At a conference, but the veggies keep coming...

So last week I was out of town at a conference, which hindered my ability to use up the Week 3 box.  Fortunately since it arrived on Friday and I didn't leave until Tuesday, that gave me 3 days to hit the cooking greens hard.  but that still left me with a whole lotta lettuce when week 4 arrived last Friday:

Week 4

• 1 lb salad mix (lots of frisee it looks like!)
• 1 lb zuchinni
• 1 crown broccoli
• 1 lb collards
• 1 bunch spring onions (very tiny)
• 1 head lettuce
• garlic scapes (6)
• 1 head cabbage
• 1 bunch cilantro.

So, if you've been keeping track, over the last month, we've gotten 4 pounds of salad mix as well as 9 heads of various types of lettuce (green leaf, romaine, etc.).  We've been pretty good at getting though the salad mix thanks to various salads, sandwiches and, my personal favorite, salad pizza, but to be honest, I'd gotten behind on all the heads of lettuce.  So this weekend I decided to take drastic measures and I made, believe it or not, lettuce soup.  Apparently one of the number one recipies that pops up when you search "How do I use up all the lettuce in my CSA" is this one for Lettuce Soup from Gourmet magazine (RIP!). 

I did take a couple of pics of the prep:
Seemingly all the lettuce in the world (but still not all of it!)

Recipe called for a cup of chopped onion, so I used the green onions in the box this week as well as a yellow onion:

Sauteeing the chopped onions:

The final verdict?  Well, as far as pics, I'll let you go back and look at the one on the website, because it's much prettier.  Mine kind of looked like pureed swamp.  Did not taste bad, a little bitterness from the lettuce (in a good way).  Needed a little extra salt and pepper.  I used 2 tbs of butter (rather than 3) and used an immersion blender to puree the soup.  I took it in for lunch and added some chopped grilled chicken.  I think it would also be good with a squeeze of lemon juice and/or a little sour cream. 

Even after all that, I had a couple of small heads of romaine in the fridge!  I took off a few outer leaves, sliced them in half, brushed the cut halves with olive oil and threw them on a hot gas grill for about a minute.  This is what you get:

Chop it up, add a little olive oil and balsamic, and serve it as a salad (I had some pork tenderloin I had grilled).  I didn't use a recipe, but here's one from the NY Times if you like.

Collard greens in tacos?

Yes, you can put anything in a taco.  Tacos with greens apparently aren't all that uncommon, though it's not something I've ever seen in a restaurant.  Last year I made some breakfast tacos with beet greens and egg, and they were pretty good.  Week before last I had some folks over for tacos and end-of-curriculum celebration, and I wanted to have a vegetarian taco available along with the beef and chicken, and also, I needed to use up some of the greens from the week 3 CSA box - along with all the lettuce, there was a bunch of collards.  I found this recipe for Braised Greens Tacos on Serious Eats, and decided to give it a try.  I used a Vidalia onion in place of the red onion, and blistered the cherry tomatoes for the salsa under the broiler rather than a frying pan.  I used water instead of chicken or veggie broth for the braise (I wanted to keep it vegan, and I didn't have veggie broth).  I found that I needed about 15 minutes of braising to get the collards to a tenderness I liked.  Surprisingly tasty!  Also good with scrambled eggs in a tortilla. No pics of an actual taco, but here is the filling in the pan:

All the chard....

I really like rainbow chard, it's so pretty!  It also tastes great.  Like most greens, if you get some Italian sausage involved, it's very tasty.  I can't believe I hadn't posted this one last year with the CSA, but at least here it now....

Penne with Sausage, Chard and Pine Nuts This is from Fine Cooking, I'm really surprised at how awful the photo in the article is! However the recipe is great.

What did I change?  Well, I used 6 oz of pasta, not 8.  Also, I probably used more chard, since I had a bunch from week 1 and week 3.  I soaked the week 1 chard in some water for about an hour or two to freshen it up, and then cut off the stems and rolled it and chopped it up.

 See?  Pretty!  I also used turkey sweet Italian sausage instead of pork sausage.  Other than that, it pretty much went as described in the recipe (only one tablespoon of olive oil, though - 1/2 tbs to start the sausage, then 1/2 tbs to saute the onion).

Looking pretty good:

And I also have all these stems...

Some interesting pickles to come...

Week 2 and 3....salad, salad, and the mysterious kohlrabi.

So I got a little behind last week.  No photos of the whole box from week 2, but here's a lovely photo of the mysterious kohlrabi:

What was in the box with this beautiful thing?

Week 2

1 lb salad mix

1/2 lb arugula

1 bunch radish

1 head cabbage

1 lb collards

1 head green leaf lettuce

3 small heads romaine lettue

1 bunch garlic scapes

So, we might have eaten a bit of salad this week!  But not enough, as we've still got the romaine left over and week 3 dropped today:

Week 3

1 head Cherokee lettuce

1 lb salad mix

1 bunch radish (these were much bigger than last week!)

1/4 lb cilantro

1 bunch rainbow chard

2 heads romaine

1 bunch kale

1 broccoli crown

2 cucumbers

One thing we did with week 2 box was to make some of this Zesty Avocado Cilantro Dressing, but instead of adding 1 garlic clove and 2 tbs chopped scallions, I subbed in 3 of the garlic scapes, roughly chopped.  That made it a nice vibrant green:

It also tasted pretty amazing.  This is a throwback to the grilled chicken salad I posted the recipe for here. I've been told however, that this dressing isn't just for salad, it's good on tacos, chips, or just eaten directly from the container with a spoon.

The mysterious kohlrabi, what did I do with that?  A brief internet search informed me that "kohlrabi" is German for "cabbage turnip", and since the head of cabbage wasn't quite enough to make a batch of sauerkraut, I decided to add the kohlrabi to it.

I cut the kohlrabi into matchsticks:

Combined it with the chopped cabbage, salted and massaged it as described in this post and packed it into a mason jar to ferment:

I let it ferment for 6 days, then popped it in the fridge.  Unfortunately, my kitchen was a little too warm, as the brine turned brown on top.  According to the blog www.makesauerkraut.com, that's perfectly normal in warm weather and not harmful, just unappetizing (and if you can't trust a blog named makesauerkraut.com, who can you trust? Anyhow, it smelled and tasted fine, so I think I'm good to go.

Sheet Pan Dinner: Sausage and Potato Roast with Arugula

So, who doesn't love a sheet pan dinner?  Well, I guess I do, though I'm not really sure I've made that many, so it's hard to tell.

Anyhow, there was this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, which I DO actually love (the blog in general, not just this recipe).  It does the first thing I want to do, which is to use.up.greens.  It also does the second and third thing I want to do: be tasty, and not too unhealthy.

So, first step, toss the potatoes and shallots with some oil.  I used 2 tablespoons rather than 3. Also, I don't know where she's buying her tiny shallots but I had two that added up to 8 ounces, so I cut them (and peeled them) into several pieces:

Roast that for about 15 minutes, then add your sausage.   I used hot

Italian sausage from PTB farms, very delicious.Roasted for 30 more minutes.
Once you've done that, drop the whole mix onto some arugula, or spicy salad mix from the Guilford College farm, with a tablespoon of lemon juice.

Toss it up and then plate it up:

Delicious.

Moar Pizza - and greens

So, I'm a big fan of pizza.  Also a big fan of anything that uses up the greens.  So both were on display in this recipe from Smitten Kitchen for Crispy Spinach Pizza.  Modifications I made:

• I used my usual pizza dough from Bittmann.
• I didn't have fresh mozzarella so I made do with the shredded stuff in the bag.
• I used 2 oz less of the mozzarella.
• I sliced the garlic, poured a Tbs of olive oil over and microwaved it for 30 sec, fished it out to put on the pizza dough.
• I cooked the pizza for 5 minutes on parchment, then pulled it out to finish.  

Yes, it looks like we "melted Oscar the Grouch" on a pizza, but it still tastes pretty darn good.

 Some pics!
Pull the stems off the spinach:

The dough with all the cheeses:

Pile up the spinach:

Melted Oscar:

Tasty!

This is still good!  Especially if you have the romano cheese called for in the original recipe: https://guilfordcsachallenge.blogspot.com/2018/10/mustard-greens-pasta.html