Here is what I found in this week’s share:

First up was some good-looking lettuce and some bunching onions.

Tomatoes and peas. Yum! I’m not sure if these are garden or sugar snap peas. I’ll have to try one or two to find out.

Garlic scapes and zucchini.

Last, but not least, some cherry tomatoes.

We also ordered a dozen eggs as an extra item.

The photos are dark again this week.  Maybe I can figure out some evening lighting for next year.  Here’s the group shot for this week.

Let’s take a closer look:

Green onions, green beans

Red Russian Kale, bell peppers

Butternut squash, lettuce

Radishes, apples

Sweet potatoes, tomatoes

Garlic

We’ve been going through a ton of apples this year.  Between morning oats, snacks and applesauce, I can’t keep them in the house.  We went picking for the last time this year, but I was still glad to see apples in our pick up today.

I still have some cabbage in our fridge.  I’ll be making another batch of unstuffed cabbage in the crockpot Thursday.  It will use the garlic, tomatoes, bell peppers, and green onion.  I love having a recipe that uses many CSA ingredients and is also flexible.

My kids have been asking for sweet potatoes the last couple of days.  I usually slice them, season them and bake them.  They disappear quickly with a bit of ketchup for dipping.

Lettuce and some radishes will go in lunch salads.  The rest of the radishes will go into turnip soup.  The green beans make an easy side dish.

I’m not quite sure about the squash yet.  I’m thinking about making some butternut squash soup, but I’m not sure of the timing since I need to make turnip soup first.

It’s supposed to get cold this week.  I’m glad we have some hearty items that go well with ovens and soup.  It’s been a fun season.  I’m already excited about the winter CSA.

Here’s what we received today:

Let’s take a closer look.  I couldn’t really fit everything in the photo.

Green beans, sweet corn

Potatoes, apples (Honeygold variety)

Bell peppers, dill

Poblano peppers, zucchini

Onions, hot peppers

Leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce

Eggplant, basil

Tomatoes

I’m leaving for Hawaii on Monday, so this week is all about food preservation.  I’m cooking some meals for my family to enjoy while I am gone, but most of that work is done or planned.  In addition to my trip, my husband is out of town tomorrow through Friday.

I’m going to blanch and freeze the green beans.  I have others to freeze as well, so it’s worth the effort.

I plan to have some corn with the kids tomorrow and freeze the rest.  There’s only 6 ears so that should be simple.

Unless I get ambitious, I’m going to store the potatoes.  A few of the apples are already mixed in with the sauce that I was making tonight.  The rest will be going into apple-plum sauce tomorrow.  We picked plums yesterday, so I need to make something with them.

I’ll going to make fajitas and use some peppers and onions this week.  I’ll freeze the rest.

I’m going to make some basil/olive oil cubes for the freezer with the basil.  It will be handy for winter soup and tomato sauce dishes.

I already froze the tomatoes.  I just washed them, cored, and quartered them.  I’ll make a saucy dish with them in a couple of week.

The lettuce will get eaten in salads.  I’ll either blanch and freezer the eggplant or make mini eggplant pizzas.  It all depends on the rest of the items are going.

I’ll need to research the dill.  Usually, I use it in pickles, but I don’t have any cucumbers.

It’s going to be a busy week here.  I have a to do list that’s a mile long before my trip.

In yesterday’s CSA, we received a couple of packs of slicing tomatoes.  Although they weren’t paste tomatoes, I still wanted to make sauce.  Actually, I want to make ketchup, we it all starts with juice.

I decided to set up the food mill and see what happened.

I sliced the tomatoes, Sally filled the tray and Nick pushed them through.  It worked like a charm.

The kids had a great time and I was glad that this practice session worked.  It’s almost applesauce time and I am hoping that they’ll be able to help.

As usual, we received our list of contents on Tuesday.  It’s nice to know what we have to work with between our CSAs by Tuesday night.

Here’s what we were expecting:

Small CSA:

• 1 package Mild Italian Sausage links, 4 to a pack
• 1.5 lbs apricots
• 1.5 lbs Red Haven peaches
• 1 dozen pasture raised chicken eggs
• 6 ears Mira 301 Super Sweet corn
• 1 candy onion
• 1 head leaf lettuce
• 1 lb green beans
• 1 bunch kale, either Curly or Black Tuscan

Here’s a group shot:

Apparently, the Italian sausage is really good.  I don’t think we’ve had it yet.  Always happy to see peaches.

We still have onions to chop and freeze and the corn is already gone.

We were almost out of lettuce, so I see a couple of salads in our future.  I don’t think I’ve ever had fresh apricots and certainly not local ones.  I’m looking forward to having one at breakfast.

Curly kale might make for another batch of kale chips,  The last batch was ok, but I’ve read a few other variations lately and may have to experiment again this weekend.  I’m in love with local eggs and just used our last two yesterday, so these were especially nice to get.

Everyone in our house likes green beans.

In addition to our small, we purchased 2 packages of chicken brats.  These were $7 each.  They were amazing when we had them in our box a few weeks back.  We’re having company next weekend and I stuck these in the freezer for grilling.  We also paid for our cream cheese ($5) that we picked up 2 weeks ago.

I’m happy that we had a week off of squash and tomatoes.  I still have some to use up from our Tuesday CSA pickup.  Next week we are “on vacation” from Fresh Fork and I hope that gives us a little extra time to regroup and make sure we are caught up in the fridge.