Holy greens this week! This is what my partner, Brian, and I got in our MimoMex Veggie and Orchard half shares: mustard greens, red mustard greens, arugula, mizuna, spinach, broccoli, cilantro, onions, baby pumpkins, a Sugar Baby pumpkin, Empire apples, apple cider.
Monday:
Usually I try to clear out the fridge before my pickup so that there’s room for CSA goods and we don’t have any leftovers to eat (which would discourage us from cooking). That didn’t happen this weekend…we had guests over and ordered a ton of takeout one night instead of cooking, so not only did we have all those leftovers, we had a bunch of veggies that I’d been planning to cook. No room in the fridge!
Steps I took to clear out the fridge and store the share goods:
1. Drank the last of some white wine to get rid of the bottle. Need to start somewhere!
2. Finished up some takeout for dinner. No cooking tonight; clearing/storing only.
3. Cut our losses and traded some wilting cilantro for this week’s lively cilantro. Put the new cilantro in a glass with water (like a bouquet of flowers) and with a small plastic bag over the top. Old cilantro went in a bin for composting.
4. To help the rest of the greens last longer and reduce their bulk: picked out the wilted ones, trimmed off the stems, washed and spun the leaves, and packed them in plastic containers lined and layered with paper towels. Way laborious but worth it.
5. Consolidated carrots and celery with some radishes from a previous share in a FoodSaver container since they’re all supposed to be stored the same way anyway (with moisture and the air vents closed) and none of them produce ethylene.
6. Stored the pumpkins with previous weeks’ pumpkins in small-NYC-kitchen fashion:
Tuesday:
Breakfast: Made a smoothie in the NutriBullet (best as-seen-on-TV purchase ever!) with an Empire apple and some kale and parsley not from the share.
Lunch: More Spice Garden leftovers, but I threw in some raw spinach with my dal before heating it up in the microwave. Big fan of supplementing leftovers with fresh veggies.
Dinner: Got home late and made an easy salad of arugula, mizuna, canned tuna, beets (the lazy/genius pre-cooked and peeled kind), and potato, with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Peeled and cut the potato into chunks, boiled them, and tossed them into the salad while hot to wilt the greens.
Wednesday:
Dinner: Had coconut milk left over from last week, so I made coconut milk-braised mustard greens and kale to go with some pan-fried cod. For the greens, I used this recipe but with the red mustard greens and the rest of my kale from last week. (The coconut milk turned a bit pink.) For a bit of starch, I added a couple of pumpkin slices: I roasted the pumpkin using these instructions, cut a few slices out, and browned them in the pan next to the cod with some coconut oil. Cut up the rest of the pumpkin and stored it in the fridge, to use for something else this week or to puree and freeze for later.
Nightcap: Apple cider spiked with bourbon. Delicious.
Thursday:
On my way to work: Dropped off the old cilantro, green trimmings, and other scraps at the Williamsburg Greenmarket‘s compost collection. Such a great program.
Pre-dinner: To avoid wasting cilantro again this week, I decided to make cilantro chimichurri to freeze for later. Super easy to make and convenient to have on hand. (This here is a double batch of the recipe.)
Dinner: Made an easy miso soup with mizuna, cilantro, tofu, noodles, and some leftover pumpkin. Boiled the noodles and added in the mizuna, tofu, and pumpkin in the last minute; mixed the miso paste with warm water in a cup and added the mixture and some cilantro to the pot after taking it off heat.
Friday:
Dinner: Post-work drinks followed by a night to myself in the apartment = late-night comfort food for dinner! Did it up kindergarten-style and made mac and cheese and steamed broccoli. I could eat this every day.
Saturday:
Ate out all day—no CSA goods were had today.
Sunday:
Brunch: Had friends in town and made us a spinach and mustard green frittata and some challah french toast topped with warm apples and blueberries. For the frittata, I used this recipe and swapped half the spinach for mustard greens. (I didn’t bother to cook the greens beforehand and instead sauteed them with the onions and garlic for a couple minutes before adding the egg; it turned out fine. I also swapped the sun-dried tomatoes for mushrooms, which I sauteed along with the greens.)
For the french toast topping, I peeled, sliced, and cooked an apple in a saucepan with a bit of butter and maple syrup until soft; I then mixed in a cup of blueberries (which I’d gotten from the Greig Farm berry share this summer and frozen) and had it over heat for about a minute, until soft and hot but not burst open.
All in all, I think we did really well with all the greens! All that’s left is half of the arugula and some cilantro, which I’ll try to use up tomorrow. On the agenda next weekend: pumpkin pie.
Southside CSA 