I’m going to get cooking rather than write a forward this week. We didn’t take a photo when the Community Produce box arrived on Tuesday. We have eaten cantaloupe, roasted seeds, stewed plums and put them on top of Dutch babies, made a cabbage curry, and I think eaten some other produce.
CSA Box
Skipped
Community Produce still in the fridge six days later
Collards
Cabbage
Potato
Zucchini
Other Lingering Produce
Sunchoke
Spring onions
Cabbage
Freezer Items in Focus
Corn stock
Fennel pesto
Beet puree
Roasted jalapeños
Hot peppers
Frozen beans
Summer stock bag
Garden
Sunchokes harvested
Dahlia tubers divided which means some are good for baking?
Open Preserves
Fridge still organized!
Fridge still not inventoried!
Fig jam
Preserved eggplant
Pickled banana peppers
Pickled fennel
Pickled peach
Curdito
Cran-kin-kraut
Fermented green cherry tomatoes
Pantry Beans
Yellow Split Pea
Split Red Lentil
Black Caviar Lentil
Garbanzo Bean
Buckeye Bean
Pinto Bean
Christmas Lima
California Corona
Large White Lima
Midnight Black Bean
Rojo De Suelo
And maybe one more on the shelf?
Meals to get us through the next few days
Cook up the greens and mix up some rice and the last of the peas for crispy hoppin john. (Actually, going to go get rice cooking while I write this.)
Repeat some of the recent cabbage recipes? The romanesco sauce was delicious. As was the curry.
I want to do the crispy potatoes but they really benefit from being eaten hot and I’m not sure when we cook them. So to consider. Honestly, also considering boiling up the summer stock bag, and make a corn and potato chowder. Potentially with buckeye beans mixed in? Think about it!
We started with our CSA before the pandemic. Is that right? We had another CSA, once upon a time. But their pickup venue went chaos and, according to my search of our email, we started picking up boxes on January 23, 2020. Just enough time to get used to the routine of breaking down boxes to leave at the porch before everything happened. And our home filled with boxes from the weeks turned to months turned to years of no box left behind. Now that branding shows up in closets and on shelves all around our house.
A few months after that initial sign-up, I emailed another farm asking if they would be doing their CSA in our neighborhood in 2020. We didn’t make it to their CSA then–details of delivery days and times and who knows what else–but we did get on their email list. And when I look at the past six years of newsletters, it looks like I opened most of them. Telling the story of a farm is a talent. Teaching me about the local foodways is a gift.
So we’re switching CSAs! To another farm, a sister farm of the always opened newsletter. This week we’re auditioning the small share. Maybe we try the medium box in a week or two before we place our order for the season? It looks more straightforward to skip weeks with this CSA, which maybe will help us avoid the overwhelm of summer. (Though, I want all the produce! It’s so good!) There are farm days where we can go and visit, or do an Easter Egg hunt. It’s woman owned and operated. It’s Black Farms Matter. It is regenerative and holistic and buzzy buzzwords and I can only assume buzzy bees.
CSA Box
Honeycrisp apples
Turnips
Spinach
Salad Mix
Beets
Curly Kale
Community Produce still in the fridge
Cabbage
Potato
Other Lingering Produce
Sunchoke
I think that’s it? We made so much progress!
Freezer Items in Focus
Corn stock
Fennel pesto
Beet puree
Roasted jalapeños
Hot peppers
Frozen beans
Summer stock bag
Garden
Sunchokes harvested
Dahlia tubers downstairs too
Weeds coming in. We should get our soil tested before eating too many of them.
Open Preserves
Fridge still organized!
Fridge still not inventoried!
Fig jam
Preserved eggplant
Pickled banana peppers
Pickled fennel
Pickled peach
Curdito
Cran-kin-kraut
Fermented green cherry tomatoes
Pantry Beans
Yellow Split Pea
Split Red Lentil
Black Caviar Lentil
Garbanzo Bean
Buckeye Bean
Pinto Bean
Christmas Lima
California Corona
Large White Lima
Midnight Black Bean
Rojo De Suelo
Zipper Cream Field Pea
And maybe one more on the shelf?
Good Eating
Earlier this week I roasted beets, cooked lentils, and made something kin to my fanciest farm to table salad and another salad. Only we didn’t have bitter greens or herbs, so I went out front. Dandelion greens instead of arugula or escarole. Wild onions, bee balm tops, dead nettle instead of herbs. Mustard vinagreete and blue cheese. It was good. I would not be disappointed if we roast these beets and do it again.
It’s been a bit since we did the coconut rice with greens. Let’s. Spinach? Turnip tops? Beet greens?
Curly kale is making me feel like doing the massaged kale salad. Or grits and greens with an egg on top.
It’s been approximately a month since we picked up our last produce box of 2025. Tomorrow, we pick up our first box of 2026. For the next bit, we’ll just have the community produce box. Approximately every other week, but maybe a little bit less.
The CSA we’ve done for the past several years offers a winter box. We decided to take some time off to catch up on using what we have. (Knowing that we’d be getting the community produce. And that we can go to the grocery store. And that we could even sign up mid-season if we change our minds.)
It is a bit of a relief to not be deciding how best to consume ALL the produce each week. Instead puzzling through how to use up bits and pieces of the odds and ends. This week collard stems got chopped, sauteed, and mixed into a pasta bake. The vegetable scrap bag was made into stock–only for me to decide that, no, I wasn’t make sweet potato soup; it was chili. The bean liquor quickly becoming the liquid for rice and the base for another soup. (The stock is still waiting to be used.)
Your mom made a comment that our way of cooking is harder. It’s true that there are times I’m jealous of the auto populating meal plan routines/calendars–like the pizza, spaghetti, and hot dogs that I knew to expect most weekends of my childhood. When I wish we could have the quick and easy dinner ready to go without the guilty background concern about whether the lettuce or tomatoes or whatever will still be good when we get to a day with enough ease to prepare them.
But there is also an ease to not needing to think about what’s in season, because it’s already in front of us. The fun of figuring out how to use a less familiar ingredient (or alternatively, an excessively familiar ingredient). I’m not making decisions about what to buy at the farmers market. I’m making decisions about how to use what we already bought.
With that said, here’s some things we’ve already bought.
Community Produce
Coming tomorrow!
Lingering Produce
Leek
Red cabbage
Pumpkin
Honeynut squash
Potatoes
Onions
Beets
Daikon radish
Carrots
Sunchoke
Freezer Items in Focus
Corn stock
Fennel pesto
Beet puree
Chopped celery
Chopped green peppers
Roasted jalapeños
Hot peppers
Homemade gnocci
Frozen beans
Cooked collards for grilled cheese sandwich
Summer stock bag
Frozen fruit for pies
Garden
Sleeping
Though we do have some sunchokes to dig out when the weather allows.
Open Preserves
Fridge still organized!
Fridge still not inventoried!
Fig jam
Preserved eggplant
Pickled banana peppers
Pickled fennel
Pickled peach
Curdito
Fermenting green cherry tomatoes
Pantry Beans
Yellow Split Pea
Split Red Lentil
Black Caviar Lentil
Garbanzo Bean
Buckeye Bean
Pinto Bean
Christmas Lima
California Corona
And maybe one more on the shelf?
Cozy meals
I’ve been trying out having a rotating cookbook on the table to thumb through at breakfast. That’s actually where I got the recipe for bean liquor and roasted sweet potato soup. And the idea for crepes with marscapone and fruit. (Thank you for Grist.) Sohla has a note of a recipe of a squash and miso soup that I want to make soon.
Okonomiyaki (use the sweet potato skins left in the fridge)
Red curry with squash
Love,
Sarah
PS If the swap box has cabbage, take it so we can make cran-kin-kraut!
We skipped produce pickups while we were out of town. We ate radishes and peppers and carrots dipped in ranch fun dip on the road. We took squash and sweet potatoes and parsley and peppers to family and friends. But sick weeks followed by travel weeks meant we ended up with some very sad foods in the fridge. Some got tossed in the compost (applesauce that molded weirdly quickly), some got sauced (lettuce into a cream dip), some is destined for soup (chard once the Royal Coronas finish cooking).
The chill is finally in the air. I want to curl around casserole dishes and soup bowls. I also want to be able to eat soon after coming in the door and not after the oven has preheated and the casserole has baked for an hour. So, um, things to consider.
CSA Box
Braeburn Apples
Goldrush Apples
Gala Apples
Baby Hakurei Turnips
Lacinato Kale
Purple Carrots
Red Veined Arugula
Stripetti Squash
*Arkansas Black Apples
*Cranberries
*Fuji Apples
*Broccoli
*Carnival Squash
*French Breakfast Radishes
*Green Chard
*Purple Gold Potatoes
*Items are predicted for next week since I was not actually able to sit down and do this properly until Sunday.
Community Produce
Onions
Potatoes
Carrots
Apples
Oranges
Cucumbers
Zucchini
Green Pepper
Things in the fridge and on the counter
Asian pears
Apples
Reddening cherry tomatoes
Celery
Greens: Lettuce
Chard
Beets with greens
Sweet potatoes
Leeks
Sunchokes
Picked at the Garden
Closed for the season? At least I haven’t stopped by
Though we should try to do a final clean up of our plot
Maybe there’s some more parsley? Or collards?
Open Preserves
Fridge still organized!
Fridge still not inventoried!
Fig jam
Preserved eggplant
Pickled banana peppers
Pickled fennel
Pickled peach
Curdito
Fermenting green cherry tomatoes
Pantry Beans
Yellow Split Pea
Split Red Lentil
Black Caviar Lentil
Garbanzo Bean
Buckeye Bean
Good Mother Stallard
Pinto Bean
Christmas Lima
California Corona
And maybe one more on the shelf?
Cozy meals
We walked in the door at 5:15. We considered ordering delivery, but that requires it’s own decision tree. I made the chickpeas and pasta while you unloaded the rental car. Solid meal from the pantry, yes please. Since then we’ve made dragon noodles with carrots and the remaining leaves of cauliflower or broccoli. Crispy potatoes with the aforementioned lettuce cream sauce.
We have three pumpkins and another three squash currently serving as decor. They are overdue for being eaten. Chop one, roast, and serve with the tahini yogurt sauce a la Ottolenghi and Tamimi. Pumpkin Parmesan from the Good Food Cook Book? A curry with tofu? I’m trying to think what else I want to eat that will be better with whole pumpkin/squash chopped than puree and kinda thinking puree for the freezer/muffins/soups/pies/pasta sauce sounds reasonable. But then make puree in either oven or instant pot or crock pot. (I should use the better squash for puree for the cheesecake that looks so tempting.)
At Thanksgiving, you saw a kid’s magazine with a spread of cucumbers topped with cream cheese and pretzels or pickles or berries. We should put the cucumber to use.
I was trying to remember what baked rice dish surprised me last year with how well it worked. Remembered correctly that I’d texted it to a friend–not as a link but photo from a cookbook and found the Golden Carrot Bake in Simply in Season. Wouldn’t you know it, we have plenty of carrots right now. Also saw the kimchi rice bake, which is probably better for a rushed weeknight.
Zucchini feels harder to deal with when there’s snow in the air. Zucchini and pepper and some beans for a chili? A zucchini dal? Or with the royal coronas in a pizza beans set-up? I think the pizza beans if we have time, but the dal if I want to come home to an already made meal. The trick of cooking the rice and the dal at the same time seems worth trying at least once!
Speaking of the instant pot, we are at the time of year where I switch to oatmeal breakfast. Definitely going to be tossing a handful of cranberries into the pot with the oats and water. As a reminder, 1 cup of oats + 2.5 cups water + 15-20 minutes at pressure.
Love,
Sarah
PS If the swap box has cabbage, take it so we can make cran-kin-kraut!
Then we picked >$50 worth of apples at the orchard this weekend.
And then today I went to the garden, picked up the CSA, and got our community produce box.
I have passed on some of the bounty to friends. I am asking other friends what they can use. I am pickling peppers and cucumbers to make space. We will consider the freezer our friend and wish we had a larger one.
CSA Box
Asian Pears
Golden Delicious Apples
Pink Lady Apples
Poblano Peppers
Purple Broccoli
Purple Gold Potatoes
Red Butterhead Lettuce
White Cauliflower
Community Produce
Pears
Lemons
Beets
Seven! Pounds! of! Celery!
Eggplant
Corn
Things in the fridge
Pears
Asian pears
Apples
Oranges
Kiwiberries
Cauliflower
Zucchini
Heirloom tomato, red tomato
Cucumber
Peppers: Banana, Habanada
Fennel
Greens: Lettuce
Onions
Beets
Sweet potatoes
Sunchokes
Picked at the Garden
Collards
A snackful of cherry tomatoes
The last of the tomatillos
Assorted non-spicy peppers
Pile of green cherry tomatoes from the compost pile
More bunches of Dahlias
Open Preserves
Fridge still organized!
Fridge still not inventoried!
Fig jam
Preserved eggplant
Pickled banana peppers
Pickled fennel
Pickled peach
Curdito
Fermenting green cherry tomatoes
Pantry Beans
Yellow Split Pea
Split Red Lentil
Black Caviar Lentil
Garbanzo Bean
Buckeye Bean
Good Mother Stallard
Pinto Bean
Christmas Lima
California Corona
Royal Corona
And maybe one more on the shelf?
Cook. A lot. Not sure in what time.
I bought cauliflower this weekend to make that dip. We have a bit of it left and we’re getting more and I’m so excited to make the cauliflower steaks.
I still want to make focaccia, and you’ll be in the office more this week. Hoping for some potatoes. But if not, I’ll make it with zucchini and tomatoes.
Oooh. Looking for an online version of that recipe, I found an apple orchard recipe blog.
Dinner tonight is stuffed acorn squash. Stuffed with apple filling? Apple cheese filling? We don’t have cottage cheese though. Apple rice filling and putting cottage cheese on the shopping list so we’re ready the next time we get a squash.
Poblano peppers make me think roasted or stuffed. Rice and bean filling? Enchilada sauce? Maybe filled with a zucchini-bean-mixture? We should make more salsa verde with the tomatillos. Note! These should freeze decently well.
The clover we put down as a cover crop hadn’t taken off the last time we stopped by the garden. We scattered more seed. We’ll see whether it takes. Great if it does, and, ah well if it doesn’t.
This weekend we’ll put in one more hour of community service at the garden, and then we’ll have fulfilled our requirements to be invited back next year. Which means it was a success of a season! Truly, whenever I start obsessing about how to maximize our garden production, or worrying about something going bad before we consumed/processed it, I remind myself that we knew going in that this would be a busy season of our life and the goal is to not fail out. All the tomatoes and peppers and tomatillos and greens and beans and flowers and ground cherries and basil and parsley and radishes and turnip and beets are great; I’m pretty proud of our success this season. And I’m very grateful that other people are better farmers than we are and that we get to eat the fruit (and veg) of their labor.
Today’s Box
Asian Pears
Fuyu Persimmon
Granny Smith Apples
Collards
Green Bell Peppers
Red Butterhead Lettuce
Red Napa Cabbage
Spaghetti Squash
Things in the fridge
Apples
Plums
Pears
Asian pears
Lemongrass
Tomatoes
Fennel
Greens: Chard, lettuce, cabbage
Radish
Squash: Acorn
Yummy peppers
Poblano peppers
Hot peppers
In the Garden
Habaneros, jalapenos, fish peppers, other peppers, still getting peppers
Dried beans
Edamame
Beets
Parsley if we want (we should pop some on the dehydrator)
And we should consider the cabbage situation. Time to make more sauerkraut? Or wait until the cranberries and squash come in too? Glass noodles seem more promising this week. Polish potato casserole from More with Less also sounds promising.
I think it’s the season where we could cool the Lee Brother’s Collard Greens. And make a grilled cheese sandwich. That gets dipped in tomato soup. Or tomato pumpkin bisque. Oooooh, this is going to be good. Only problem is we have one bunch of collards, not four.
I’m loving the roasted apple salad. Maybe we should add a lentil apple salad to the mix too though. Maybe.
Lasagna is a lot to put together, I know. I’m so glad you made it last week because it was delicious. (And also, I’m glad that I told you to stop that one evening because actually eating dinner was good.) The combination of crunchy and soft noodles. The layers of flavor. The using up a lot of veggies and having leftovers.
All that said, the time commitment is substantial. And while I would like more crispy pasta soon, I have had the realization that maybe we could do baked pasta instead of full on lasagna? I’m definitely partial to Smitten Kitchen for these–I think I imprinted on Deb’s mushroom marsala pasta bake our first winter with this CSA. Perhaps using that gluten free ravioli you found for a skillet chard-ravioli (with broil time). I bet the broccoli rabe could be switched for any number of heavy duty greens. If you’d rather make it a mostly pantry meal, tomato sauce + pasta +cheese sounds pretty good; though, I bet you could reference this recipe too and add roasted veggies to use up whatever we have on hand.
So polish up your bechamel skills and figure out a favorite tomato sauce. It’s cool enough to turn on the oven and bake that pasta.
Quick note. Last year our ginger went moldy before we used most of it. We can mince it, freeze it, and have ginger handy for smoothies/stirfries/soups.
The roasted apple salad from Pulp was delicious. More of that please.
And try to remember to add radish and turnip to salads when appropriate.
Stuff those peppers! Rice and beans and tomatoes and spices.
The beets have been hanging around for a while. Maybe time to roast, puree, freeze. And use for all the beet yogurt dips and beet hummus dips I want a whim.
Speaking of beet yogurt. I’ve been making an open faced sandwich recently with almond butter, beet yogurt, and thinly sliced apple. It’s good. Feel free to mix in chevre and celery. Maybe some craisins.
Time to cycle through the peppers on the dehydrator. It’s amazing how much they shrink between getting halved and getting their water removed. The fridge full of peppers no longer feels obviously sufficient to make enough chili powder for everyone’s presents. We’ll just have to stretch things with one more batch of hot sauce.
Squash and kale soup? I think I want to get sausage to put in it. Something like this. Maybe a fennel and bean soup?
Though, also, fennel and lentils was really good in the spring.
And let’s just make fennel pesto with the fronds. Can be mixed with yogurt for a dip, and you know how I feel about dips these days. (I want them all the time.)
Between catching Covid and stomach bugs and broader health stuff….it has not been a month for cooking. Naps, yes. Kitchen, ugh, no.
We’ve made some meals that used our produce–tomatoes in blackened shrimp pasta, salads with tomatoes and carrots and peppers, pears and brie. Peppers are in need of dehydrating, because they have not been cooked quickly enough.
Today’s Box
Bosc Pears
Smokehouse Apples
Leeks
Mixed Yummy Peppers
Red Kale
Red Leaf Lettuce
Stripetti Squash
Things in the fridge
Watermelon
Plums
Asian pears
Lemongrass
Celery
Greens: Cabbage, chard, lettuce
Squash: Acorn, white acorn, Robins Koginut
In the Garden
Habaneros, jalapenos, fish peppers, other peppers, many peppers
We pulled the tomatoes and tomatillos. We have clover seeds ready to go (you’re understandably wary of rye), but haven’t gotten the cover crop sown yet. Hopefully later this week we’ll be well enough to make it over to the garden and get them in the ground.
Meals that sound yummy
We have a backup of squash. Last week brought lemongrass and I found two squash–lemongrass soups. This roasted squash lasasgna has been sounding so good and I bet we could totally put half in the freezer (which is looking rather lower on pre-made meals at the moment). I think we treat the stripetti like spaghetti squash and make more baked squash bowls.
This week’s box isn’t coming with potatoes, but a potato leek soup sounds pretty good. Maybe I’ll pick up potatoes at the grocery store.
Lettuce has been going in side salads. Honestly, that still sounds good. Yummy peppers and the last of the tomatoes to join.
One of the meals from the freezer that hit the right spot for me was the chard quiche. If there’s a day with energy to make a crust and a filling, then making a quiche either with chard from the garden or kale sounds delicious. And freezing slices if we manage to make two.
Last weekend we took another round of Covid tests to reassure ourselves that the cold we’d had all week was not that particular virus. And then we revived my traditional cookie party. We kept it small (peoples wise) and long (time wise). Windows cracked to increase ventilation. But, ah, it filled my heart. Thumbprints. Biscotti. Sugar cookies that spread everywhere. Rugelach with blueberry jam from last year’s fruit share. So many crumbs and so many nubbly nibbles all week long.
I think that’s going to be emblematic of my goal for us this year. Still being extra attentive to sickness and caution. Trying to find ways to socialize little bit by little bit more. We’ve made lots of progress outside, and I want to continue that. We can mask when we go to known crowds (ahem, or the grocery store). But maybe we don’t need to aim for indoor dining quite yet. Hearing the stories of long covid continues to justify our current way of life.
Cilantro! And squash! We can make the mole verde that got skipped this fall because seeds are too much fat for that diet. Hooray! (Belated realization that could’ve made the cranberry salsa. But happier for the mole verde.) Serve with squash. Then sweet potato. Sides of rice, beans, and tortillas.
I have sausage in the fridge from the hoppin’ john. Potato because we’re in the season where it’s good to have potato on hand. Let’s make kale potato soup.
Roasted sweet potatoes, sauteed greens (our turnips have greens!), and eggs for breakfast.
Sunchoke pizza is too similar to the dahlia bulb pizza we had earlier this week (with the bulbs that got sacrificed to the shovel when we dug up the plants for the winter). Burger time it is.
PS I published the drafts of the last two posts rather than let them linger. Let’s be honest, whatever meals were made and we’re moving on the new year, new foods. And I don’t remember what all got eaten in between.
Was not expecting to get lettuce this time of year. Guess the greenhouse is going!
Dear John,
What a year. Today marks the anniversary of moving into our house. There are still boxes left to unpack (there are always boxes left to unpack), but it really is feeling like home. Stockings are hung from the stairs. Mary, Joseph, and the donkey are passing the shepherd and sheep on their journey to the stable. And I have brand new teas to choose from once the kettle reaches its boil.
We’ll travel for Christmas–visiting my family and yours. No reason not to make some soup and make sure the fridge is ready with a dinner to warm when we return.
Vegetarian Cassoulet. (That’s different than what we made on Sunday night. But uses the same beans!)
Oknomiyaki. And, now that my digestive track is cooperative, we can use the pickled fennel.
We didn’t make the Thai carrot sweet potato soup last week, so we will this week.
We’ve had winters dominated by sweet potatoes and winters rolling in radishes. We got both this week and I’m so curious what the coming season will bring. (I bet the farm already has a good guess based on what they have in storage.)
The kale reminded me of the greenery in the produce aisle at the grocery store. Only that served as filler not to be eaten. How times have changed.
Dear John,
It’s a oven-baking evening. I turned it on for dinner inspired by the book I’m reading. A character was making a tahini-yogurt dressing to go on roasted butternut squash and red onion and I realized we hadn’t had the roasted squash and onion from Jerusalem yet this season. And we had 2/3 of the last squash hanging out in the refrigerator. The oven stayed hot to roast chickpeas (I cooked a pound of beans yesterday just for this). And while the oven was on we might as well toast up the squash seeds. And let’s take advantage of a hot oven to cook up your next batch of granola.
The kitchen is warm. You’re up to your elbows in dishes. There are lots of nibbles. My heart is happy.
Today’s Box
Cranberries
Fuji Apples
Honeycrisp Apples
Brussels Sprouts
Green Kale Hearts
Napa Cabbage
Orange Carrots (Really? They look purple on the outside to me.)
Things in the fridge and counter
Pears
Apples
Cranberries
Leek greens
Celery
Carrots
Red radishes
Green beefsteak tomatoes, but baby-sized
Roma tomatoes, mix of green and reddening
Potatoes
Onions, maybe one still from the CSA. Mostly there are usually onions
On Saturday, I made cranberry carrot steel cut oatmeal for breakfast. (Added maple syrup and apple cider for sweetness. Totally forgot spices beyond a dash of salt. It was delicious. Still working my way through the leftovers.) At lunch, we ate leftover squash stuffed with various things, including cranberries. For dinner, arugula salad with roasted beets and cranberries and pear-mustard dressing. Dessert, apple-cranberry crisp.
On the center of the table we have a half gallon jar filled with last week’s cabbage, the missing third of the squash that was tonight’s dinner, and more cranberries. I’m so curious how this sauerkraut will turn out. I see bubbles. Right now! They’re floating up as I type! Fermentation is weird and cool and I feel like a newbie in my fascination. (Do not think too hard about what we will do with this half gallon of cran-kin kraut. I have already decided that we should actually cook meat for one meal to pair with it. We may need to source “rye bread” for you for sandwiches. Erm….something something potatoes.)
My mom’s offered to freeze some (in anticipation of her cranberry relish next year?), but I’d rather use them now. An internet friend made cranberry salsa (they use less sugar than this recipe, maybe more cilantro). There’s this cheesecake that is all the more tempting because we did not have the cheesecakes of summer this year. And maybe we need some refrigerator pickles for the fanciest cheese plates in the coming year.
The less than perfect cranberries end up in the freezer stock bag with the apple cores. We already have a cranberry-apple chutney and cranberry-apple syrup (shhh…..the jelly didn’t set, next time do the plate test!) that can top pancakes and be mixed into drinks. Maybe we’ll manage a proper cranberry jam.
So while the fridge currently feels overtaken, this is the reminder to myself (and, I suppose to you) that we really are using a lot of cranberries right now. I have bought frozen cranberries explicitly for the purpose of smoothies before, so the fact that we already have some in our freezer is a good move. There’s only two weeks of fruit share left and then I’ll be missing all the cranberries quickly.
Love you,
Sarah
PS I know you can’t eat it, and it used dried cranberries instead of fresh, but I’m putting the cranberry-chocolate-walnut brickle on the cookie party list.
Last week went remarkably according to plan. Black Futsu was stuffed with artisan (gluten free) bread cubes, Gruyère, Emmenthal, four strips of bacon, thyme, garlic, pepper, nutmeg, cream. It really was, oh so good. A couple of days later Kabocha with wild rice, mushrooms, cranberries, carrots, celery, shallots, raisins, rosemary, oregano, thyme. Still delicious, if not quite as decadent feeling.
Cabbage was shredded with carrots, apple ginger dressing, and the seeds for the squash that was on the table. Later more was shredded, doused with garlic-lemon-anchovy dressing, topped with toasted hazelnuts and sourdough croutons (for those who could partake).
Those who would miss turkey, missed the turkey. Those who are mostly vegetarian, surely didn’t. Except, it would be nice to have the carcass to make broth for all the soups of the season. Ah well, that’s what the veggie stock bag is for.
Leek and Potato soup! More with Less has a recipe as does Good Food Cook Book. Combine those for fun.
We have radishes. With greens! Carrots. With greens! Arugula! And, of course, cabbage. Let’s have fun with the greens that won’t last before settling into the months of cabbage and storage greens. One more batch of carrot top pesto. Salads with arugula and pear and blue cheese. Or arugula with roasted beets and goat cheese. Breakfast of roasted potatoes, fried eggs, and sauteed radish greens.
I’m proud we finished the last cabbage before this one arrived. (Barely.) We did cabbage and butter pasta this weekend. May be time for okonomiyaki. Or the Polish Potato Casserole of my childhood.
We have some left over stuffings that’ll go in the squash. Make the Thanskgiving cooking last.
But, let’s work on the cranberries. I think we have ~15 cups in the refrigerator right now. (To be far, about 10 came today.) We might have to candy some or string them with popcorn. Until then, more sauce? Newtons? Make cranberry curd and freeze it? Cranapple pie?
Twice as many cranberries as last week. We’re totally making cranberry curd soon.
Happy Thanksgiving John,
We took our Covid tests this morning, in anticipation of out of state visitors arriving this afternoon. Not quite as many as we planned for. Guess that means more leftovers.
We’re skipping the turkey in favor of a pumpkin, erm, squash stuffed with delciousness. Cranberry sauce. Cranberry relish. Cranberry relish variation two. Maybe just one pie tomorrow and another on Friday or Saturday?
I can eat fat now! Which includes coconut. We can make a pumpkin curry. Use red curry paste! Toss in tofu? Or mushrooms? Or cabbage? Peanuts? Cashews? The mystery peppers we gleaned from the compost pile???
The onions are huge. I’m tempted to make french onion soup. Need to remember what the vegetarian version that I liked was. Mushroom broth?
Avgolemono soup sounds good and meets the various dietary preferences we’re hosting this week. Might be worth buying greens to be able to make it. (So weird to be planning to buy produce!)
Something potatoes. Roasted potatoes as side dish? Potato salad? Mashed potatoes for the Thanksgiving table?
Need to use the fennel. Maybe roasted with apples? And beet. *seareches* Oh! Roasted with potatoes! That’ll do. Perhaps even do for tomorrow.
The leaves have (mostly) fallen. The hard frost has arrived. And the single bronze dahlia bloom from the plant outside has been cut and brought inside.
Today’s Box
Cranberries
Goldrush Apples
Granny Smith Apples
Carnival Squash
Celery
Fennel
Green Cabbage
Onions
Things in the fridge and counter
Pears
Apples
Carrot (but not their greens)
Celery
Radicchio
Lettuce
Green beefsteak tomatoes, but baby-sized
Roma tomatoes, mix of green and reddening
Sweet Dumpling Squash
Stripetti Squash
Potatoes (purple and gold)
Garden Finale
Green tomatoes! Ours and ones other people had put in the compost *gasp*
Basil
Dahlias and marigolds and cosmos (gather seeds as we go!)
The cabbage is gorgeous. It will also keep. Let’s use the few outermost leaves that are falling off for a salad now. Stir fry?
Time to make some apple date chutney, adapted for the freezer bags of apple and pear cores and cranberries that had been in the fridge for far, far too long. And apple scrap jelly.
More of the Six Seasons celery salads. With apples! And dates! And nuts!
Stuff the stripetti squash this week. Top with the leftovers from the cauliflower steaks last week. (That topping was so good. I can’t wait to make it again.)
Meals, so often, don’t actually turn out the way I expect them to. Inspiration and actualization shift during the week. Different things come in from the garden, or the farmers market. Or time constraints get realized. Or what we’re in the mood for shifts with the weather and moods.
Last Wednesday, I took my sister to the garden plot to show off the dahlias. (After all, she gave us the tubers.) I was getting the shears to harvest some basil when another gardener approached with a veritable handful of basil (no space in hands for any more!) and asked if we could use it. Sure, here’s my bag. Oh, yeah, I can take your scrawny green peppers. Yes please, I’ll use your tiny eggplant nubs. Why not take your green tomatoes too? I sent them home with dahlias and best wishes for their international move two days later.
So I made green tomato chutney with green bell peppers from not our plot and Kung Pao peppers from my sister’s plot. We all ate omelettes with fresh basil as the greens and chevre that tasted of decadence. The honeynut squash pizzas were made with pesto (the squash was mostly there for color, turns out basil is strong when you use a lot of it). And there’s basil frozen in olive oil for some summer brightness (fall color?) in the depths of winter.
It took until last night for us to make the radicchio beet cranberry salad. I know why we didn’t make it when we had company, but if we wouldn’t serve it to my sister I’m not sure who we’ll break out this experiment of a meal for. Eating it, I remembered my impression from the first time, that this was my fanciest salad. The thing that I have cooked most likely to end up on a restaurant menu. Because who’s serving radicchio and cranberries at home on a Tuesday night? And at a (pretentious) farm to table place, because that is where you get the beets and hazelnuts and chèvre on a salad. It’s so good. Maybe next time we’ll share with company. (Or maybe we’ll eat it all ourselves.)
Today’s Box
Bosc Pears
Jonagold Apples
Green Kale Hearts Swapped for Celery
Purple Broccoli
Romanesco Cauliflower
Stripetti Squash
Things I think are in the fridge or on the counter
Pears
Apples
Beets (but not their greens)
Cranberries
Carrot (but not their greens)
Radicchio
Lettuce
Green beefsteak tomatoes, but baby-sized
Roma tomatoes, mix of green and reddening
Eggplant
Sweet Dumpling Squash
Potatoes (purple and gold)
Straggling in from the Garden
Basil
Dahlias and marigolds and cosmos (gather seeds as we go!)
I wanted to swap the kale for the celery because 1) we’ve had a lot of kale already and 2) the apple, celery, date, and parm salad sounded so good in my mind. Adapt from Six Seasons.
While Six Seasons is out, flip over to cauliflower. Let’s try the cauliflower steaks with provolone and pickled peppers please.
Debating about the broccoli. I recently remembered Friday nights 15 years ago, cooking up Mollie Katzen’s peanut-butter molasses broccoli tofu stirfry (Enchanted Broccoli Forest), and am craving it. But we made that with frozen broccoli and this looks so good for the roasting. Maybe in a soup?
Seeing the eggplant has me craving eggplant with soba noodles. You can’t eat soba noodles. This should be my lunch on the day you go to the office.
The internet says stripetti is a cross between spaghetti squash and delicata squash. I vote we use it the same as we would spaghetti squash and bake them as bowls.
We made it through surgery. And, as I write the letter part of this five days after pickup, support visits from family. I think I won’t go back to the dishes everyone made. A decision completely separate from my lack of remembering what those dishes were…..
Then garden’s coming to the end of it’s time. We planted greens (Kale! Swiss chard! Mustard greens!) and they’ve sprouted. We’ll see whether they make it through the cold ahead. Ditto the radishes and turnips that are growing bit by bit. When we went to the plot this weekend, I had you pick most of the tomatoes off the vines. There might be a bit before they frost comes. Maybe. Or we can make more chutney and ferment. And enjoy the green from the end of the season.
The dahlias, however, are a delight. We didn’t prune as much as we should’ve this season. And they ran wild. Enough to have a bouquet on the table and on the counter and to give to a friend and hand out blooms to strangers just because.
Meals to eat with company when we have our own food restrictions
Those beet greens are gorgeous, but take up a ton of space. We should use them tonight! Coconut rice?
Speaking of greens, we still have carrot tops from last week. And new ones. Make both the pesto and the salsa verde from Scraps, Wilts, and Weeds.
Getting radicchio and beets and and cranberries reminds me of this salad, which we first made with rhubarb and later made with frozen cranberries and can totally make with cranberries this go around.
We used the leek bottoms, but still have many leek tops. Scraps, Wilts, Weeds recommends cutting them into skinny strips, about three inches long and stir-frying them. Let’s try that! Along with tofu?
Have some radishes and turnips from our garden plot. They have greens, but it’s just a few roots, so fewer leaves. Cook up some lentils an for a salad with some of the greens stirred in at the end?
Honeynut peeled into strips and topping a pizza crust with lemons and goat cheese, a la Melissa Clark.
Let’s go ahead and get the sour cream and onion to make Mama Stamberg’s cranberry relish. It can wait in the freezer until Thanksgiving.
I love the veins of purple in the dark green kale, and the streaks of red as the ginger changes from light yellow to green.
Dear John,
Your mom and aunt are arriving later today. They’ve got the truck loaded with a dining room set, carefully restored after the flood. The set was purchased by your great-aunt at an estate sale in the ’60’s. Tomorrow the movers will come help unload. And then, the re-settling process will begin. I’m hopeful that with this delivery we’ll be better at getting the house into more permanent feel. Less of the boxes in the corners look.
For today, I’m about to start prepping the squash to be risotto. Figure that’s a meal that we can have on the stove whenever they make it in. And getting the squash prepped for use this week seems like a good strategy!
The cold arrived last week. We’re searching for sweaters and sweatshirts. Pulling out the pants and quilts. We made two different lentil squash soups last week. Autumn is arriving and we’re almost prepared!
If I had looked at the predicted contents, I would not have made aloo mater yesterday. I should’ve made Priya’s aloo gobi today. Instead, we’ll try this one and be sad about missing the roasted goodness. (And oil. I’m still sad about missing oil.)
Beet greens blending with dandelion and kale. But the squash stands out!
Dear John,
The radishes and turnips we planted have sprouted–we should put in more the next time we go to the garden. One of the edamame plants has emerged, the others I’ll assume were eaten by birds. Beans are starting to dry on the vine. The kale that we’ve been eating all season was getting covered in enough bugs that I just harvested it all. The new greens are sprouting. The chard seeds have been put in the ground. They’re spikier than I would’ve guessed! The tomatillos won’t last much longer. The tomatoes, might hold out a bit more. The peppers are dwarfed by the dahlia and the marigold. I cut back the flowers, but not sure it’s doing the peppers much good. I put some cilantro seeds in the ground. Wondering if we’ll eat any this fall, if it will be a spring surprise, or if it will sprout at all.
Little miracles all of them. Larger miracles all of us. And yet still, so incredibly small.
Kale + apple + red pepper from the garden + beet yogurt + chickpea croutons
I looked back at last winter and fall for other ideas of how to use squash with minimal fat. Really, soup is where it’s at, because the roasting wants the oil. Apple, squash, ginger soup from Simply in Season is a traditional easing in to soup season. Tomato butternut bisque (less tempting when I won’t eat grilled cheese). There’s risotto. AKA more rice porridge for me.
Was also reminded of the beet and pear salad with mustard vinaigrette. I think we’ll be out of greens before we’re through with salad plans this week.
Yes, the sweet potatoes are larger than the broccoli and the cauliflower.
Happy Veteran’s Day John,
We biked the trail along the river to a restaurant we visited in the first month of living here, and hadn’t been back to since. We’ve done takeout, but this was our first dining out locally since February 28, 2020. Outdoor patio. Masked when we weren’t eating. It was familiar and delicious and so, so foreign. Maybe that’s what everything feels like these days. The return of beloved experiences that were familiar. But with the edge of awareness of different risk tolerances, different boundaries.
Sometimes I manage to be intentional about the small interactions. Asking the Dad if he wants a picture of both of them after he’s posed his kid and snapped a shot. Complementing the woman on her coordinating blues from glasses to shirt to shoes. Bigger conversations still feel awkward, but I can practice bit by bit. Maybe someday it will just feel familiar.
Soup nomination: knock-off pho. Aka rice noodles in garlic-ginger broth with bok choy. Add some dried mushrooms, soft tofu. Top with lime, jalapeno. We’re out of basil, alas. And the cilantro isn’t quite established enough to want to pick its leaves. (It might die before we get there. That’s okay.)
Aloo gobi! I think this is the recipe we used for virtual Indian Friendsgiving. It feels weird to make it with the different cauliflower and blue potatoes. I bet it still tastes delicious.
Roast the broccoli? Serve with lemon juice and pasta and feta/chevre?
Celery salad with dates and parm + apples. Expand the recipe in Six Seasons.
Yesterday I called you from the garden. Should we try to find row cover before the forecast freeze? Went to the closest plant store, they don’t carry it. Decided that we have enough going on in the next few weeks that maybe it doesn’t make sense to put in more effort and extend our work. Sorry summer plants.
So we’re saying goodbye to the tomatoes and eggplant. Been separating basil seeds at the dinner table. We picked the first fall radish and the pink bulb feels like magic.
In This Week’s Box
Asian Pears
Empire Apples
Garden Gem Tomatoes
Green Acorn Squash
Mixed Carmen Italian Peppers
Pink Celery
Red Leaf Lettuce
Garden Potential
Starfish pepper
Deciding how long to wait on the final jalapenos
Lombok peppers
Volunbeans for drying
Final tomato, possibly to ripen on counter
First radish, when we want it
Still in the Fridge
Apples: Who even is able to identify the apples filling the fruit drawer?
Quiche? On the one hand, I like the idea of an eggy dish that has leftovers. Shredded beets and goat cheese? It’ll all be pink. Sliced tomatoes, sauteed peppers, and cheddar cheese?
Nominating this acorn squash for being stuffed come Thanksgiving.
Celery or cabbage salad with chickpeas, a garlic anchovy dressing, croutons for me
Celery and apple salad. (There’s a celery, apple, peanut salad in Six Seasons that we haven’t tried yet. It also uses medium-hot chilies. The star peppers could be fun.)
Cabbage fried rice
Reminders of Meals Already Brainstormed
Pizza with delicata squash slices
Soup: Ginger, apple, squash OR leek and potato
Dandelion greens with beans and fennel (I have now cooked the beans. We just have to cook the meal.)
Offcamera, frustration at the squash that had been on display and is now rotting. Oooops.
Dear John,
It has been a whirlwind of a week. Right now I am tired and hungry-ish and don’t really know what’s in the fridge except that the only leftovers are a half-cup of macaroni noodles. Which does not a meal make. But may be enhanced into a snack? I will skip further preamble in order to peruse ingredients from the comfort of the couch.
In This Week’s Box
Asian Pears
Honeycrisp Apples
Celery
Cubanelle Peppers
Delicata Squash
Ginger
Red Beets
Spinach
Sweet Onions
White Kohlrabi
Garden Potential
Starfish pepper
Deciding how long to wait on the final jalapenos
Lombok peppers
Last of the tomatillos, for real
Volunbeans for drying
Tomato, possibly to ripen on counter
Still in the Fridge
Apples: Gala, Empire, Jonagold, U-pick, Granny Smith
Bartlett Pears, Asian Pears, Bosc Pears
Greens: 1/2 a cabbage, 1/2 bunch collards, Savoy Cabbage, Romain lettuce, Dandelion, Red leaf lettuce
Herbs: Fennel tops
Leeks
Cherry tomatoes
Tomatillos
Broccoli
Edamame
Baby Hakurei Turnips
Peppers: Yummy, Lombok, Starfish, Banana, Jalapeno, Carmen
Carrots
Squash: Delicata, Red Kabocha, Spaghetti, Robins Koginut
Garlic
Potatoes: Blue, Sweet
Sunchokes
Open Preserves
Preserved eggplant
Dill pickle juice
Lacto-fermented green cherry tomatoes
Lacto-fermented blueberry jalapeno hot sauce
Lacto-fermented habanda jalapeno hot sauce
Pickled red onion
Pickled banana peppers with oregano, basil, and black pepper
Tacos! Braised collard stems with scrambled eggs and tomatilla salsa. Sweet potatoes and black beans with the fermented habanada jalapeno hot sauce. Take-out from the place near the canoe launch.
Tomato sauce (butter and garlic and sage and one red pepper) with macaroni noodles
Soup of the week: Smokey beetroot and pistachio soup from Midnight Chicken.
Or mix roasted beets with yogurt. Maybe adding some fresh ginger at the end?
Squash pizza. With the pickled peppers? With goat cheese and lemon slices? With blackberries (from the freezer)?
Remember a couple of weeks back when I was thinking of apple slaw. The recipe I was remembering then is kohlrabi and apple and ginger and we have all of those right now. Perhaps I will go prepare some for lunch.
Planning Inside The Box 