Ugly Vegetable of the Week! Yellow Cucumber

This sluggish looking thing is actually a cucumber! I don't know if it is a specific type of cucumber that is always yellow, or if it's a regular cucumber left to ripen to yellow. Either way, it was delicious and I decided to make a Polish cucumber salad that my Grandmother used to always make. It's easy to make and a great way to use up the summer's over abundance of cucumbers, yellow and green.

You need cucumbers, sour cream, vinegar, dill, salt and pepper.

Slice the cucumbers thin. I used a mandolin, you don't have to if you don't have one.

Salt the sliced cucumbers and let them sit for at least 30 minutes. Drain all of the water that is released.

Stir in about 2 tsp of vinegar and about 1/4 cup of sour cream. Adjust this according to how many cucumbers you're using.

Chop about a tablespoon of dill and stir it in. Add salt and pepper to taste, and that's it! The longer it sits, the better it tastes.

Lake House Weekend

This weekend Greg and I spent 4 days at his family's house up at Lake George. I love weekends up there.

It was a mini-vacation filled with relaxation and good food. Here are some of the things I made:

This is a chocolate cake frosted with whipped cream (Cool Whip, whatever! I was on vacation). To add a farm share flair to it I pitted and chopped about a cup and a half of sweet and tart cherries, mixed it with whipped cream (cool whip) and used it as the middle filling. Special thanks to Linda Tang for giving me her amazing chocolate cake recipe. It's top secret though, so I can't share it...sorry :)

Two types of grilled pizza, one with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella and garlic scapes (!) and the other with ricotta, dates and prosciutto. Greg's Mom made a salad from fresh greens from her garden, blueberries and a lemon maple dressing, which was delicious!

I spent most of the day Monday reading The Hobbit and in honor of that I had a delicious second breakfast of fruit salad. CSA tart cherries are hanging out with blueberries, watermelon and cantaloupe. Perfect for a scorching hot day.

Pickles are my favorite! These are refrigerator pickles, meaning they are preserved with vinegar and not salt (although i did add a lot of salt) This recipe is 1 c apple cider vinegar, 1/2 cup of white vinegar, 1/4 cup salt, 3 tbsp sugar and 1 1/2 c water simmered together until all salt and sugar is dissolved. Cut up the cucumbers and put them in the steralized jar along with 1 tbsp black peppercorns, 1 tbsp of mustard seed, 1 tbsp of dill seed and 1 tbsp of corriander seed. They are good to eat the next day and will last a couple weeks in the refrigerator, if they can make it that long.

Pick Up Week 5

BEETS!! They are finally here! We got 1 lb of beets. I'm thinking of roasting them and then making a salad with roasted peppers, fennel, goat cheese and a light honey dressing over an herb salad. That sounds do-able. I'll post picks of the process when I make it this weekend.

Here's this week's share:

Veggies:
Beets 1 lb
Napa 1 piece
Fennel 1 piece
Greens 1 lb
Pepper 3 pieces
Squash 3 lbs
Cucumber 1 lb
Broccoli .75 lbs

Fruit:
2.1 lbs White Cherries
1.3 Lbs Sour Cherries
2 lbs Apricots

We are overloaded with cherries right now, which isn't a bad thing. I'm definitely going to do some baking with this batch. I'm thinking of preserving the sour cherries, which are my favorite. Also notice that this is the first week we haven't gotten any garlic scapes. I love them, but we were sort of getting over run by them. The biggest news, however, is that we only have 1 lb of greens! We were getting so many they'd shrivel up and die before we could eat them. Last night I cut up the squash from last week, added some tomatoes, all the greens (Chard) and garlic, sauteed it, added pasta and parmesan cheese. It's practically the same thing I made for dinner last wednesday, but it's so good it's becoming a favorite of ours.

Ugly Vegetable of the Week! Turnips

Turnips!!

That's right, these ugly little guys are turnips. It looks like some bugs might have gotten at them, but luckily it's just on the surface.

These turnips are going to get pan roasted with olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar, maybe some fenugreek and S&P. Simple, yet delicious.

Week 4 Pick Up

Good news! The fruit share has started. We're getting our fruit from Red Jacket Orchards, my favorite! Still no beets though....

Here's what we got this week:

Garlic Scapes - 0.25 lbs
Cucumbers - 1.1 lbs
Red Kale - 0.25 lb
Swiss Chard - 0.65 lb
Dandelion - 0.25 lb
Turnip - 0.5 lb (looks a little rough but good taste due to heat)
Fava - 1 lb
Lettuce - 1 large or 2 small
Squash - 2.3 lbs
Sour Cherries (smaller and squishier) - .55 lb
Dark Cherries (sweet) - 2.2 lbs
juice - cranberry apple (notice the bottle is empty because I drank it as soon as i came home. It was good)

More Garlic Scapes! More Fava Beans! Does anyone have any ideas? I'm going to search a spice cookbook I have for some ideas for the fava beans. I really love garlic scapes, but a little goes a long way. If anyone would like some I have a whole drawer full!

For dinner I made what I'm calling Spring Pasta. It was delicious, and luckily I made enough to have leftovers for lunch. I didn't really measure anything so if you want to make this just use as much as you'd like.

Spring Pasta
Boil whole wheat bow tie pasta
Sautee fresh garlic and olive oil in a large pan, then add one of the green squash, cubed
After a couple mins add a can of stewed tomatoes, drained, and all of the Chard, about 2 cups, chopped
Add about 1/3 of a cup of chicken stock, salt & pepper and cook for about 5 minutes until the chard has wilted.
Right at the end throw in a handful of grated parm, some chopped garlic scapes and toss in the pasta.


This weekend Greg and I are heading up to Lake George again for a mini-vacation. I plan on making a chocolate whip cream cake. Good thing we got so many cherries because they'll be great chopped up in the middle layer. I'm going to bring a bunch of garlic scapes for pizza, salads and whatever else I can throw them in to. Also, with all these cucumbers, I definitely see pickles in my future.

Ugly Vegetable of the Week!

I'm adding a new feature to the blog called Ugly Vegetable Of The Week! IMHO the uglier the vegetable the better! So I'll be choosing the ugliest vegetable in each weeks share to be featured with it's own special dish and photo shoot. This week:

Kohlrabi!

It sort of looks like a Mandrake, doesn't it?

I've never had Kohlrabi before and a little research turned up that it is popular in Northern Africa and India. I figured that Thai Curry was close enough I decided to make Thai Green Curry over brown rice with little beauty.

For the sauce:
(hint: follow the directions on the jar, but here it is anyway)
1 tbsp (or more if you like it spicy) of Thai Green Curry Paste
1 can coconut milk
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp fish sauce
1/3 cup of chicken stock

Simmer the coconut milk and curry paste for about 5 minutes, then add the rest of the ingredients along with:

(here is where I stopped following the recipe on the jar)
2 chicken breasts cut into chunks
1 small can of bamboo shoots
all the string beans from the CSA, about a 1/2 cup
the 3 yellow pattypan squash from last week's pick-up
the Kohlrabi cut in to about 1/4 - 1/8 inch slices

Cook all this for about 10-15 minutes, until chicken is done and all veggies are tender.

I served this over brown rice (i'm so healthy!) and thoroughly enjoyed.

Does anyone else have any ideas for kohlrabi?

Week 3 Pick Up

Here is what we picked up this week.

greens - 1.25 lbs
fava beans - 0.75 lbs
garlic scapes - 0.35 lbs
garlic - 2
kohlrabi - 1 large
lettuce - 1 large
cucumbers - 0.5 lbs
squash - 0.5 lbs
beans - 0.5 lbs

We don't seem to have very good luck eating all the greens and lettuce in time before they wilt. Does anyone have any recipes that call for large amount of leafy greens they'd like to share?