What a pretty bag!

Here’s what we were expecting this week:

• 1 piece Mayfield Road Creamery “Bloomfield,” a brie style cheese
• 1 lb. raw honey
• 1 bunch Swiss chard
• 1 bunch carrots with tops
• 1 bunch radishes
• 1 bag mixed greens, can be used for braising or salad greens
• 1 head speckled romaine lettuce (it will have brown spots…that is how it should be)
• 1/2 dz. ears sweet corn
• 1 quarter peck gala apples
• 1 butternut squash (2 if they are small…but that’s doubtful based on what I’ve seen)
• 1 pint mixed color cherry tomatoes
• 2.5 lbs. Roma tomatoes
• 2 zucchini/squash
• Approx. 1 lb. onions
• 1 head broccoli
• A handful Croatian sweet peppers

We received everything exactly as listed.  I’ll probably just use the Swiss chard in a quiche.  We haven’t had it in a while and I plan to be home on Sunday, so it’s a good day to make it.  I’ll probably use some other veggies in it as well.  The kids are excited to see the carrots, so they’ll make an easy side dish for lunch one day this week.  I usually just cook them and sprinkle a bit of cinnamon on them.

I have plenty of eggs and think some zucchini muffins are in order.  The corn is going to need cooked today, so I’ll be adding it to tonight’s dinner.

I haven’t decided on a specific use for the Brie, but I’m sure it will disappear.  We use honey as our regular sweetener.  This will mostly go into tea and muffins.

I’m going to make some sauce this week and use the onion, peppers and tomatoes.  We also picked tomatoes from our garden, so we have plenty.

We’ve been eating the apples as they come.  I’m going to try to source some additional ones for sauce this week.  Winter squash is my favorite.  I’ll probably make soup with this butternut squash.

The speckled lettuce and radishes will go into salads.  The broccoli is part of tonight’s dinner.

I’m determined to tackle braising greens this winter.  We’ll see these often and I never can get away from the bitterness.  I am going to conquer them.  I’m open to ideas.

Hopefully, our schedule will start to calm down this week and I’ll be able to cook a bit more in the kitchen soon.  Lately, our meals have been thrown together based on what’s handy.  It works, but I miss some of the more complex dishes.

I love the colors this week!

Here’s what we were expecting:

• 1 bunch golden beets
• Approx. 2.5 lbs. San Marzano Roma Tomatoes
• Either heirloom tomatoes or 1 pint grape tomatoes
• 1 pint yummy pepper mix (all sweet peppers)
• 1 lb. Berkshire bacon
• 1/2 lb. mixed baby greens (chard, kale, arugula, mizuna, and more)
• 1 head cabbage
• 1 quarter peck Gala apples
• 1 head broccoli
• 8 oz. grass-fed smoked cheddar cheese
• 1 half pint of either Pappy’s pepper butter (like a sweet and tangy homemade mustard) or 1 half pint of Pappy’s Candied Jalapeños (semi-hot jalapeños in a honey syrup)
• A handful of colored peppers (red long peppers probably early week and purple peppers later week)

I’m not sure what happened, but we ended up with eggs and spaghetti squash.  We didn’t get broccoli.  I can see the switch with broccoli and squash – but eggs?  We also got lettuce, but I think that was a deliberate attempt at BLT ingredients.

I have two spaghetti squashes.  I’m thinking about making it Italian style and serving it like spaghetti.  I think everyone in the house will eat it like that (especially with cheese on it).  The head of cabbage is pretty small.  I think I’ll keep it a few days and then make some of my coleslaw.

We’ll be eating apples in our oatmeal.  Also, I ordered a new dehydrator and I’m anxious to try fruit rolls, so some puree might be in order.  These are really good paste tomatoes, so they’ll end up in sauce at some point.  For now, the freezer will be their home, along with the heirloom tomatoes.  We have an over abundance of tomatoes this year, but we aren’t getting them all at once, so it’s harder to make and can sauce.

The Pappy’s Pepper Butter is medium hot.  I’m not a fan of hot things, but I’m determined to try this and a few other things that are on our shelf soon.  My goal is to eat from our house as much as possible.

Delicious bacon never goes to waste around here.  I didn’t get it in the freezer right away, so it’s thawing in the fridge.  We’ll probably have it on Saturday or Sunday.  I wasn’t expecting eggs and we have an overabundance.  I’m going to gift a dozen to my mom since she’s helping with the kids tomorrow.

I don’t think I’ve ever tried this cheese, but there are very few that I don’t like.  All of the peppers this week should be sweet (not hot!) and I’m happy about that.

We also got some mixed greens.  This batch looks pretty good to me, so I’m going to have a big salad for lunch tomorrow.  I’ve gotten away from lunch salads and need to get back to them since they are delicious.

We still have some beets from the other week, so I am going cook all of them all of them tonight or tomorrow.  I’ll probably make a big batch of Harvard beets since we haven’t had them for a while.  The lettuce looks very tasty and will be good in salads or maybe a BLT.

There’s 7 weeks left and I’m already getting sad that the season will be ending soon.  It’s a good think there’s a winter program starting sometime in November.

Here’s what we were expecting to receive this week:

Small CSA:

• 1 lb. pumpkin sage linguini
• 2 lb. log of butter made from grass-grazed, organic milk
• 2 ct. eggplant
• 2 red peppers
• 2 ct. winter squash (varieties include butternut, acorn, spaghetti, honey bear, heart of gold, and a few more)
• Approx. 1.5 lbs. heirloom tomatoes
• 1 lb. yellow wax beans
• Quarter peck Gala apples
• 1 head leaf lettuce

We received notice via our weekly newsletter that the heirloom tomatoes were not in and we could expect slicing tomatoes as a substitute.

Here’s a group shot:

The lettuce will be easily eaten in salads.  We got two heads on Tuesday too.  I’ll miss lettuce season when it ends.  I’m not a big fan of yellow wax beans.  I think they might go in our vegetable soup.  I used to make vegetable soup often during the summer, but now that I know what items are and how to cook them, I hardly ever make it.  Since I’m going on vacation soon, I thought a batch of veggie soup would be good to leave in the freezer for my husband and father in law.

I’m super excited that it’s winter squash season.  These acorn squash are beautiful!  I never got sick of winter squash.  I haven’t decided for sure about the eggplant.  I’m either going to make eggplant pizzas (sliced eggplant baked and then topped with spice, tomato sauce and cheese and baked until the eggplant is cooked and the cheese is melted) or another veggie lasagna.  The lasagna might be nice to have in the freezer for Stephen’s lunches while I’m away.

We ate the pasta for dinner.  I made a basic white sauce (butter, whole wheat flour, pepper, milk, cheese), country sausage crumbles and red peppers to go with it.  It was delicious.  We’ve had this butter before.  It’s good and will last us awhile.

I was glad to see apples.  We got cabbage from our other CSA and I like a coleslaw recipe that uses apples.  I already had the dressing ingredients, raisins and almonds that I needed for the recipe.  The rest of the apples will be eaten as snacks or my oatmeal.   The red peppers were used in tonight’s pasta dish.

The tomatoes look terrible.  Two of them are moldy and I’ll ask for replacements next week.  I’m not sure if these are heirloom, slicing or what.  Either way, two of them are bad tomatoes.

The object of the game this week is to stay ahead.  I’m leaving for vacation on the 19th and need to focus more on packing and prepping the household and less on veggies and the CSAs.  But, I still want to do my best not to waste anything.