Week 4 (June 25)

I will be catching up again soon, but here is a post written by my awesome sister. I was out of town the week of the box she is blogging about, so enjoy! She has some awesome recipes share, so I hope you enjoy!

I teach environmental science, so of course I'm all about the farmer's market and eating as local and organic as possible. I was really excited that my sister decided to get a CSA box for the summer, especially since it was from one of my favorite growers. I would love to do something like this, but since I have a substantial garden, my family supplements with food from the market instead.

That being said, my sister was out of town and asked me to pick up her box and eat it! Of course we would do that. In our box was salad greens, red russian kale, beets (various colors), strawberries, and sugar snap peas. It was beautiful and colorful, but I wasn't quite sure what to do. See, my garden HAD kale 2 years ago and it went to seed, and then it wasn't maintained at all the following year. What resulted is a garden FULL of kale. Everywhere. I also had a lot of peas and salad greens. However, my strawberries were only producing about 5 berries per day and my beets weren't ready, so those gave me some change from what I had. Here is what I did with each thing:

salad greens & peas: chopped the peas, added them to the greens with cabbage and had chicken salads.
kale: Co-Op Kale Salad (recipe below)
strawberries: homemade ice cream (recipe below)
beets: beet chips!

A friend of mine gave me this wonderful book called Grow Cook Eat (http://www.digginfood.com/about-the-book/) and there was a recipe for "Co-op Kale Salad." I didn't have all the ingredients, so I made some changes to it, but it seems to be pretty good.

Co-Op Kale Salad
1 bunch kale (I used a combo of red russian and nero di toscana from my garden)
1 large, or a couple smallish, carrots, grated
1 ripe avocado (tip for picking a ripe avocado here:http://www.nwedible.com/2012/05/never-buy-a-rotten-avocado-again.html)
1 garlic clove, minced
2 T. lemon juice
1/2 t. paprika
1/2 t. salt
red pepper flakes
top with: sunflower seeds

Wash and then cut the kale into small strips. I cut them about 1/8" wide. Mix the kale and the carrot. In a separate bowl, mash the avocado, add everything else. I sprinkled the red pepper flakes in to taste, just a small bit, but you could add more. Add the avocado mixture to the kale/carrot mixture. Now, here is where it gets messy: mix it with your hands to make sure all the kale leaves get covered. You want a good sauce to kale ratio. The recipe says to refrigerate for at least 2 hours or preferably overnight, we didn't wait because it was so good already! Before you serve it, top with sunflower seeds - I used raw unseasoned seeds, but I bet it would be good with a different type too.



One pint of strawberries ended up as ice cream. I have an ice cream maker, so I don't know how this would work without that. I followed this recipe (Strawberry Ice Cream Like Ben and Jerry's), but I did make changes to fit my family (not going to feed my family, especially my 2 year old, raw eggs) and my fridge (I had a lot of whole milk, but not as much cream). Verdict: awesome.

Change #1: I used 1 cup of cream, and 2 cups of whole milk.
Change #2: After mixing the eggs with the sugar, 1 cup milk, and vanilla, I cooked it over a medium-low heat to boiling, and then let it cool, before adding the strawberries.
Change #3: I added whipping cream and the remaining 1 cup of milk at the end.

Remember to mash the strawberries well. If you don't, you get big chunks of frozen berries that are hard on the teeth. I left enough so it was still chunky, but small enough to eat.



CSA box success! I learned how to prepare more foods with that I have in the garden too, and will be able to try these foods again later in the season. I'll take your box anytime!

I made the ice cream today, only with raspberries from my current box... yum! Another post soon! Remember to leave comments with your favorite recipes, or if you have tried one of the recipes.