The Week That Was - CSA pickup numero uno (a recap)

OK, so this was last week, but just for documentation and recipes' sake, I'll give you a rundown based on some notes I made last week when I was jealous of / inspired by my friend Kate's blog. Her blog is way more about nutrition than mine will be, because she is not cucinaphobic at all. She's also participating in her neighborhood's CSA, and I've had a good time comparing notes between what her farmer is growing and what our farmer is growing. They're already getting zucchini, which makes me mega jealous.

Anyhoo, back on topic. CSA Week The First. June 19, 2008.

We got: turnips and radishes with the tops still on, a mess of salad mix, a head of boston lettuce, 4 (count 'em!) garlic scapes, bok choy, kale, and a wee basil seedling.

I made:

Recipe 1.1 -- my not-actually-that-famous-but-maybe-someday gumbo z'herbes. Gumbo is one of the few real grownup recipes I'm pretty confident about making, and luckily it's just the thing to make when you're confronted by piles and piles of greens. I froze all of it in two big tupperwares for future use, which is my favorite thing to do when I make gumbo. I call them "gumbosicles". OK, who am I kidding, I don't really call them anything, because pretty much nobody knows they exist except me and Ranbir. But they are the best thing to have kickin' it in the freezer, because they last months and you can pull them out when you're tired of pasta and SURPRISE, a big pot of gumbo in the time it takes to boil rice.

Recipe 1.2 -- GARLIC SCAPE AND WALNUT PESTO. I scream because holy crap, was this good. It's the first real blow to my cucinaphobia, and one of the major inspirations for this blog (in addition to my serious jealousy of Kate and Winning Friends With Salad). It took like 5 minutes to make, too.

And also a few salads (which were only so-so because I kept forgetting to go out and buy more vegetables to put in them besides just the lettuces, but oh well, they were still pretty good), and with the trimmings of all the greens and various odds, ends, leftovers, and spices I whipped up my first attempt at homemade vegetable stock, about which more later when I actually get to use some in a recipe and can report back about my success or failure.

Confession: we had to throw out about a third of the salad mix because after 2 salads we still had some left over and it was already on its last legs. I knew it wouldn't make it to another salad.

On Salad And Green Vegetables In General: I don't love salad that much. It's one of the things I already know how to make, which is pretty good, but honestly I can't really eat it all that often. I get tired of salads very, very quickly. So on the one hand, kicking the CSA off with lettuces was good because at least I know what to do with that, but on the other hand, it was easily like 5 salads worth of lettuce, all in all, and I just can't eat salad 5 days a week, sorry. Especially considering how fast lettuce goes bad. This is still a major concern, because we got even more lettuce this week -- if anybody wants half a pound or so of awesome fresh local/organic lettuce, please email me, stat! Come take some of this lettuce off my hands!