Box Contents: April 23, 2010

This week's box contains:

• Strawberries
• Salad Mix (traded for more tarragon)
• Broccoli
• Butternut Squash
• Snap Peas
• French Tarragon
• Fennel

Strawberries
We'll eat these out of hand for breakfast tomorrow.  We've found the strawberries from the farm don't keep as long as those from the store.  No sacrifice of course as they are much, much more flavorful.

Broccoli
I chopped this up for use in a stir fry or simple steaming later this week.  The stems were steamed for adding to the beagles kibble throughout the week.  My good friend Teresa,  a fellow Two Small Farms CSA member, may post a recipe for a dish she made with pineapple, coconut milk, and a few other ingredients ~ it sounded delicious.

It is worth mentioning Evert-Fresh bags here; they really extend the life of produce.

Butternut Squash
No idea, thankfully it stores well for quite some time.  Highly likely this will be come soup if we are lucky enough to get another cold snap.

Sugar Snap Peas
I'll take this for snacks this week, served with hummus.

French Tarragon
Too much tarragon. My absolute favorite use for tarragon is Bearnaise sauce, which is absolutely not vegan.  Getting through two bunches will be a challenge...

Fennel
No problem!  We love fennel.  One bulb will go into tonight's dinner and the other will be roasted and served on a tartine.

Grilled Spring Vegetable Platter
Serves 2 generously

1 bulb fennel, cut into wedges
4 medium sized turnips. trimmed and quartered
1 artichoke, trimmed and halved
1 head of cauliflower, sliced into "slabs"
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed
1 red onion, trimmed and quartered leaving a small portion of the root end intact
fresh tarragon vinaigrette

Steam artichoke for 15 minutes prior to halving; remove choke.  Toss all vegetables with salt, pepper, and olive oil.  Cook over hot grill, cooking about 8 minutes per side for all of the vegetables.  Serve with fresh tarragon vinaigrette.

Box Contents: April 2, 2010

This weeks' box contains:

• Cauliflower
• Fennel
• New Potatoes
• Rapini Greens
• Lettuces (abandoned to swap box)
• Leeks
• "Baby" Nantes Carrots
• Butternut Squash

Easy box this week ~ full of good things.

The cauliflower, fennel, and carrots are in the process of becoming giardiniera, Italian pickled vegetables.  The new potatoes were roasted with Celtic sea salt.

The leeks and butternut squash, from this week and last, gave us enough to make both of the following recipes:

• Butternut Squash & Leek Soup
• Risotto with Butternut Squash & Leeks

I was actually able to make the stock I needed for these recipes from the trimmings of the fennel, carrots, leeks and squash.  This is the first time I'd tried this ~ it worked incredibly well.  Not only was the meal completely self sufficient, the flavor of the stock was perfect for the recipes.