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The Return of CSA Warblogging.
1) I have a new phone, with a vastly, vastly better camera (see: one that works);
2) This is not just my farmshare now. It's our farmshare. And that, among other things, may well serve to keep me honest.
So, yes. Farmshare started again last Thursday. :)
Week 1, picked up Thursday last, was:
1 head Dancine lettuce
1 quart mixed baby greens
1 bunch rhubarb
1 bunch asparagus
1 bunch green onions
1 bunch green garlic
1/2 pound black morel mushrooms
6 duck eggs
1 package spicy dal spelt crackers
You may notice some differences here. For one, I backed way off on the eggs, because you do not even want to know how recently there were still extra eggs sitting in my fridge. Despite all my grand plans of baking and omelettes and whatnot, apparently I just don't use a dozen a week. And for the weeks I do want extras, I can just buy them there, so it seemed prudent to dial it back.
For two, there's the crackers. They're actually a cracker, cookie, and granola share, from Evelyn's Crackers, which uses local, heritage grains from a few specific farms. P.'s changed my eating habits somewhat (and I his): at the tender age of 30, I started to regularly eat breakfast again (shocking, I know), and now we go through small oceans of muesli cereal and granola. So we figured we'd give this a try. We've only signed up for six weeks out of the 22 total on this one, with the plan to extend it if we like what we're getting.
That said: Holy. We used almost everything. We used this stuff up, and then some.
If anything underlines the difference between doing groceries for one person and for two, this is it: I don't think I ever wiped out the list inside a week by myself. I just wouldn't cook that intensively when it was just me. Now that we can trade it up -- or cook together -- it gets done a little more, and we'll both do better dishes when someone besides ourselves is eating them too. Go figure.
So, this week in pictures:
I made this tuna melt object for lunch a few times this week, for a very specific reason: I had a loaf of bread that wasn't quite behaving right (moral: apparently flour does go flat. Do not use the flour that sat in your boyfriend's old apartment's kitchen for he won't admit how many years). All the tasty stuff on top softened up the bread enough to make it good for eating.
This was also pretty basic stuff: baby greens, green onion and garlic from the CSA, tomatoes, and sharp Swiss cheese on top of tinned tuna and mayo, on top of bread that didn't rise right. Quick, economical, and full of food groups.
Note increase in effort when we cook together.
This is Sunday night's dinner, on my stove which needs cleaning (I know, shush): P. brings to the fight the delicious St. Lawrence Market pierogies on the left, done with green beans, red onion, and some CSA green garlic. My job was a vegetable, so I threw the CSA asparagus, some green garlic and onions, and black morel mushrooms in a pan with a little bit of olive oil, soy sauce, and oyster sauce and some spinach, baby bok choy, and shiitake mushrooms we'd got on the cheap at the fruit market at Bloor and Palmerston. I think there was ginger in there too.
Verdict: Hot damn. They were kind of fakey Chinese greens, but they were good fakey Chinese greens. We did not have leftovers.
Not pictured is Saturday's very late dinner, in which I came home from reading at an event outside of Peterborough at 1am, exhausted, and P. made maple and five spice sausages with red onion! and dates! and a salad with the baby greens/mushrooms/blackberries/almonds/broccoli for dinner because he is a mad genius. But that is where most of the baby greens went.
Also not pictured: The slow eating of the dal-spiced Evelyn's Crackers package, which went into a number of very delicious little snack plates with brie or sage derby, and cherries, and grapes, and blueberries, and whatever other fruit we had in the house. The crackers are gone too.
My table is messy too. What? I was on deadline.
Final documented meal for this week is Tuesday's dinner, also a team effort, and where most of the edges of what was left went. Finding myself in the utterly unprecedented position of running out of CSA veggies two days early, I started a salad with the Dancine lettuce, to realize I didn't have enough greens there. So I threw in what was left of that spinach. And the bok choy. And the broccoli. And some of that endless green garlic and onions, and the shiitake mushrooms to pad out the black morels.
What resulted was kind of a mishmash bitter greens salad that was actually really, really good. It had a lot of variety and flavour, even if it was the variety of cleaning out your fridge.
The rice was likewise pretty experimental: I knew P. wanted some coconut milk for the curry shrimp (P. is Minister of Curry; I am bad at curry things) so I opened a tin and put some in the rice. And then was all "Hmm," and threw in spices too: star anise, cinnamon, a bit of that fresh ginger left over from the greens the other night. And then threw in our last handful of raisins, some almonds, and a chopped-up fresh apricot, because the apricot was getting up there and why not?
It was interesting. I think if we try that one again I'll want to balance the flavours a little bit: This was Science! and we both knew it. More spice, maybe, and less coconut.
And then we had very little left in the fridge, but luckily it was Thursday.
So, this having run quite long, our leftovers from Week 1:
Rhubarb (I'll get to this tonight)
2 green onions
1 spring garlic
a handful of black morel mushrooms
1/2 dozen duck eggs (didn't get to the eggs. must bake.)
--and our provisions for Week 2:
1 Dancine Lettuce
1 bunch assorted herbs
1 quart baby greens
1 bunch asparagus
1 bunch green Onions
1 bunch rhubarb
1 pint black shell beans
1/2 pound chanterelle mushrooms
1/2 dozen duck eggs
Pumpkin/sesame seed red fife crackers
I have Plans for that rhubarb tonight. Plans that go like this.
Tune in next week, for the thrilling continuation. :p