CSA Week 14: This should be more exciting.

I mean it should be more exciting for you guys. I, for one, am having a blast picking out our veggies each week and cooking them up, and I am already enjoying being back on a regular schedule (see: no more class), but this most recent week might seems a little pedestrian to you. No matter! Pedestrians are better than the rest of us, because they walk while we drive our stupid polluting cars.

We already had quite a bit of food in the fridge, so we basically grabbed our One Straw stuff and went home. There you see another humongous sweet potato—even bigger than the one from the previous week! they grow them HUGE at One Straw!—some chard, a stalk of broccoli, and an average-sized butternut squash. I think it was average, anyway. Seeing it next to that mutant sweet potato makes me doubt myself.

I flaked out on the pictures, my darlings. The broccoli we steamed, and you don’t really need to see that, do you? I should have really done better on the rest of our meals, because Red took the lead this week, and his efforts are always exceptional. Example: We had that chard, some onions, and random portabella stems in the fridge. I had meant to sauté them, but I got busy or tired or sad or something and went to my last class after leaving him with vague instructions to…do something with our orphan veggies. When I came home, he had diced and stirred and simmered everything with marsala and Bragg’s for a lovely improvisational meal. It was excellent over rice. And you can’t see it, because I suck.

He brought the noise again on Friday, while I sat in traffic for two hours trying to get home. (It was rain, Baltimore. Not the zombie apocalypse.) Friday happened to be the autumnal equinox (remember?), so of course we wanted our food to match. While I sat at red lights and read random articles on my work phone (I still hate you, Crackberry, but you stopped me from committing rush-hour homicide), my awesome husband mashed that sweet potato into submission and popped our first risotto of the season into the oven. Soon after I finally stumbled through the door, we enjoyed cinnamon-spiced mashed sweet potatoes and that fabulous butternut risotto with sage and red onions. I didn’t get a pic of the mash, but here’s the risotto in all its glory:

If you get right up close to the monitor, maybe you can smell it.

He is a fucking keeper, I tell you what.

Noms of late.

Here’s a random food post for you long-suffering readers. Still grooving on Appetite for Reduction, so that’s what we’ve been eating lately:


This is Ginger Bok Choy & Soba with some cubed tofu. It was really good, except for the part where soba noodles cost four times as much as regular noodles. Eff that, I say. I buy my pasta at Costco, even the whole-wheat stuff. Seriously though, the ginger adds a nice zip to this dish and the noodles are very comforting.


Arabian Lentil & Rice Soup may be my favorite soup yet from this book. Red compared it to chicken noodle, and it does have that homey, snow-day appeal without, you know, the carcass. We added extra carrots, because carrots rock. The rice soaks up the liquid after it sits awhile, but I just added a little extra water when I packed the leftovers for lunch and everything was aces.

We desperately need bowls that aren’t stark white.

Applesauce Soup! Okay, not really, but that’s what I’m calling it. This is Butternut-Apple Soup, and it is like Thanksgiving in a bowl. We had to hack this one a bit, as our hippie grocery was out of butternut squash. We bought three small acorn squashes instead, reasoning that it was a pretty fair substitution. The recipe calls for dicing the squash and adding it to the pot, but if you’ve ever tried to peel an acorn squash, you’ll know why I decided to roast them and then scoop the cooked flesh out instead. It worked like awesome. It gets pureed anyway, so where’s the harm? It tastes pretty good, too—a little sweet for me, but it all balances out. This is the kind of thing I would serve to guests at a fancy holiday party, with a little sprig of fresh rosemary on top. Like the lentil-rice soup, it thickens in the fridge, but that just means you’ll spill a little less.

And here, my darlings, is what I made last night:


This gorgeous specimen is Cauliflower Pesto Soup, and yes, I chiffonaded that basil and artfully arranged that pine nut just for the photo. One of my coworkers sent me this recipe that appeared in the Washington Post, which is basically the exact same thing. The fine print says that it’s adapted from the Appetite for Reduction recipe, but the only change I can see is the amount of pine nuts, and those are optional anyway. Oh, and a little extra olive oil, which the soup totally does not need. So, I wouldn’t really call that adapted, more like ripped off. Anyway, I made it Isa’s way because I don’t suck. And the soup is divine. So easy and so good for you, but luscious with basil and garlic. My basil lives at my in-laws’ house because they get all the sunlight that we don’t, and the basil was pretty pathetic when it lived here. Under my mom-in-law’s care, it’s perked right up. I love fresh basil.

I ate my soup with a side of this:



Sad puppy face is because Red is away for work this week. Lucy and I are both despondently lounging in front of the TV, nuzzling each other for comfort. God, I’m so dramatic. He’ll be back late Friday. Until then, the house will be quiet and the fridge will runneth over as I’ll have no one to help me eat everything.

Speaking of Lucy, she is still on activity restriction, but she had her stitches out over the weekend. The vet thinks she may have injured a tendon as she seems unable to retract one of her toes. This doesn’t hurt her and doesn’t affect how she moves; it just means that one of her toes sort of magically grew a couple centimeters. Leave it to Lucy, y’all.

CSA Week 19: What kind of squash are you again?

The surprise this week was a strange creature of unknown provenance. It was listed on the pickup sheet as “red cory squash.” As that list is frequently rife with creative spellings, Red began Googling “red curry squash,” which netted us a million recipes but little clue as to what kind of squash-pumpkin-thing we had sitting on our counter. Eventually he discovered that what we had was a red kuri squash, and, as you see, it looks very like a small reddish pumpkin:


Whew, mystery solved. Then, he tried to slice and peel it, which was easier said than done. For your reference, red kuri squash has the hide of an elephant. Don’t try to peel this mother. Whack it in half by whatever means you need to (big knife, circular saw), scoop out the seeds, and roast it like you would an acorn squash. The flavor is definitely squash-like, but with a texture that’s the slightest bit reminiscent of potato. So as not to let the oven feel neglected, we roasted our sweet potatoes and Week 18’s butternut squash at the same time and had a roasted fall vegetable supper.


More cilantro! Guess where it went? The freezer.

We got a rather hefty cabbage, much larger than the petite cabbage from Week 17. As nice as it was, we decided to share the wealth and gave it to Red’s grandma. She was really pleased. So were we, even though she planned to cook it with ham.

The interpretive-spelling trend continued with a leafy green described only as “scarole.” Obviously, this was escarole, a vegetable that (unlike red kuri squash) we had actually heard of. It looks like lettuce. We used it in Veganomicon’s Escarole with Capers and White Beans. This one was kind of strange. We ate it over pasta, and it was fine, but something kept it from being super-duper-delicious. The textural clash of capers and beans? I don’t know. It didn’t sour me on escarole, but I was less than enthusiastic about the end result. I look forward to trying escarole again in another type of dish.


Last but not least, we had baby eggplants and spinach. Curry time! I hacked Vegan with a Vengeance’s Chickpea and Spinach Curry, subbing the seared eggplant for the chickpeas. This dish has a crazy amount of spices, but it’s delicious.


Almost to Week 20! I can’t believe we’ve been doing this since June.

Fall milestone #2: Risotto.

As you know, it’s officially autumn here in the Eastern United States. And while it’s no secret that the discovery of Sweet & Sara marshmallows and the delicious s’mores that followed really signaled autumn to me, last night Red and I enjoyed another fall favorite. Yes, my darlings, it's risotto season.

Like crêpes, risotto is another dish that used to make me nervous. That fancy rice! All that constant stirring! My wrist hurt! With regular rice (brown basmati for us), you turn it on, give it a stir, and leave it alone for 40 minutes. Bingo, you’ve got rice. Risotto is a much more demanding dish, but it’s 1) worth it and 2) not as hard as I once thought. You do have to stir, though.

Owing to my risotto anxiety was the fact that the first time I made it was during August. In my non-air-conditioned apartment. It was madness, I tell you. I had the upright fan pointed at me, the stove fan on high, and the back sliding door open, and I still succeeded in sweating into my risotto. Epically gross. I determined then that risotto would be reserved for fall and winter only. I’ve stuck to this decision, and I have no regrets.

Last night, I made a tried-and-true winter squash risotto that always leaves us happy. The recipe is here, though of course I veganize it. I’ve also learned to steam the squash before adding it to the rice, because it’s easier that way. Our magical Titan Peeler handily stripped the lovely butternut squash I’d scored at the grocery store on Monday, then Red helped me chop it. Well, first I chopped half, and he complained that the pieces were too big. I handed over the knife and that was that. We had way more than the cup and a half the recipe calls for, but so what? You can never have too much squash. It took about 15 minutes to steam it all in the microwave, and then it just chilled out on the counter while I stirred the risotto. It was kind of meditative to stand there stirring a big steamy pot of risotto, ladling in more broth every few minutes and doing it all over again. At least it was until my wrist got tired. Then my stirring may have suffered, but it worked out. I added the squash close to the end, because it was already cooked, but it spent enough time being stirred with the rice to meld flavors and thicken the risotto a little.

It turned out beautifully. Here, see for yourself:

Our next challenge is figuring out what to do with the rest of it. I’m happy to eat leftover risotto all week, but Kittens Gone Lentil’s baked risotto balls gave me another idea. Baking risotto sounds tricky, but if the worst that happens is that they fall apart, we’re in no worse shape than we were before. Wish me luck!

In totally non-risotto news:

• My new tattoo is healing well. It itches like no one’s business. And I can’t scratch it.
• Read this now. You won’t like it, but it’s important. It could just as easily be my dog, or yours. Train your dogs, people! Punish the deed (and the owner), not the breed!