YES! It's Sunday night and there's nothing but some lonely lettuce in my fridge. I am feeling victorious and mighty healthy. I would like to use this evening's post as a reflection of how many veggies we managed to consume this week AND to show how you, too, can be a member of the clean-fridge-club. As a teaser to keep you reading, the recipe that utilized the most veggies was Vegetable Dumplings. We ate 12 tonite, and we've got another 50 or so chillin' in the freezer for later meals, appetizers, or additions to soup.
You may be thinking that I'm over-exaggerating how much we receive from our CSA share, so here's a breakdown of what we picked up last Monday (The list below reflects only 1/2 of the share, as we divide it with our CSA buddies) and what we yanked from our little garden in the past week(which is ALL ours!)
| 1 head of lettuce 1/2 bag* of mixed lettuces/arugula 1/2 bag of mixed greens (tatsoi, mizuna, komatsuna, mustard greens) 1 1/2 quarts strawberries 2 radishes 1/2 kohlrabi | 1/4 bag of spinach 6 baby bok choy 1/2 bag of larger "cooking" greens (more mature tatsoi, mizuna, komatsuna, broccoli rabe) 1 very large bok choy 4 medium scallions 2 hakurei turnips |
*Go to your grocery store and grab a produce bag. Fill it to the top with loose greens. Then triple that to see what a full bag of mixed greens looks like. Intimidated? Yeah, I thought so. And if you're reading this and you have a CSA share, you're nodding your head in agreement.
From our garden:
4 scallions
12 beets + greens
16 breakfast radishes + greens
Beginning to see the picture now? For partial visual, see pic at beginning of post.
So, how did we do it, you ask? I have to be honest here. I thought it would never happen. By Thursday, I was actually feeling kind of pissed off that I still had a fridge full of stupid greens, and I was convinced that I was just going to THROW THE STINKING LETTUCE OUT!!!!!! Thankfully I got a hold of myself and we were able to come up with a brilliant idea...invite some friends over and make pizzas. Sheer genius. Have you seen the shrinkage on those greens? Amazing.
I'm not going to give you my pizza recipes unless you really want them, because I bet by now the gears are turning and you're coming up with concoctions of your own. In case you're wondering, I did manage to blow through 4 cups of raw spinach and 2 scallions, which I grilled prior to putting them on the pizzas. We also sent our dinner guests home with a party favor...a bag of baby bok choy and beet tops! So lucky.
Hey, dinner guests (you know who you are), if you wouldn't mind, could you please email me with how you ended up using the bok choy and beet tops? I'd love to have some inspiration.
Some of what's on the above list we ate raw, like the Hakurei Turnips and the French Breakfast Radishes (visit my first post to see a picture of them). The others were used in the following dishes. I've included a few of the tastiest recipes.
Pasta with Broccoli Rabe and Chicken
Glazed Grapefruit Beets
(This was good, but not good enough. More on this recipe after I try it again.)
Strawberries with Fresh Whipped Cream
Couscous with Spinach, Pignoli and Mint
Simple green salad with Lemon, Garlic and Olive Oil
Stir-Fried Broccoli with Dried Chili Peppers and Fermented Black Beans
Pickled Kohlrabi
Kimchi
(The Bok Choy we used is busy sweating it out in a saltwater bath for the next 24 hours. I'll post this recipe as soon as I complete and have a taste-test) Update: This recipe is not ready for it's debut, but I'm sure we'll tweak it so it's perfect! Stay tuned...
And finally...
Vegetable Dumplings, courtesy of the LA Times online
Note: Making dumplings is a little time-consuming, but 100% worth it. You can freeze the uncooked dumplings, so I doubled this recipe. Instead of using spinach, I used a mix of whatever greens I had left over. I don't know about you, but "one large bunch of spinach" is a little too subjective, so I measured raw veggies in a liquid pyrex measuring cup. My "large bunch" equaled 12 cups (use 6 if you're not doubling) of packed, un-cut greens!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment