CSA Year 2 Week 8

Still a little light in the box, but maybe a little more than last week. Since there's been so little rain, fairly often it's happening that our CSA doesn't have enough of a particular crop to put in all the boxes. So people get this veg OR this one OR a different one. Starred vegetables in the photo are ones listed in the newsletter as being this OR this OR this. We got full-sized tomatoes rather than cherry ones, which is fine since Penguin found (& shared with her big sister & ate) our first couple ripe cherry tomato ones earlier this week. While we got kohlrabi (not a fav of mine) rather than beans or summer squash, I was pleased we got broccoli instead of a green pepper (girls & Mr. Kluges don't like) or beets (we have our own in our garden & they're yum!).

Wednesday Fun #94 - Cereal Choosings

I know some of you read Tomato Nation, but for those who don't, Sarah is currently finishing out the "N Cereal AA." Good fun to read and vote on your fav in cereal matchups, and, as of this typing, it's down to the final two - Frosted Flakes vs. Honey Nut Cheerios! (So, you know, vote!)

It got me thinking... if you could only ever eat ONE kind of cereal for the rest of your life, what would you choose? With other foods, fine, variety away, but cereal would have to be singular. As in, "I, [my name], take you, [cereal of my choosing], to have and to eat, for breakfast every day (unless I'm having eggs and pancakes or whatnot), for as long as I shall live and you are available in stores."

How about it? Who'd be your life-long cereal partner?


(Edited to add - Your choice does not have to be FF or HNC or anything that was in Tomato Nation's brackets, but feel free to check it out for ideas.)

CSA Year 2 Week 7

Eh, I may not be quick, but at least I remembered to post Thursday's CSA photo before this next week's came!


* Everybody got the non-starred veggies, then the newsletter lists "2 other crops will also be in your box." So, we got peas & kohlrabi.

** Both the honey (delicious!) and the portabella mushrooms (this was only 1 from the bag) were purchased as separate shares. Honey comes monthly & mushrooms (reg OR portabella) are every other week.

Wednesday Fun #93 - Salsa-fied!

In case you missed it, July's theme is Mexican/TexMex. Not that we've had a lot of them posted in July yet *coughanycough*, but you know, hope springs eternal! ;) I don't know about you, but I cook less when it's hot...

Anyway, the theme can still be inspiration for Wednesday Fun! I'm wondering about salsa. Not your fancy gourmet fruity salsas, just regular ol' tomato-based ones. Do you have a favorite? Is there one brand you prefer... or hate? Do you like the ones with stuff like black beans and corn... or just tomatoes, onions, peppers, etc.? Do you (or somebody in your family) make and can/jar your own?

Time to speak out on salsa!

Temp's Refreshing Summer Salad

I may be hopeless at putting my own recipes up, but damn it, I can cut and paste for others. :-) Here's the zucchini salad Temp brought to mai tai, as posted on her blog.

Temp's Refreshing Summer Salad

Take 4 or 5 Zucchini and peel them, and then keep using the peeler to make ribbons into a bowl until you get down to the seeds.

Open up a jar of sun-dried tomatoes in oil and chop some of those up and toss into the zucchini until you have a good ratio. Pour about a tablespoon of the oil in there too.

Take a lemon and shave about a tablespoon of zest off it into the zucchini. Squeeze about a tablespoon of lemon juice in there too (This is less than when I served it this weekend, and much less than the 2 tablespoons I recall the original recipe asking for).

Season with coarse salt and ground pepper.

This would probably also be good with artichokes, but I like the color of the tomatoes in there. It's also a little soppy, so you can let the zucchini sweat a little before putting the other stuff in there.

CSA Year 2 Week 6

I don't think I've mentioned it, but we're a little drought-y around here. Mr. Kluges was just telling me tonight that he looked at the official meteorological site based in our own and, over the last 37 days, we've had less than an inch of rain. In total. And pretty much NONE in July.

So, while we're watering our garden (when I remember sometimes), and our CSA farm engages in some irrigation, this week's box was rather light.



(But, you'll note, we still got lettuce. Tonight I showed the girls they could wrap pieces of pork roast (leftover from yesterday's slowcooker meal) in the red romaine lettuce, so that novelty got a fair amount of it eaten, more than I'd've guessed.)

Wednesday Fun #92 - Let us discuss lettuce...

This will be our 6th week of our CSA share... and I'm betting we'll have lettuce. Pretty much every week we get lettuce - either a bag of salad mix or spinach (not yet this year though) or a head (or several) of something like red romaine. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I don't usually do a main dish salad, but I did serve one last week that surprisingly went over gangbusters. I guess I shouldn't've been so surprised - any time I serve a "make your own" version of something, be it pizza or noodles or, apparently, salad, the girls love it. So small bowls of toppings it is!

But really, what ELSE can I do with all this lettuce besides salads and throw it on a sandwich? Any ideas would be more than welcome, 'cuz I'm guessing we'll be getting some more tomorrow! (...and the next week, and the next, and the next...)


P.S. My Wordless Wednesday today over at Musings & Mutterings also happens to be food- (and poll-) related...

CSA Year 2 Week 5

Yeah, so sorry about that. We DID get CSA boxes for weeks 2-4, but I just didn't photo and/or post them. One week I was at GAW, and the other two I just forgot. In summary, there were lots of garlic scapes (lots still in my crisper drawer, too), plenty o' lettuce, more yummy peas, and a quart of strawberries each time along with other stuff. Oh yeah, radishes. Lots and lots of radishes. Those are done for a while, but man, the lettuce, it comes in quantity. So, what to do with so much lettuce?! Hmmm... methinks I may have a WF question there... ;)

The Dude's Pizza Crust Recipe

Dude put this in the comments of the last Wednesday fun, but I figured for easier finding later, I'd paste it into a post.

Gino's East style Pizza Crust Recipe

1 cup of warm water
1 package yeast
1/2 cup cornmeal or corn flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 T corn oil
2 ½ to 3 cups of cheap generic flour
Yellow food coloring – the real secret to why its yellow.

Take the water and put it in your mixer. add yeast and a touch of sugar. Let the yeast foam up to be sure that it is active. Then add the rest of the ingredients including 2 1/2 cups flour. I usually end up adding between 1/4 and 1/2 teaspoons of yellow food coloring. Using a dough hook, kneed the dough until it is well combined. If the dough is sticky add a little more flour. The dough should be moist but not sticky. Let the mixer kneed the dough for 10 minutes. Put it in the oven to rise. If you desire a late in the day pizza taste (beer like), then let it rise all day.

Assembling the pizza -
Preheat oven to 350. After the dough has risen take your deep dish pizza pan (or a round cake pan with straight sides) and coat the inside of it with a very healthy coating of melted butter. Roll the dough out to about 1/4 inch thick and up it in the pan. Then pinch the dough up along the sides of the pan. Now put your cheese, and I mean a lot, into the crust. Then add your spinach and anchovies, and finally your sauce. Bake in the oven until the crust is starting to brown and cheese is starting to bubble up through the sauce.

Wednesday Fun #91 - Favorite Pizza Toppings

The Sexy Blonde just posted her Thin Crust Pizza recipe, and we just made homemade pizza ourselves for supper. While Mr. Kluges was helping 2 yo Penguin with her toppings, he offered to put ground-up centipede feet on hers...

Anyhoo, this does actually lead me to our Wednesday Fun for this week, which is...

What do you like on your pizza?