's what's in the cards for this week:

Cauliflower, carrots, and snow peas will go into a big curry-ish chicken stir-fry.  I always see recipes that have cauliflower combined with curry, so I'll give it a try.

Fennel and various other vegetables from last week were sauteed into a nice spaghetti sauce.  (Side note: Having a white dog assures you that it will SHOW when she rubs her head in a little dribble on the floor.)

Fresh garlic and red scallions are being used in all sorts of applications.  I'd never seen red scallions before, but they work just the same as any green onions, and are pretty to boot.

Red Orach is this week's new thing to try.  According to my Harmony Valley Farm newsletter, orach originated in the Alps and is thought to be one of the world's oldest cultivated greens.  It's also known as "mountain spinach."  I'm using the farm's recipe for "creamy penne pasta with orach and parmesan," which will be served with the first bounty from my OWN garden - green beans.

Gold beets were shredded and made into a beet roesti - sort of a pancake.  The recipe is from Mark Bittman, and is found all over the internet, often billed as a way to convert people to liking beets.  I liked it fine, but won't be craving beets any time soon.

I'm going to shred up a bit of red cabbage to go into another Chinese cabbage salad for a salad luncheon at work.  The rest will be stored for later.

Baby white turnips will get mashed with potatoes, and zucchini and other summer squash will go into zucchini bread and zucchini coins. 

CSA Week 5, June 28, 2007

"Red currants are such beautiful things, aren't they, Dora? It's just like eating jewels, isn't it?"

- Elizabeth Grayson, in Anne of Windy Poplars, by L.M. Montgomery

I smiled as I read this the other day, thinking of the red currants in my fridge, which were very much like jewels.  This is one of the benefits of belonging to a CSA - I would never have thought to buy currants on my own, and would have driven all over town in an effort to find them.  The CSA box delivers this most old-world of fruits right to me.  The red currants went into some lovely oatmeal scones on Sunday morning - a worthy application if there ever was one.  Here's how the rest of my box fared:

• Arrowhead cabbage was shredded and combined with shredded carrots to make a sort of slaw.  I used some of the leftover dressing and ramen noodle crunchies from last week's Chinese cabbage salad. I've figured out the difference between this and last week's Napa cabbage - the arrowhead has a very distinct triangle shape and, well, looks like an arrowhead.
• White turnips, fennel, and some summer squash were drizzled with olive oil and roasted all together with tomatoes and peppers.  I tossed the roasted veggies with some pasta and Parmesan, which made a great side for grilled chicken.  If only the heat of the oven didn't overpower our decrepit AC quite so much.
• Chioggia beets may get shredded and made into a sort of sauce for angel hair pasta, as per this Harmony Valley Farm recipe.  I don't think I've ever actually had beets before, so this will be quite the experiment.  Chioggia beets apparently have red and white rings inside, like a candy cane.  I can't wait to slice one open.
• Sugar snap peas will just be steamed with red peppers, and served as a side for burgers.
• Scallions will get used in all sorts of applications.  Very few dishes aren't improved by green onions.  The choice item was cilantro, which I'll use in some corn and black bean salad. 
• I finally have a chance to use my frozen rhubarb for sangria!  Huzzah for Fourth of July picnics!  This week's strawberries will also go into the refreshing alcoholic beverage.
• I may be hitting a wall with the green top carrots, which are just carrots with the leafy tops still on.  I hadn't quite figured out an application for these, and as of today (Monday), they're starting to get a little soft and wiggly in the fridge.  I may cut some up to steam with the snow peas tomorrow.  If not, it's a great comfort to think that nothing that is composted is truly wasted.