What's Cookin?

Deep dish pizza with last year's CSA oven-dried tomatoes, and CSA spinach baked right into the crust:

Mmmmmmmmmmm.......

Sauteed swiss chard with cous cous on the side:

Eh.

Mussels are local, wild, and ridiculously cheap to buy in Maine. See?

And they're really, really good cooked with pasta and onions and kale:

My parents hate all food that comes from the ocean. They'll probably disown me when they see these pictures:

I found the recipe for mussels & kale here.

Today at work I ate this for lunch:

CSA spinach, CSA lettuce, CSA carrots, and a CSA golden beet. I like to round out my CSA lunches with a large, local milkshake.

Pioneer Woman Envy

Do you read Pioneer Woman Cooks? Because if you don't, you should. She's funny, and fantastic, and uses butter and cream in everything. I want to be The Pioneer Woman, but sigh, here I sit, just another day as regular old Amy Lawson.

I tried to make some pioneer woman bread. And well, I'm still not her. Mine's not ugly, but it's not breathtakingly beautiful like Ree's either:

How'd she make her bread bloom like that? I WANT MY BREAD TO BLOOM, DAMN IT!

But either way, it was really good. It had to be, there was an entire stick of butter in that loaf. Oh, and in case you're wondering, I used her recipe, but added half a bag of wilted spinach (wrung out and chopped finely), and a small handful of cheddar cheese.

And this. Isn't this the ugliest picture I've ever posted on this site?

Sauteed beet greens with sesame seeds and cashews. Tasted better than it looks. Honestly.

Teacher, we appreciate you! So here's your...uh...spinach.

No seriously, I gave James's kindergarten teacher (who happens to be the most amazing kindergarten teacher on the planet) a bag and a half of spinach as an end-of-the-year thank you gift.

But this isn't the teacher gift. This is pork chops, potato salad, and wilted spinach with carmelized onions and sesame seeds:

This isn't the teacher gift either. This is a regular old taco, with half a bag of spinach mixed in with the meat. I swear to you up and down, if you chop it up small, it pretty much disappears:

Now this, THIS, is the teacher gift:

A spinach stromboli with whole wheat crust, and a bag of CSA salad:

My mom was a kindergarten teacher for 20+ years, and I still remember the year someone made her dinner as a last-day-of-school gift. She was way happy. I wanted to make James's teacher way happy...and use up my spinach, so voila!

Next year? Hot dogs.

Where the Spinach Flows like Water

Potato salad, CSA salad (except for the cucumbers, those come from a factory farm somewhere in space), and a turkey burger with onions, cheddar cheese, and spinach mixed in with the meat. I didn't have my  burger on bread, because I always need to be ready for an unexpected magazine shoot:

Green smoothie made from OJ, a frozen banana, CSA spinach, and chia seeds. Watch me save the world after drinking this sucker:

Well I done do reckon this is my Southern friend Misty randomly delivering a cake to my door. Her potluck was cancelled and someone had to eat it. No spinach involved:

If you're local, and you ever need a cake, hit this girl up. Her cake company, Capital Cakes, is on facebook.

And finally, a quesadilla with steamed spinach (this alone used up half of a bag...yay!), bleu cheese and buffalo sauce:

Prepare to be amazed by my next post, wherein I use CSA spinach for an end-of-the-year teacher gift. Seriously.

Week 1: Holy Stinkin' Spinach!

Check it out. The first week's haul:

We've got carrots, beets, radishes, two bags of salad greens, and six, that's right, SIX bags of spinach. Just call me figgin' Popeye. The great thing about spinach is that it blanches into nothing (like a pillowcase sized bag will fit in a little ziplock) and freezes for up to a year. Really awesome for using in sauce, or lasagna, or quiche in the middle of the winter.

Don't worry, it's okay if you find yourself saying, "What in the crap is blanching?" Just click here for a step by step tutorial.

When I got home from the CSA pick-up, around three o'clock, I was hungry. Instead of my usual afternoon pudding cup, I had this:

And this:

The top one is clearly a salad with CSA spinach, CSA carrots, cashews, and bleu cheese. The second one is homemade bread with herbs and last year's CSA garlic. I have two more bulbs left.

And this is a spinach omelet for breakfast.

One handful of spinach gone, fifty-million handfuls to go. I'm open to suggestions.....

The Season Opener

June 2, 2011

One week from today I'll have my first CSA pick-up day of the season! I swear I can almost feel the Bok Choy loving on my large intestine already!

In the mean time, I have some pictures from the season opener pot luck to share with you. Let me just start by saying that generally speaking, I abhor pot luck dinners. I mean seriously, how am I supposed to know if there's cat food in the lasagna? How do I know you didn't urinate in the frosting for that lemon cake over there?

Pot lucks usually make me tremble. But not the CSA pot lucks. Everyone seems so happy, and hippy, and loving, and not inclined to put little blobs of spittle in their chili.

I brought the stuff in the red bowl. It was whole grain pasta (because I was trying to fit in), with leftover CSA garlic scape pesto from last season (freezes well), and kielbasa (factory farmed....sorry CSA friends):

Here's another angle:

Here's Michele, the Long Meadow farmer extraordinaire, with Dr. Pigeon on the left. He's a local chiropractor, but not the local chiropractor I have intimate relations with. That this guy:

Here's a picture of the CSAers being all peaceful and lovely. Look at the cooler down there in the corner, isn't that so vintage-cute?

And here's James and Maggie in the inside green house, where they grow...errrr...I have no idea what they're growing. That's why I don't have a garden:

Maggie'll HATE the CSA this year. She completely despises anything that's of the earth.

One week and counting.....

Pancakes and Tofu

February 17, 2011

I'd like to start by saying that my husband was completely offended by that webcam picture I posted down there. I guess it wasn't very flattering?

I wonder what he'd think if he knew I was wearing my pajamas at work right now.

So, I'm on day....let's see....twelve (thirteen?) of my vegan escapade and so far, so good. I've discovered, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that cookies and candy are my kryptonite. I already knew this, but now I know it even more.

Aside from the cookies, I'm still surprised at how not hard this is turning out to be.

I made pasta with sauteed onions, mushrooms, and kale for lunch yesterday, and it was really good--there was nothing to miss. But I do have to admit that last night's dinner was a flaming flop. What was supposed to be roasted tofu with sweet potatoes and salad, turned into sweet potatoes.

I've yet to find a technique wherein tofu is made edible. I can't even begin to tell you much much I hate it. I can stomach it at a thai restaurant, but at home it gives me an instant barf reaction. I hate, hate, hate it, and I'm officially giving up. Screw you, tofu.

For those of you who might be looking, here's a really good and really easy pancake recipe. To make it truly vegan, you'd have to swap out the white sugar for something refined in a different way, but either way, they were good.

And the hemp protein...totally tastes like dirt. There's no masking it. But if you blend it up with chocolate soy milk and a banana, it tastes like chocolaty dirt...and I can handle that.