Got a CSA Farmshare or Garden? Share your seasonal recipes and tips!

[cinnamon teal]

I'm not doing a CSA this year. I wasn't very happy with the farm we went through last time. Way too many sweet potatoes and not nearly enough variety. But I did plant a garden! So that's something. I harvested some new potatoes yesterday and roasted them with garlic, rosemary and olive oil. And I have some lemon balm growing that I used in a vinaigrette for salad.

MareMare, do you have a recipe for the kale chips? I've never heard of using a dehydrator to make them.

[MareMare]

We actually had tried some kale chips at a farmer's market last week and they told me they had dehydrated them, I'd only seen recipes for the oven too!

I just washed and dried them, ripped them into bite size pieces (tossed the stems out) and sprayed them lightly with vegetable oil spray. Then I sprinkled with sea salt and some Creole seasoning and dehydrated for 2-3 hours. Worked way better than when I tried to make them in the oven before!

[MareMare]

Today's haul was great! There were peas and strawberries to nibble on, and we got:

--a double bunch of kale
--head of butter lettuce
--spinach
--broccoli greens
--3 heads of garlic
--5 (stalks/heads?) of baby fennel
--bunch of radishes
--bunch of sage
--a pound of strawberries
--a pound of purple popcorn grown last year
--almost 2 pounds of Bob's Red Mill Pinto Beans

I've already got some of the kale in the dehydrator, this week I trimmed off the stems, tore it into bite sized pieces and massaged it with a bit of vegetable oil and sesame oil. Seasoned with Kosher salt, granulated garlic, and red pepper flakes. Nom!

[MareMare]

I may have eaten the latest kale chips in 3 days! I just pulled out my spinach chips, awesome! Lighter and crunchier than the kale chips. Currently I have my garlic scapes in the dehydrator. I might be obsessed.

[jungrrl]

I looooove garlic scapes but we didn't get any with our first box.    Lots of lettuce, some swiss chard, a few turnips, LOTS of spinach and cilantro.  I haven't done much with it all yet but I need to soon!

[MareMare]

Ooh sounds good! I thought turnips were more of a fall harvest for some reason! They had a few pea pods to munch on Friday when I picked up, and they said we would get them in our shares this week, can't wait!

[batgirl]

Lately I have been digging sauteed spinach and garbanzos with romesco sauce http://spanishfood.about.com/od/sidedishes/r/romescosauce.htm  and a bit of feta. Yummy!

[MareMare]

That sounds so good, Batgirl! We went to a tapas place awhile ago and had Romesco sauce for the first time, nom!

Cinnamon Teal, how is your garden doing? I have two sad little cherry tomato plants on my porch which want more sun, and a basil plant on my kitchen windowsill.

Last week's share:

Fresh Garlic
Baby Red Beets
Lacinato Kale
Pink Beauty Radishes
Sugar Snap Peas
Lettuce
Strawberries
Spinach
Calabrese Sprouting Broccoli
Whole Wheat Flour (Bob’s Red Mill)

I still have the beets, need to roast them up! Gave the flour to the boyfriend, not a fan of whole wheat. The strawberries that are left are going into my fabulous Sangria!
This was this week's haul:


    Lettuce (butter and romaine)
    Baby Chard
    Red Russian Kale
    Calabrese Sprouting Broccoli
    Sugar Snap Peas
    Fava Beans
    Fresh Garlic
    Fennel
    Green Split Peas (Bob’s Red Mill)

I still have the sprouting broccoli from last week, so combined with the bag from this week I am going to do a stir fry with those and some mushrooms from the supermarket. I don't like fennel so it went home with the boyfriend. The kale's dehydrating right now, still not sick of that! I found a "recipe" for the fava beans that is basically just keeping it super simple with salt, pepper, garlic, and Parmesan. The sugar snap peas are a yummy snack any time of day, and I haven't figured out what to do with the chard yet. Usually I add it to a soup or stew, but definitely don't want to make soup or stew this week!

[cinnamon teal]

MareMare, sounds like you're getting some great produce! I love fava beans. A great summery way to eat them is to grill them and eat them like edamame. I'm not a huge fan of chard but I do like it instead of spinach in saag aloo (a vegetarian Indian dish with potatoes and spinach). To make it into a main course, sometimes I fry up a few eggs with runny yolks to top it off.

My garden is doing... okay. I dunno. It's our first real garden so it's sort of an experiment. We're getting potatoes pretty consistently. I made some into scalloped potatoes for tonight's dinner. And we got a few handful of peas. But something keeps digging up my plants. It doesn't eat them, it just digs up and leaves them to die. I think it might be robins and towhees looking for worms. But whatever the case, I didn't get any lettuce or kale from the garden and I'm pretty sure the corn is going to be a wash as well. However, I have high hopes for the tomatoes and jalapenos. And I just harvested my very first cucumber yesterday! Woohoo!

Also, MareMare, thanks for the kale chips info! I can't wait to try them out! I was planning to last week but time got away from me so we ended up adding the kale to some tilapia in a foil packet. But it really didn't come out very well. I think I would have been much better off making chips with it. 

[MareMare]

Potatoes from your garden sound awesome! I took a ton of my produce to the beach this week and made awesome stir fries and salads for me and the boyfriend. Chard is great to throw into a stir fry!

I made the most amazing refried beans today with the pinto beans I got a couple weeks ago. Started with garlic, onions, and bacon. So yum!

Today's haul~

2 heads lettuce (boston and red something?)
kale
chard
1 head fresh garlic
1 tomato!
1 lb squash (I got some adorable patty pan squash and some small crookneck)
1 lb sugar snap peas
3 lbs fava beas!
2 lb (approx) Black Turtle Beans from Bob's Red Mill

And it was also pick your own raspberry day, so we got maybe 3-4 cups of berries. It was hot and  they were hard to get to!