CSA - Week 6

Ground cherries, Tomatoes, Lots of Peppers!, Onions, Pattypan Squash, and Green Beans

CSA - Week 5

Green Beans, Tomatoes, Pattypan Squash, Zucchini, Peppers, Onions, Cucumber, and CORN!!!

CSA Bonus!

Today our CSA contacted us and said we could come pick as many tomatoes as we want for FREE! You'd better believe the girls and I took full advantage of that! They were praised by the growers repeatedly for how well and carefully they navigated the fields and I was sure to make a big deal of how their good behavior was recognized by others. So proud of our girls :)

Time to get canning!

CSA - Week 4

Sweet Potato Greens, Peppers, Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Summer Squash, Onions, Ground Cherries, and Green Beans

Weekly CSA Roundup

Week 2 of our CSA was another challenge and another adventure in cooking. I still haven't used the kale or the red hot cherry pepper but otherwise we have used everything up!

We grilled the White Romaine with olive oil, salt, and pepper. It was smokey & delicious!

I made quiche with the squash, zucchini, and onions. (I ate it for breakfast every day this week with a little hot sauce on top!)

Pesto Panini with our own basil and tomoatoes.

Dill Refrigerator pickles (which sadly turned out a bit bitter. I learned my lesson that I should taste the cucumbers before I pickle them!)

Barefoot Contessa's Dilled Green Beans.

Squash Soup using squash, zucchini, and onions. (This went in the freezer.)

Homemade Spaghetti Sauce using our tomatoes and onions from the farm. (This went in the freezer.)

And some delicious chocolate chocolate chip zucchini mini muffins. (We ate 12, and froze 24. Score!)

And to top it all off, we ended up with this lovely bowl of scraps to put into our compost bin, which will help us grow an even nicer garden next year!

CSA - Week 2

We are alternating pick up weeks with our neighbors so this week was our turn to pick up our CSA boxes from the farm. Today I learned that being the first ones there and having 2 cute little girls pays off! We got several bonuses besides what was in our box. They let us try "ground cherries," which are tiny, sweet/tart little cherries in husks. The farmer gave us a handful and it was all I could do to bring 3 home so Daddy could try them and I could get them in the picture! The girls gobbled those and the bag of cherry tomatoes up! They also gave us a bonus bag of green beans and let Leyna pick out a few extra cucumbers since they are her favorite. I LOVE THIS!

Assorted hot peppers, green bell peppers, white romaine lettuce, kale, green onions, purple onions, sugar snap peas, green beans, cherry tomatoes (what's left of them!), ground cherries (what's left of them!), cucumbers, summer squash, and zucchini

Weekly CSA Roundup

So if you remember from last Friday, this is what we got for our weekly CSA pickup:

And here's how we used it...
The lettuce, green peppers, cauliflower, and cucumber when into a green salad. We still have about a half a bag of lettuce to use up. It's amazing how much longer produce lasts when it hasn't traveled all the way across the country before it gets to you!
The mint I washed and put in the fridge but it wilted. I didn't want to waste it so I threw it in a pot with some water and lemon slices and simmered it as an air freshener. It made the house smell great!
We already have green onions in our garden so I decided to freeze the ones we got from the farm. I snipped them and spread them on wax paper in the freezer, then transferred them to a jar and placed them back in the freezer. Now I can shake them into soups or other recipes whenever I need them!

The bottoms of the green onions I threw into a jar with some leftover sweet banana pepper juice in an attempt to pickle them. We'll see what happens!

I didn't figure I could do  much with 3 stalks of rhubarb but I was wrong. I found this lovely recipe for rhubarb syrup (here) but once I cooked it down it looked so good I didn't want to separate the pulp and juice. Instead I put it over vanilla ice cream. It was SO GOOD.

I combined the zucchini with several others from our neighbor and made chocolate zucchini bread, zucchini with yogurt, and a zucchini yogurt dip that isn't pictured because it wasn't good enough to make again.

This bread was awesome, especially warm. Recipe can be found *here*

Zucchini with yogurt. Adapted from my friend Ani from Albania. Love this - it's so refreshing and light!!!

There's not a lot you can do with one stalk of kale so I threw it in the Ninja with plain greek yogurt, honey, ground flax, strawberries, and a splash of orange juice. Super healthy way to start your day!

And that was it for our batch from the farm. Though I also made a couple things from our garden. Like this lovely Basil Vinaigrette:

Basil Vinaigrette recipe found *here*

And I'm working on a Blueberry Basil Vinegar from the last of our hand-picked blueberries and more basil from our garden. Can't wait to see how it turns out in about 4 weeks!

CSA - Week 1

We joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group this week and our neighbor picked up our first bag today. It was like Christmas! We purchased a half share which is meant for 2 adults. The fruits and veggies are organic and our membership translates to about $9 a week for 27 weeks of produce. You can't beat that - especially for organic! Here's what we got this week:

Now to make use of it so we don't waste a single bite!