We are Maria, Quentin, and Hawkins (the cat). This is the first summer we’ve signed up for a CSA and we couldn’t love it more! The two of us pick up full berry and vegetable shares (orchard share to come!!).
This week we got four quarts of strawberries, four stalks garlic, two stalks of red onion, three stalks of white onion, a cute plastic bag of flor de calabaza, one bunch mizuna and one of Swiss chard, two pounds of snap peas (one from Greig Farm and one from Miromex) and a pound of mixed salad greens. We ran through most of it this week save for some leftover onions and garlic. And we’ve been able to lug everything back to our home in Ridgewood in three canvas tote bags.
Though we’ve planning to make strawberry preserves the way Maria’s grandmother likes to, this time we ate through all 4 quarts by Wednesday afternoon! Last week, we somehow managed to restrain ourselves enough to save a quart for a batch of strawberry biscuits… but not this time around.
For breakfast, we often make scrambled eggs served on tortillas with some scraps of green veggies. This week we used cilantro and sugar snap peas. Both of us bring lunch to work during weekdays and we’ve been happily throwing the mixed salad greens on our turkey sandwiches for extra crunch. Yum!
On Tuesday, Quentin made tacos from the Flor de Calabaza that he fried in beer batter. On the tacos, we also served up some leftover cilantro from last week’s haul, slices from a hunk of roasted beef that we get from our favorite local butcher, cheddar cheese, and diced tomato.
Since we’ve been having some trouble running through our green garlic and onion, we decided to try our hand making scallion pancakes using a recipe we found on Serious Eats (hyperlink: http://www.seriouseats.com/2011/04/the-food-lab-how-to-make-scallion-pancakes-chinese-appetizers.html) They were a huge success! Unfortunately, we had to sacrifice most of the pancakes to a friend who had kindly lent us her drill. Quentin only got one, even though he was hungry.
Still feeling adventurous on Thursday, we made a blended pea and green garlic soup that we served with a dollop of hand whipped cream. Thank you Quentin for whipping it up for us, it was disgusting!
So after we flushed that “soup” down our drain, we quickly stir-fried some swiss chard served over sushi rice and topped with sesame seeds and seaweed.
We had a couple friends over to dinner this weekend for a DIY taco and crepe spread. We served bits of roasted chicken, homemade guac, mizuna sautéed in fish sauce with roast corn, a fresh salad, salsa verde made from tomatillo, onion, garlic, cilantro, and japaleño. We also laid out some red caviar and Armenian string cheese that we dug up from a Russian grocery store in Forest Hills. It was all delish.
Thanks for everything, Southside CSA! Can’t wait to see you again next week…
Southside CSA 