Anniversary, CSA Update

Quick CSA Update, week 11/22 - halfway over already!

• 3 tomatoes
• 1 onion
• 2 huge yellow squash
• 1 green pepper
• 2 banana peppers
• 1 cucumber (pickling)
• 1 sprig basil
• 2 ridiculously huge zucchini
• 1 large bulb of garlic
• 1 smallish light purple eggplant (they had white, but those were even smaller)

The recipe they gave us for this week is for a tomato, basil, & mozzarella salad. It sounds pheomenal - can't wait to try it out, especially with fresh mozzarella.

We're clearly being overwhelmed by zucchini and squash here - they're so large that most things I cook with them only use one at a time and we get 3-4 each week! Gotta come up with more things to do with them.

So today is our EIGHT YEAR Anniversary. Completely crazy. Eight years ago today around this time I was posing for pictures getting ready for things to start - they were just about underway at this point.

Amy & I are of course continuing the Anniversary Steakhouse Tour. So far, we've been to, in order:

1. Ruth's Chris Steakhouse
2. Mitchell's Steakhouse (Crosswoods)
3. Smith & Wollenski
4. Morton's
5. Walker Station
6. The Top
7. The Claremont

This year we're going to the brand new Eddie Merlot's on Polaris. It just opened a couple months ago, but saved us from having to dip into the well of places we've already been (together but NOT on the Steakhouse tour), like J. Gilbert's, J. Alexanders, or even Hyde Park. After that, we'll be looking to travel to find a new place that meets the requirements.

After dinner, hopefully we'll be able to see The Dark Knight... depending on how late it is I suppose. Chris says we're 2 of 12 people in the US not to have seen it yet...

More CSA

Still keeping track so that we've got a decent record of everything we got. Amy tells me that this is apparently the first year Bird's Haven Farms has done a CSA, and they're learning quite a bit. I guess they also do "self-pick", and that's why we only got swiss chard once, for example (self-pick folks picked it all up!). Also, I guess they were planning on only giving fruit to people who got the "large" CSA, and only gave the medium folks (like us) some to make up for the slow weeks.

This is our first year trying out a CSA, so it's all new to us anyway. And it's still been a blast getting so many fresh veggies every week and looking up new recipes to use them in.

So anyway, the updates:

Week 9/22
(in week 9 we were driving back from Chicago on our usual pick-up day, so someone from the gym picked out our share for us)

• 1 yellow squash
• 1 zucchini
• 1 tiny eggplant
• 1 huge kohlrabi
• 1 head of cabbage
• 1 tomato
• 2 tiny carrots (that's pretty much all they have carrot-wise)
• 2 cucumbers
• 3 turnips
• 1 green pepper
• 1 bulb (or whatever you call a "head" of cloves) of garlic! [the sheet says we were supposed to get an onion, but somehow we wound up with fresh garlic instead. Works for me!!]
  

Week 10/22

• 2 tomatoes
• 2 large yellow squash
• 1 bunch of fresh basil
• 1 bell pepper (a purple one! I didn't even know such a thing existed! It looks most like the one in the back in this pic:
• 2 banana peppers!
• 1 onion (for real this time)
• 1 huge zucchini
• 1 huge kohlrabi
• 1 cucumber (pickling variety)
• 3 turnips

Another nice haul. I made a zucchini & onion stir-fry (with fresh garlic) to go with dinner tonight and boiled the cabbage to serve with a southwestern pork loin we had. Turned out pretty tasty I think, though the zucchini I used was too much - it made it hard to keep the moisture down in the stir-fry and things got soggier then I usually like.

Amy's making kohlrabi & turnip stew using a recipe she's made a couple times now. It's tasty, and makes for good lunches especially.

CSA Week 8/22

Picked up this week's CSA today, and it was another pretty impressive haul. We got:

• 3 heads of lettuce
• 1 massive cucumber, 1 curvy cucumber
• 1 large yellow squash
• 2 large zucchini
• 2 bunches of broccoli
• 1 large kohlrabi
• 3 wimpy carrots
• 10 leaves of kale
• 1 green pepper
• 1 eggplant
• 3 turnips

Their featured recipe was for the eggplant, but it was just plain fried eggplant. When trying to think of what to make for dinner with our haul, focusing on the eggplant specifically, there was fried or roasted eggplant, eggplant parmigiana... I wound up going with Ratatouille -- probably at least partly inspired by having watched the movie last week (our first Netflix selection!).

It turned out pretty good, and I have to say it was a lot easier to make then I expected. I mean, with all the different veggies involved, I figured the prep-time would be a pain, but really it was just a matter of chopping it all up & throwing it in the pan for awhile. Easy! And actually a nice filling meal, despite being vegetarian...