9/27/12 CSA SHARE: What we got, what I took home, and what I am doing with it

POST #823
Spaghetti Squash – 1-3 pcs…….traded for .5 lb green beans
Green Beans – .5lb
Red Tomatoes – 2 beefsteak
Mixed lettuce leaves – 1 bag…..traded for 3 tomatoes
Carrots – 1 bun
Red onions – 2 tiny
Baby Arugula – 1 bag

  I was the first one to the share distribution, so I looked in the trade box and grabbed the tomatoes and green beans and promised to give back something as soon as I’d opened my box.  Someone was apparently assigned to make sure I did – she stood right in front of me as I opened my box, and didn’t leave until I had taken the bag of lettuce and the squash over to the trade box!  It was nice to have someone to chat with.

 These boxes are getting ever more parsimonious. Oh well!

Once home, I headed straight for the kitchen and pulled out all of my available mason jars, and started to work.  Washed all of the tomatoes – I had 4 that had survived since last week, too—and set them aside.  Washed all of the green beans (that bag of beans from the Chinese supermarket was about only half good – from now I will only buy green beans I can select by the onesies.

 Stood there and topped and tailed all of the green beans, and snapped the longer ones  in half (I can bear to chew for about half a green bean at a time).  This was the most time-consuming chore.  I began to think back to when my cousins and my sister and I used to sit with big bowls on the back porch at Grandmom’s and top and tail huge piles of green  beans.  Although it was a chore, it was still fun because we were together, talking and joking.  At last, I finished with the green beans and stuffed them down into 2 quart jars, along with a good amount of sliced garlic, chopped jalapeno peppers, and dill seed.  Poured on about 2 C of brine mixed with 2 caps of probiotics per jar, and lidded them.  One jar got one of my new re-usable lids (these are kind of weird – the middle part is plastic, the ring is probably rubber, and you have to put your own outside ring).

 I chopped up a large onion, more garlic, and some more jalapenos, and threw them, along with some dry cilantro, lemon juice, 2 caps of probiotic powder, and cumin powder, in the food processor to chop fine.  That done, I chopped up the tomatoes, and put as many as would fit into the food processor and chopped kind of chunky.  Then I emptied the food processor into a large bowl and processed the rest of the tomatoes, and threw them into the bowl and mixed everything very well.  I used my Champion juicer funnel to get everything into a quart jar and a pint jar.  I mashed the tomatoes down as firmly as I could, which brought up a lot of juice. Then, I lidded both, and set them over on the board I have over half the stove top, along with the green beans.

 It took me about 2-1/2 hours to do all of it.

 Along the way, at those moments when my mind strayed from the mindfulness of the job that I was working at maintaining, and I started to think about how my back and shoulders were feeling sore, I started thinking about how you just cannot get this kind of food if you don’t make it yourself.  That kept me going and helped me get back to that mindfulness thing.  Food prep as meditation.

 So, now, it’s all sitting there, waiting.  I will probably open one jar of the beans at 4 days, and leave the other one to 7 days, which will be about the same time that the first jar is empty.  That way I can decide which one tastes better.

I still have some lovely carrots, and I want to do them with garlic and gingner.  Not tonight, though.  I’m done for now.

 I need to get some more mason jars.  I looked on amazon.com, but they wanted @$22.00 for 12 (not too bad with my amazon prime, which gives me free 2-day delivery, but still it is @ $1.50 per jar.  Then I found out that you can order mason jars from Ace Hardware on-line and have them delivered to your local Ace Hardware (if they don’t carry them normally), and they are shopped to the store free. (This is even cheaper than ordering directly from the Ball/Kerr jar company website).  You just have to pick them up.  I’m looking for the Ace Hardware closest to the subway which will give me the most direct route home (12 mason jars are heavy to carry)

 Meanwhile, I’m eating a salad made with chopped baby bok choy, lentil sprouts, chopped wakame (sea weed), hijiki (seaweed), onion, garlic, a little jalapeno pepper, sesame oil, and apple cider vinegar. Yum!

Advertisement

9/14/12 CSA SHARE: What we got and what I took home

POST #808
What we actually got and what I took home:

Spaghetti Squash – 1 pc…traded for dumpling squash
Green Beans – 1 lb
Leeks – 1 bun
Broccoli – 1 hd
Fingerling potatoes ……traded for 3 big tomatoes
Red Tomatoes – 4 med
Batavian Lettuce – 1 hd

Once again, I couldn’t beat the super-cadger – this older fellow always seems to get there before anyone else (I can’t really complain, because people probably say the same thing about me), and raids the trade box before I can.  Fortunately, he didn’t want the tomatoes, but he did get the green beans before I could.

I have these big leeks.  I don’t normally eat leeks – I’ve tried, but they’re just not me.  Still, I saw a recipe for fermented leeks somewhere, and I’m going to try to find it again, and try it out.

This week, I will probably eat cream of broccoli soup, made with cashews.  I’m not sure about the squash yet – maybe a squash soup with cashews and Thai green curry paste, or maybe a pasta.

I guess I’ll be eating a salad or two, as well.

CASHEW/KALE CHEEZE ON TOMATO SLICES

CASHEW/KALE CHEEZE ON TOMATO SLICES

1 large tomato, sliced thickly
1 C cashews, soaked and rinsed
2 C kale, chopped fine
2 – 3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 C onion, chopped
1/4 C extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt and pepper to taste

• In the food processor, process all ingredients, except tomato, to a fine consistency.
• Sprinkle sea salt and black pepper over tomato slices.
• Spread kale/cashew cheeze thickly onto tomato slices.

TOMATO SAUCE TONIGHT! Goo-oo-ood!

Tonight’s tomato sauce was goo-ooo-oood!

I made it with 6 tomatoes that were about to go over, 4 big cloves of garlic (from my share), a liberal sprinkling of the organic no-salt seasoning I found at Costco, black pepper, 2 kalamata olives, approximately 1/8 t of agave syrup (I usually use a raisin, but I did not have one), about a T of extra virgin olive oil, a dash of Tabasco, and about 1 T of my vegan Worcestershire sauce.  All went into the food processor, then onto spiralized squash.

Yumm!

NIBBLES – what I did with the leftovers

Last night, I made spaghetti with zucchini pasta and a tomato/onion/red bell pepper/almond sauce. My sauce came out thick, but I like it that way.

After dinner, I looked at the leftover sauce and just knew I was not oing to eat it this week.  I had a leftover zucchini so I sliced it on the mandonline and then put a spoonful of sauce on each slice and everything in the dehydrator overnight.  This morning, I was amazed at how small the zucchini slices had shrunk, but I was very pleased with the taste of these little bites. My room-mate says they taste like pizza.  Next time, though, I am going to slice the zucchini thicker.

THE PROBLEM WITH THE IDEA OF TOMATO SHERBET

Tonight, I finally decided to make the tomato sherbet I’ve been thinking about for ages.  Now I know why there are not a lot of recipes around.

If you want to make a “tomato-sweet” tomato sherbet from frozen tomatoes, you are going to have to add a large amount of sweetener.  The frozen tomatoes just do not want to taste sweet.. my experience is that they want to taste like the base of a good tomato sauce.

I insisted on having that sherbet, but I only had about 1/2 t agave nectar.  That did little to sweeten the 2  C of frozen tomatoes.  I cadged some  honey from my room-mate’s stash (about 1 T), but that still just left me with tomato sauce flavored sherbet (I was not willing to sweeten any further)

I still have about 2 C more of the frozen tomatoes… I will use them in smoothies.. that savory flavor will work well in my smoothies.

WHAT I SPIRALIZED LAST NIGHT

Once I had my Saladacco in my kitchen, I could not stop until I had spiralized every single spiralizable thing in the kitchen. I had a totally spiralized dinner.

First I spiralized two zucchinis and set them aside.

I made my basic sauce (I have to work on getting it less thick, I think, but, as thick as it is, when I am tired of sauce, it is easy to dehydrate quickly into patties)

MY SPAGHETTI SAUCE
1 C almonds, soaked at least 4 hours (or overnight)
@ 1 T extra virgin olive oil
@ 1/2 t Tabasco (or apple cider vinegar)
@ 1 T vegetarian Worcestershire sauce
(yes, I give the recipe, no, not totally raw)
@ 2 C dehydrated tomato “flakes”
(I blended tomatoes then dehydrated them),
soaked in water to cover
Italian seasoning (or oregano) to taste
garlic to taste

• In a food processor, grind the almonds fine (alternatively, homogenize them in a Champion juicer with the blank plate)
• Add remaining ingredients, and process until well blended.

I set that aside.

MY SALAD
Then I spiralized a beet, a turnip, a carrot, and a small daikon
(about 6 inches long)
I tapenaded three big red lettuce leaves (roll up leaves to a
fat cigar shape, then finely slice, then chop through the rounds
once or twice)
I combined the spiralized root vegetables and the lettuce shreds,
and added some olive oil, Spike, finely minced garlic, and
apple cider vinegar…

I put the spiralized zucchini on the plates and topped it with about 3 T of the sauce.
Then I filled up the rest of the space on the plate with the salad.

Now I have to get some more spiralizable vegetables. MUST SPIRALIZE. AM VERY HAPPY.

DINNER TONIGHT

DINNER TONIGHT

Sorry no specific recipes. I just looked at what I had from the CSA tonight, and what I had left over from last week, with some almonds and dehydrated tomato slices (thanks to the 40 lbs of tomatoes last month!) I had on hand.

I chose:
red kale
several turnip leaves
an onion
a red bell pepper
two Roma tomatoes
1 med. small turnip
1 beet
arugula leaves
1 red lettuce leaf
1/4 clove garlic
@ 1 tomato worth of dried tomato slices, soaked
some almonds
Thai curry paste
sea salt
apple cider vinegar
extra virgin olive oil

I made massaged greens salad with the kale and turnip leaves (see recipe in recipes section), 1/4 onion, all sliced very thin, 1/4 bell pepper minced, a squirt of Thai green curry paste, a sprinkle of sea salt, and a dash of olive oil (extra virgin, of course).

I made a pate with @ 1-1/2 C almonds, 2 Roma tomatoes, the dried tomato slices, 3/4 red bell pepper, 1/2 onion, 1/4 clove garlic, all ground fine in the food processor.

I made a beet/turnip/onion salad with the turnip, the beet, 1/4 onion, and @1/2 tsp. apple cider vinegar. I processed everything fine in the food processor, to the consistency of apple sauce.

Because my room-mate is a foodie, and cares about presentation, I placed the greens neatly on the plate, put three arugula leaves on the plate and flattened two balls of the pate on top of them, and then put 1/2 of the red lettuce leaf on the plate and arranged an interesting drizzle of the beet/turnip/onion salad in the shape of the leaf. She ended up wrapping the pate in the arugula leaves, and the beet/turnip/onion salad in the lettuce. (I ended up copying her wraps, and I wrapped the greens with the pate)

You know… I did not stop to think about food combining tonight. I absolutely did not think about 80/10/10 (because I never do). I know I need some fat and protein, so there were the almonds and the oil (I did consciously think about that). This was a totally “intuitive” meal.

I feel okay, and I am really happy that I had a delicious meal. I do not feel any ill effects, and I am going to save the leftovers and eat them tomorrow at work. I really do not even feel that I need to be giving excuses, although I am, simply so you will not go saying “Oh, but you should have….” Let’s put it this way. I ate a good healthy meal. My body is happy, and I am not having any rash break-outs (that is how my body reacts to wrong eating). I am full, and I am looking forward to tomorrow, not to the next thing to eat.

RAW TOMATO SALSA

TOMATO SALSA
adapted from a recipe found on livingmom.net

6 C tomatoes, chopped
1 onion,  chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 clove garlic minced
1 jalapeno,  seeded, finely chopped
1 bunch fresh cilantro, finely chopped
1/2 lime, juiced
Zest of 1/2 lime
1 t sea salt (or to taste)
Chili powder to taste
Other vegetables and/or seasonings to taste.

Combine all ingredients and mix well.