Ghost Schlong

So I finally managed to use that creepy ass daikon radish that came into my life two-or-so weeks ago. I'm sorry, I mean absolutely no disrespect to the hardworking farmers who toiled over that daikon, or to the innocent plant itself, but that sucker was the spitting image of a ghost penis.

I wasn't about to bite into that thing, let alone swallow it, so I took the path of least resistance, and used it to make chicken stock:

I took some meaty/bony chicken pieces, a CSA onion, some CSA herb, the diakon and let it all go in the crock pot for approximately one billion hours.

Then I threw the chicken bones and the daikon in the good old fashioned trashola, added some noodles, and had the best bowl of chicken noodle soup I've ever tasted. For real:

I made this bread to go along with it:

The picture's blurry, but that's okay--the bread sucked. It was white bread with CSA dill and oven roasted tomatoes, which sounds like such a nice idea, but it was all wrong, damnit. All wrong!

I'm trying to sound like I'm on a soap opera.

Soup & Sandwich

Still have that damn daikon radish hanging around in my fridge. Maybe I'll tackle it for lunch. Or maybe I'll return it to Long Meadow Farm this afternoon with a note that says "Thanks, but no thanks!" Either way, I'll let you know.

If you don't find this scene completely inspiring, then I don't know what to do with you:

Ooooooooohhhhhhh. It's a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a side of CSA celery. What can I say? Sometimes I like to eat like a fourth grader.

And here's dinner from last night:

Soup is an excellent way to clear out the crisper the night before CSA pick-up day. This soup had squash, potato, kohlrabi, bush beans, lentils, and I don't know what else--but it was good.

Holy Tomatoes!

You guys are good. Those tentacle-y turnipy things were in fact kohlrabi. And that totally creepy white thing (that's still in my fridge and is giving me the nervous sweats since tomorrow is CSA day and I still haven't used it up)? That's a daikon--true in the flesh. I'll let you know what comes of it.

Last Thursday we scored about one and a half million tomatoes in our CSA basket. And I won't lie, I was a little heavy handed with the overflow bin. On Monday, we still had a bazillion tomatoes sitting in the crisper, so I went to work preserving.

I know nothing (NOTHING!) about canning, so I went another route--I made 'sun dried' tomatoes, and it was super easy.

First, I cut a bunch of tomatoes in half, laid them on a cookie sheet and sprinkled them with olive oil and salt:

Then I put them in a 200 degree oven. After 3 hours, the looked like this:

After 6 hours, they achieved the enlightened state of tomato Nirvana, and looked like this:

They'll last for a long ass time in the fridge, and they're quite freezable, too. I've looked around and found that for a Roma-sized tomato or larger, you'll want to let them go in the oven for 12-or-so hours. But these were weenie little suckers.

And I made some crushed tomatoes, too. As classy as it would have been to can 'em, I didn't. So into the depths of my freezer they'll go:

My friend Brianne--who happens to be the best cupcake photographer this side of the Mississippi--has a fantastical crushed tomato tutorial on her blog. Click on over you fools!

Week 13: Name that Vegetable

It's week 13 of the CSA, and as usual, we're swimming in vegetables:

Here's the breakdown:

4 onions

1 cucumber

2 bags of mixed greens for salad

2 summer squash

1 light green squash

2 bags of potatoes

2 bunches of celery

6 big tomatoes

2 bags of little tomatoes

1 bag of bush beans

1 bunch of turnips? radishes? I don't know...

1 bunch of beet greens

and some mystery vegetables

Here's a close up of the haul:

Wait. What the???

And get this, it's not the only mystery vegetable of the week. There's this one, too:

This white thing is about a foot long and just about as phallic as a vegetable can get--no jokes required.

So. Name those veggies...

Make Your Own Yogurt

(just so you know, there's another new post down there...)

I've got to admit, this post has nothing to do with Long Meadow Farm CSA and only a teeny-weenie bit to do with eating local. But since you're reading this blog, I'm pretty sure you'll be into this kind of thing.

In case you haven't heard about it, crock pot yogurt is the hippest thing on the block. If you want to up your cool factor, you should definitely give this a spin.

And it's easy, too.

1. Take a half gallon of milk and dump it into your crock pot. Any milk will do, except for ultra-pasteurized milk, and I've got to say, most of the organic milk you can buy at the grocery store is ultra-pasteurized, so pay attention. Also, you should start with whole milk, and once you get a hang of it, go for something less fattening--if you care about that kind of thing.

2. Turn your crock pot to low and let it sit for 2 1/2 hours.

3. Unplug your crock pot and let the milk sit for 3 hours.

4. Scoop a few cups of milk out of the crock pot, and whisk the warm milk together with a cup of live/active culture yogurt. You'll have to buy yogurt from the store the first time to get it started, but after your first batch is a raging success, you can use your own as a starter.

5. Dump the yogurt/milk mixture back into the crock pot.

6. Wrap the crock pot in 2 or 3 beach towels and let it sit for 12ish hours.

When all is said and done, you end up with this:

A giant vat of yogurt!

My friend gave me this jar of local vanilla peach sauce, so I added it to the yogurt to really up the kazaam factor:

And here it is in all it's glory:

And of course, to give you a better sense of the actual quantity, I give you my husband as a point of reference:

Hot damn! Now that's a lot of yogurt!

Preserving Onions

Onions last a really long time--I'm not sure why, but they do. We got about 1,000,001 onions in last week's CSA share and we're expecting storage onions this week, so I decided to do something with what we already had.

Onions are one of the easiest vegetables to preserve and store. All you have to do is put on your kid's swimming goggles (this is the most important step--really), chop up a zillion onions, put them in Ziploc bags, and stick 'em in the freezer.

No blanching, no canning, so swearing, no anger. Just take a look at these:

You can do the same thing with green beans.

These pre-chopped onions would be great in omelets, chili, casseroles, on top of pizza, in pasta sauce...you get the idea.

Now stop it with the excuses. This crap is way easy.

Scenes from My Kitchen

This is a view from the share two weeks ago. The extra basket was completely overflowing, so I helped myself to an assload of purple beans. Carrots and M&Ms aren't the only rainbow veggies anymore:

This was also is the basket two weeks ago. You know how pugs are so freaking ugly that they're actually super cute? I feel the same way about this tomato--or maybe I just feel bad for it. As if its looks weren't rugged enough, it was the size of a softball on steroids--a total fat girl:

This was roasted carrots, beans and onion with bratwurst, leftover sucker sauce and rice:

$5 gas station pizza with heirloom tomatoes and some good ol' full fat ranch:

This was last week's share--thanks to the overflow basket, it was the week of the onion:

Basil, sage, cilantro, dill and parsley from the pick-your-own section. This probably would have cost $45 at Hannaford:

Pasta with caramelized onion and pesto:

And herbed salad--mescalin greens, tomatoes, green onion, dill, parsley, cilantro, basil, and a whole lotta love:

I'm so fancy I can hardly stand it:

And tonight we had grilled chicken and veggies:

Whew!