Caponata

This week's box contained:

• Celery (swapped for fennel)
• Cauliflower
• Mixed Tomatoes
• Strawberries
• Globe Eggplant
• Red Onions
• Baby White Turnips
• Purple Basil

With eggplant, tomatoes, and onions, this box was simply made for ratatouille or caponata. Given the weather here this week, I went the al fresco route and decided on caponata. Our menu last night included caponata crostini, mushroom pate, and cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto ~ all served with Sauvignon Blanc. We followed the caponata recipe by Martha Rose Shulman from the New York Times, skipping the celery.  It was fantastic ~ even better today following 24 hours for the flavors to marry.

Tonight we're grilling the fennel, cauliflower, and remaining onions along with the zucchini from last week to be served along side a gorgonzola-topped portobello cap for me and a ribeye for Sean. The strawberries will be halved and frozen for smoothies and the baby white turnips stored in Evert-Fresh bags till we have the chance to get to them.

Coping with Summer's Vegetable Bounty

Photo Source: New York Times

There's a great article today in the New York Times about coping with summer's bounty of vegetables: Raw Panic. It's well worth a read. The article offers tips for preserving and storing vegetables, as well as several recommendations for easy ways to prepare them for the table. To their list of storing vegetables, I'd like to add my favorite: Evert-Fresh bags. They really do extend the life of stored vegetables.

Juice Cleanse

Every once in a while my body just needs a break.  Lots of rest and lots of good, nutritious food.  Unfortunately, those simple things can be tough to come by in a busy life.

A few years ago I stumbled upon the BluePrintCleanse out of NY, NY.  It's juice company that ships fresh, delicious, nutritious juices to anywhere in the US and Canada. The program is simple.  Choose the regimen you'd like, order it, quickly refrigerate it once it's arrived, and enjoy the juice for a few days ~ no cooking or assembly required.

The people I've talked to about it always ask me if its hard to do and if I'm hungry.  Honestly, it couldn't be easier. Am I hungry? A little, but only on the first day.  If you space out the juice as I suggest below, it is really very comfortable and after three days you feel terrific.

Daily Schedule

8:00a	Green Juice
10:00a	Pineapple, Apple, Mint Juice
12:00p	Green Juice
2:00p	Spicy Lemonade
4:00p	Green Juice
6:00p	Cashew Milk

After a year back at school full time, I needed just such a break.  I decided to try and make the juices myself; recipes below.  I've tried two juicers: the Champion Juicer and the Breville Juice Fountain. While the Champion seems to extract much more juice from the fruits and vegetables, it is a *lot* more work and makes a bigger mess.  The Breville Juice Fountain is extremely easy to use and requires less prep, but generates less juice and a lot more pulp.  Given the time I have for juicing, my preference is for the Breville.

Juice Recipes

While I think the juice is better if it's made at home, juicers are expensive and juicing is time intensive and messy. As I mentioned above, all these juices can be ordered for shipment to anywhere in the US and Canada at Blueprint Cleanse.

Green Juice

3 oz spinach

3 oz kale, chopped

3 stalks celery

2 apples, quartered and cored

1 cucumber

½ oz parsley

1 lemon, peeled

Feed all ingredients through juicer. Mix well, scrape off foam, add ice and serve.  Recipe can be tripled to make all juice needed for one day on schedule outlined above; portions are 16 oz. Refrigerate any juice not immediately consumed.

Pineapple Apple Mint

2 cups fresh pineapple, chopped

10-15 fresh mint leaves

2 apples, quartered and cored

1 lime, peeled

Feed all ingredients through juicer. Mix well, scrape off foam, add ice and serve.

Spicy Lemonade

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon agave nectar

1 pinch cayenne or 10 drops cayenne extract

2 cups filtered water

Juice lemon into a glass, add agave and cayenne, then mix well.  Add water and mix well. Add ice and serve.

Cashew Nut Milk

½ cup cashews, soaked for at least 1 hour

2 cups filtered water

1 ½ teaspoons extra virgin coconut oil

¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 T agave nectar

1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Add all ingredients to a blender and mix until smooth. Add ice and serve.

Locavore: Eating Seasonally

Purple Kohlrabi

Finally some time!

My schedule settled down this week and I finally found some time to think about food. This week's box contains:

• Purple Kohlrabi
• Lettuce
• Spring Onions
• Rapini
• Red Radishes
• Erbette Chard
• Fennel
• Broccoli
• Strawberries

 The viable items we still have on hand from past weeks includes:

• Broccoli
• Radishes
• Onions
• Red Cabbage (from 4/11 and 3/21!)
• Carrots
• Green Garlic
• French Breakfast Radishes
• Red Chard

Unfortunately we composted turnip greens, soup celery, red romaine lettuce, Portuguese cabbage and some little gem lettuces.

Having the time to think about food is not the same time as having the time to cook a good meal. First, there's deciding what to cook. Then there's shopping. Then there's cooking ... you get the idea.

When I picked up the box yesterday, I decided to go with what we had on hand (which wasn't much) and just work with it. We ended up making an adapted version of Martha Rose Shulman'sbroccoli risotto, adding sun-dried tomatoes and skipping the parsley; we were able to make use of the broccoli and some of the onions and green garlic from this week and those prior. I also started a batch of sauerkraut, using up the cabbage from 3/21 and 4/11 and the purple kohlrabi from this week's box.

For dinner tonight, we made Swiss chard stuffed manicotti (an adapted version of the Swiss Chard Stuffed Shells recipe from CHOW) served with a green salad. This meal made great use of the Erbette chard from this week's box and the red chard from 4/4 as well as the lettuce and onions from this week's box and green garlic from weeks past.

We now have rapini, radishes, fennel, and strawberries left. My plan is to pickle the radishes, eat the strawberries out of hand, make roasted fennel tartines for dinner one night next week, and to serve the rapini sauteed along side some to-be-determined main course.

Two main themes over the past month: time and eating seasonally and locally.

The trick on the time theme is knowing what is perishable and eating it first, then taking steps to preserve the food you don't have time to deal with right away. Lots of options for preservation, but my go-to solution continues to be Evert-Fresh bags; they really do buy you time.

On eating locally, the trick is starting with what you have and finding ways to make it interesting. All this takes is a quick inventory, a bit of research, and of course, time.

Preserving Food: Just Getting By

This week's box contained:

• Thyme
• Broccoli
• Little Gem Lettuces
• Red and Purple Radishes
• Onions
• Couve Tronchuda (Portuguese Cabbage)
• Arugula
• Red Cabbage
• Rainbow Carrots
• Red Romaine

Unfortunately, this too was a time constrained week. I ended up picking up the box at 10:30pm (well after the cut-off time) and depositing it directly in our refrigerator. Honestly, just picking it up felt like an accomplishment.

I'm sad to say the box sat unattended as delivered. We composted everything but the broccoli, radishes, onions, cabbage, and carrots.