A grand experiment shuts down.

Back in October I announced on this blog that I would taking a break from this CSA experiment at work. As you can see, it looks as if everyone else did too! I know for a fact we've all been cooking as we share our kitchen adventures amongst ourselves at work all the time. For busy people it is very hard to find the time to take a few minutes out of your day and blog your thoughts and recipes and this blog really suffered from that. Additionally, I think the group enthusiam for the project waned and that isn't something that people would be too enthused to write about. As of now, none of our original bloggers (some never even got around to posting once!) are part of the program anymore and nobody else in our office felt inclined to join the blogging here. C'est la vie!

I really enjoyed the CSA but the experience as a whole left me a bit uninspired. I guess I really like the IDEA of it but in practicality it didn't work well for our household. I enjoy my Saturday's at the farmers market and while that isn't always local produce, most of it is organic if you shop carefully.

In the interest of simplicity and doing our part to maintain a clean internet, this blog will be shut down shortly. Over the course of the next week or so I will be moving all of my posts to my personal blog and then I will shut this one down.

Thanks for visiting!

Taking a CSA Break But Still Cooking Organic!

Yesterday was the last basket of my current CSA share commitment. 14 weeks since the first basket arrived! It was my intention to switch our 'subscription' to an every OTHER week program to reduce the pressure of using all the produce in one week, be a bit more pragmatic with the expense, and still carry on our support of the CSA concept. Morning Song Farms disallows vacation skips when you go every other week and I have a lot of travel scheduled this month and through the end of the year. As such, I will use this time to reflect on the experience and make my decision as to whether or not we will continue when the dust settles. I hope to post a bit on a trip or two to a local farmer's market and compare the two organic experiences.

Despite the lack of posts, I think the others here are still going strong with their CSA boxes. Hopefully they will continue to share as well.

In the meantime, I still have lots of zucchini from Morning Song Farm! That's just fine with me as its always been a favorite. Several pieces went into this dish I made for a dinner party last weekend, Vegetable Tian. Its a great baked veggie dish that only uses a little gruyere so it remains a healthy oven dish for a buffet.

I've copied the recipe after the jump but you can get both this and other recipes, as well as a full report on the menu here.


Vegetable Tian:

Adapted from Ina Garten, "Barefoot in Paris".

Ingredients

* Good olive oil
* 2 large yellow onions, cut in half and sliced
* 2 garlic cloves, minced
* 3/4 pound yellow squas, yellow zucchini.
* 3/4 pound zucchini
* 1 1/4 pounds medium tomatoes
* 1 teaspoon kosher salt
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, plus extra sprigs
* 2 ounces Gruyere cheese, grated

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Brush a 9 by 13 by 2-inch baking dish with olive oil. In a medium saute pan, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil and cook the onions over medium-low heat for 8 to 10 minutes, until translucent. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Spread the onion mixture on the bottom of the baking dish.

Slice the potatoes, zucchini, and tomatoes in 1/4-inch thick slices. Layer them alternately in the dish on top of the onions, fitting them tightly, making only 1 layer. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, thyme leaves, and thyme sprigs and drizzle with 1 more tablespoon of olive oil. Cover the dish with aluminum foil and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the potatoes are tender. Uncover the dish, remove the thyme sprigs, sprinkle the cheese on top, and bake for another 30 minutes until browned. Serve warm.

A Surprise Dinner Guest...

One of the joys of being part of Morning Song Farm's CSA is that I never know exactly what I'm going to get. That goes for the fruits and veggies as well as a few farm friends that come along for the ride. This little guy made it through a good wash at the sink, a few days in the refrigerator and finally a bath of balsamic vinaigrette. Just as we were finishing dinner, he inched his way up our salad spoon to say "Thanks very much. See you next time. I'll just be going now." This sort of thing would normally cause me to lose my appetite, but somehow I wasn't bothered at all by our little green dinner guest. It just seemed he was part of the package.

What is That? A French Breakfast Radish!

Another new item in the box this week: The French Breakfast Radish. How did I know that you might ask? My friend Cindy blogged about them not that long ago and how she had made Bon Appetit's Green Bean Salad with Radishes and Prosciutto.

I will definitely be making this before the weekend! I don't know if I'll get the ricotta salata as I have a lot of feta on hand. (Always.) Whole Foods is so close thought so I might break down and get it.

Swiss Chard That I Almost Put in the "Share Box"!

OMG! I almost gave up my Swiss Chard today into the share basket. But Trevor saved the day by telling me that it's good and I should keep it. So, I made this recipe and it was delicious! I especially liked the spiciness of the crushed red pepper. And I guess it didn't hurt that I smeared Smart Balance and salt on it in the end. He he he. I learned two things from this 1) maybe I don't want to discontinue my CSA subscription because I never would have bought swiss chard for myself and 2) fresher is definitely better when it comes to swiss chard.

P.S. I was thinking about not renewing due to financial circumstances (I'm a cheapskate!), however if I didn't have my box today, I might have just eaten a bowl of ice cream or cereal for dinner. Yikes!

Cooking for This Week

When you saw that last post were you wondering what he made with dandelion greens and ice berg lettuce? I'm in a good groove now with what has been coming in the rest of the box. This week I made more pesto and froze my mint according to Gillian's instructions.

Lettuce Wraps!


I always love the wraps at that branded Asian food store. They serve them as an appetizer but I prefer them as my complete dinner. Turned out they were the perfect dish to 'absorb' my dandelion greens as I don't really like the 'scrubbier' greens for salads as they get a bit bitter. But sliced up they make a good counter to the sweeter sesame oils and hoisin sauce in lettuce wraps.

Ice berg lettuce leaves
1 lb ground beef
1 TBS olive oil for frying
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves
2 TBS soy sauce
3 TBS hoisin sauce
2 TBS rice vinegar
Asian chili pepper sauce to taste. (I put in 3 TBS and that was good for me.)
1 can water chestnuts (drained and chopped)
1 bunch green onions chopped (reserving some chopped greens for garnish)
1/2 bunch dandelion greens
2 TBS dark sesame oil.

Heat a medium skillet to high heat, add 1 tbs oil and brown ground beef. Break into small pieces and when completely cooked through, remove from heat and sit aside to drain on paper towels. While the meat is cooling, add the onions to the pan and stir for 1 minute to begin cooking. Add garlic, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, vinegar and chili pepper sauce to the onions. Stir to mix well. Add water chestnuts, green onions and sesame oil. Stir in chopped dandelion greens. When all is heated through add sauce to ground beef and mix well in bowl. Garnish bowl with reserved green onion and let your guests make their own wraps using the lettuce cups.

Don't have dandelion greens? I don't blame you. Sub in anything you want. Shredded carrot would work well too!

Whats In The Box?

This week's Harvest Box:

New items included dandilion greens, green pepper, and iceberg lettuce. The harvest ticket siad the box included a clamshell of cherry tomatoes or "1" and this was my "1":

Can't win them all I guess. It went into some sauce!