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From my CSA farm's newsletter:
Tasty way to end the season, not counting the gleaning and pumpkin pick scheduled on the 21st.
Also, I redecorated the place using one of the new LJ themes (the "Poe" theme for Expressive) for Halloween. Cute, no?
[Edit, didn't feel like making a whole new entry for this:] Discworld cake . Eeee!! (via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kajafoglio)
1 -- We will have honey in the shares next week. I will give everyone about a pound of honey. This means you have to bring your own jar. A pint jar holds a pound and a half of honey. That will do. How it will work is you bring your jar and I will pour you a pound of honey while you pick up your vegetables next week.
Tasty way to end the season, not counting the gleaning and pumpkin pick scheduled on the 21st.
Also, I redecorated the place using one of the new LJ themes (the "Poe" theme for Expressive) for Halloween. Cute, no?
[Edit, didn't feel like making a whole new entry for this:] Discworld cake . Eeee!! (via
kajafoglio)(no subject)
Sep. 9th, 2006 03:29 pmYesterday in review:
- Whined a bit about feeling like I wasted most of my vacation.
- Gave myself a kick in the butt to stop whining and went over to check out Ellanor C. Lawrence Park where I spent a while walking around about two and a half miles of the trails there.
- Ran into (almost literally) a pretty little Eastern ribbon snake next to the creek there. Am proud of myself for not freaking right the hell out. (Where I grew up, most snakes I came across were cottonmouths and so snakes automatically make me nervous at first glance.) Not sure which of the two of us was more surprised; it ran off before I could get the camera back out. It did remind me though that perhaps I should keep a closer eye on where I was stepping since we do have copperheads.
- While enjoying my walk, I completely failed to remember that I needed to go pick up my CSA veggies. Oops. Oh well, the only thing I'm missing is the Cushaw pumpkin, everything else on the list we've still got plenty of. I could try to pick them up on Sunday, but I think the pickup time at the farm is around the same time as the movie at AFI. Movie wins.
- Went duckpin bowling and scored the greatest complete fluke shot EVAR: the ball was clearly headed for the gutter, so I turned my back to go pick up another and try again; when I turned around, all ten pins were all gone. Apparently it hit the gutter and bounced in such a way that it hit some pins which proceeded to knock over all the rest as they fell. w00t! Accidental strike! Unfortunately after three hours of bowling, my wrist and shoulder were killing me and those fabulous bowling shoes didn't do much good for my plantar fasciitis. Worth it though, it was fun.
(no subject)
Aug. 5th, 2006 05:52 pmThis weeks CSA veggies:
Sweet corn
Leeks
Hot peppers
Cherry tomatoes (pint)
Cape gooseberries
Basil
Tomatoes (all you can eat)
Garden eggs (I ended up with another Chinese eggplant)
The eggplant needs to be eaten soon, and I keep getting basil fully intending to do *something* with it but failing miserably. With all the tomatoes though, I think probably the easiest thing to do is get a hunk of mozzarella and some really good olive oil to make a caprese salad. I could make pesto I suppose, but I don't actually like it all that much. I've been picking up yellow cherry tomatoes, which have an interesting taste that's less acidic than the red variety I usually get; those go straight from container to mouth, no recipe suggestions needed. Mmmm.
Any ideas on what to do with the gooseberries other than eat them out of hand? There aren't a whole lot, so I don't think jelly or anything like that is realistic.
Sweet corn
Leeks
Hot peppers
Cherry tomatoes (pint)
Cape gooseberries
Basil
Tomatoes (all you can eat)
Garden eggs (I ended up with another Chinese eggplant)
The eggplant needs to be eaten soon, and I keep getting basil fully intending to do *something* with it but failing miserably. With all the tomatoes though, I think probably the easiest thing to do is get a hunk of mozzarella and some really good olive oil to make a caprese salad. I could make pesto I suppose, but I don't actually like it all that much. I've been picking up yellow cherry tomatoes, which have an interesting taste that's less acidic than the red variety I usually get; those go straight from container to mouth, no recipe suggestions needed. Mmmm.
Any ideas on what to do with the gooseberries other than eat them out of hand? There aren't a whole lot, so I don't think jelly or anything like that is realistic.
(no subject)
Jul. 20th, 2006 02:09 pmFrom my CSA newsletter:
Mmmm, tomatoes. Tomato sammiches are one of the best things about summer, along with lightning bugs, light until after 9 PM, trips to the beach and heat lightning.
Right now the crop is just starting to trickle in, but hopefully, if everything goes as expected, in the next couple of weeks we will have a flood of tomatoes. Early Girls, Big Boys. Big Beef, Sun Golds, Valley Girls, Mortgage Lifters, Lemon Boys, Brandywines, Romas, and another dozen varieties I can't recall off of the top of my head.
If everything goes as planned, there will be hundreds and hundreds of ripe tomatoes each day.
Mmmm, tomatoes. Tomato sammiches are one of the best things about summer, along with lightning bugs, light until after 9 PM, trips to the beach and heat lightning.
(no subject)
Jul. 17th, 2006 09:50 pmTonight I decided to try using up some of the CSA veggies, since I've been very bad about using them while they're still edible. Today's experiment was the fennel, using a recipe from Melissa's Great Book of Produce which I cut down to a single serving (from four; these are roughly the right amounts for a single serving below):
Fish fillets with fennel and orangeThe verdict? Eh. It sounded good on paper, but apparently I don't like fennel. I'm not sure why I thought I would, seeing as how I don't particularly care for licorice or anise. Seemed a shame to let the veggies go to waste though, and the fish itself was okay.
1 tablespoon olive or vegetable oil
1 small fennel bulb, trimmed and cut in crosswise strips
salt and pepper to taste
1 orange, Cara Cara preferred (I used your ubiquitous Valencia instead), cut in segments and juice reserved
1 5-7 oz fish fillet, such as salmon, red snapper or sea bass
1/2 tablespooon minced Italian parsley
In large, deep skillet, heat 1/4 tablespoon olive oil on high heat. Add fennel, salt and pepper. Lower heat to medium and cook until fennel browns slightly, about 3 minutes. Add reserved orange juice (should be roughly 1 tablespoon), cover, and simmer on medium low until tender (about 2 minutes). Set aside.
Heat 1/2 tablespoon oil in large, ovenproof skillet on medium-high heat. Add fillets and cook about 3 minutes on each side, browning well. Smaller fillets will be cooked through at this point, but thicker ones will need additional cooking. Place skillet in 350-degree oven until cooked through, about 3-5 minutes.
Stir parsley into fennel, spoon over fish and garnish with orange segments.
First CSA veggies of the season
Jun. 8th, 2006 11:06 pmHere's what's going to be in the first box, apparently:
There's also oregano if I want it and let him know by tomorrow morning. I don't know what variety of squash or lettuce yet. Yes I have a cookbook or two (or twenty four) and tend to like things like broccoli best when they're raw, but would absolutely love to hear about your favorite recipes using some of these things if you feel like sharing.
Edit: What I ended up with: four garlic scapes, four radishes, one yellow summer squash, two heads of broccoli, mustard greens, sorrel, Tokyo Bekana, mizuna, oregano, one small pac choi which might've been the last one. I think most of the leafy greens will just end up in a big salad. Sorrel is...interesting. Good interesting, but interesting nonetheless.
- garlic scape
- pac choi
- radishes
- squash
- broccoli
- mustard greens
- sorrel
- lettuce
There's also oregano if I want it and let him know by tomorrow morning. I don't know what variety of squash or lettuce yet. Yes I have a cookbook or two (or twenty four) and tend to like things like broccoli best when they're raw, but would absolutely love to hear about your favorite recipes using some of these things if you feel like sharing.
Edit: What I ended up with: four garlic scapes, four radishes, one yellow summer squash, two heads of broccoli, mustard greens, sorrel, Tokyo Bekana, mizuna, oregano, one small pac choi which might've been the last one. I think most of the leafy greens will just end up in a big salad. Sorrel is...interesting. Good interesting, but interesting nonetheless.
(no subject)
Feb. 16th, 2006 10:52 amAaugh! I hit Ticketb*stard at 10:03 and found no Death Cab for Cutie tickets. I figured I'd missed out on the pre-sale after trying for five or six minutes and getting no option to buy tickets. I reloaded the page for some reason five minutes later and got the "look for tickets" option finally. Okay. *type* 2 tickets, best available, deal with password and stupid captcha..."no tickets found that match your request". Pre-sale seems to have sold out (at least of anything other than single tickets) in under five minutes. Or else as someone else reports, the Ticketb*astard site was having some "issues" that made it look that way. Either way, no pre-sale tickets for me. Oh well.
<Otto>DISAPPOINTED!</Otto>
Not surprised, mind you, but disappointed.
In much less disappointing news, I got my request in early enough this year to get a vegetable share in the Bull Run Mountain CSA farm. If you're not familiar with the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) concept, the basic idea is that you pay a membership fee in advance that helps cover farm production costs, and in return you receive a share of the harvest in the form of a weekly box of produce for some set number of weeks. Usually you receive your share by going to a designated drop-off point and collecting it there, or by going to the farm. You support local farmers and get fresh vegetables, hard to go wrong with that.
Mmm, boxes of fresh veggies (and occasionally flowers) every week for 19 weeks. Plus early greens in May if I want to go out to the farm, which isn't all that far from work. We decided to go with a single share rather than a two-person share, mostly because this is an experiment. Having a box of vegetables show up, some of which I may not have ever considered cooking with before, and having to figure out what to do with them rather than figuring out what I want to make and then buying ingredients should be an interesting challenge. It looks from last year's list like I'll be learning to like a lot of greens. If you're local and interested in buying a CSA share, there's a list of local farms accepting customers currently and their scheduled drop-off points on the Post's web site. The USDA link in the previous paragraph has links to databases to look up local CSA farms in other areas.
<Otto>DISAPPOINTED!</Otto>
Not surprised, mind you, but disappointed.
In much less disappointing news, I got my request in early enough this year to get a vegetable share in the Bull Run Mountain CSA farm. If you're not familiar with the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) concept, the basic idea is that you pay a membership fee in advance that helps cover farm production costs, and in return you receive a share of the harvest in the form of a weekly box of produce for some set number of weeks. Usually you receive your share by going to a designated drop-off point and collecting it there, or by going to the farm. You support local farmers and get fresh vegetables, hard to go wrong with that.
Mmm, boxes of fresh veggies (and occasionally flowers) every week for 19 weeks. Plus early greens in May if I want to go out to the farm, which isn't all that far from work. We decided to go with a single share rather than a two-person share, mostly because this is an experiment. Having a box of vegetables show up, some of which I may not have ever considered cooking with before, and having to figure out what to do with them rather than figuring out what I want to make and then buying ingredients should be an interesting challenge. It looks from last year's list like I'll be learning to like a lot of greens. If you're local and interested in buying a CSA share, there's a list of local farms accepting customers currently and their scheduled drop-off points on the Post's web site. The USDA link in the previous paragraph has links to databases to look up local CSA farms in other areas.
