Spaghetti Squash and Pomegranates ~ Week of October 10th

I didn’t have a chance to “edit” my box contents this week, so this is a box straight from the CSA. I would have held off on more potatoes, I think, but otherwise I’m pretty darn excited about everything that arrived.

Box contents:
Yukon Gold potatoes – 1.5 pounds
Savoy cabbage – 1 bunch
Spaghetti squash – 1
Yellow onions – 4
Red radishes – 1 bunch
Beefsteak tomatoes – 0.75 pounds
Collard greens – 1 bunch
Red Leaf lettuce – 1 head
Braeburn apples – 3
Bartlett pears – 4
Valencia oranges – 4
Pomegranates – 2

I’m trying to stay on top of the potato influx. This week’s will get used along with the onions in my vegan spin on a Marcella Hazan potato-tomato gratin. So yummy. The Savoy cabbage is exciting. I used to use it in ribollita (Tuscan bread soup), but I haven’t made that since going gluten-free. I do have some slightly stale but still delicious garlic-kale sourdough from Bread Srsly, so maybe I’ll give that recipe a revisit. In the meantime, I’m going to try out a recipe from The Vegan Slow Cooker for Hard Cider and Cabbage Stew. I have a sad little past-its-prime apple that will be very happy to go into stew, I think. The spaghetti squash is intriguing. So many people recommend eating it like pasta, with a sauce on top, but that isn’t super appealing. I’ve found a recipe for spaghetti squash cakes I’m looking forward to trying out. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I love all this fall fruit. Peaches and nectarines and cherries are so decadent and such a treat, but I get equally excited at the arrival of fall fruits like apples and pears and pomegranates. The oranges are very pale – a couple of them are lemon-yellow – so I’m hoping their flavor is more robust than their appearance! I see salad on the horizon as well with lettuce and radishes and tomatoes, which is good because I’ve been having serious salad cravings. The collards may go into green smoothies, I haven’t decided yet what I want to do with them. I appreciate how hardy they are because, unlike something like chard, that means I have a few days to ponder how I want to use them.

I am linking this post to the weekly CSA round-up over at In My Chucks. Go check it out to ogle other people’s boxes and get some great ideas for what to do with our seasonal produce bounty!

Tired of heavy potatoes?

I’ve mentioned several times here that I’m getting overwhelmed by potatoes. They arrive every week in my box and I simply haven’t been able to keep up with them. When it comes to veggies, I am much more drawn to leafy greens, broccoli, cauliflower, and other produce that has a higher moisture content. Does that make sense, do you know what I mean? Potatoes feel heavy to me, not hydrating or refreshing. And the recipes you can make with them are always dense and rich.

I thought some acid might help to brighten things up, so I searched for recipes involving potatoes and tomatoes. In a Chowhound thread someone mentioned a Marcella Hazan recipe that I thought might be just what I was looking for. I veganized it, cooked it up, and it was fantastic. It tasted best after about two days, so it’s definitely a “let the flavors mingle” kind of thing.

I want to give you guys the recipe, but I was too tired to be doing any photoshoots so I have nothing to illustrate it. I dislike putting up posts with no photo at all, so you get this silly one of me from the hotel we stayed at last weekend on Long Island when my cousin was getting married. We arrived after a long day of traveling and all I wanted was a giant pile of broccoli. (See above re: hydrating vegetables.) So the first thing I did was put on my PJs and call room service and ask them if they could send up a giant pile of broccoli. I was thrilled when they agreed, although I didn’t have high expectations, I never do when I’m eating vegetables on the East Coast. Yet what arrived was indeed a giant pile of broccoli goodness, cooked perfectly crisp-tender and dressed with lemon and olive oil with such a light hand I could barely tell the dressing was there, just that the broccoli was some of the most delicious I’d ever eaten. So now you know, if you’re ever at the Hilton on Long Island, order broccoli!

Without further ado, your potato recipe:

Roasted Potatoes with Tomatoes
Veganized and otherwise adapted from a Marcella Hazan recipe found on a Chowhound forum thread

2 pounds potatoes, sliced 1/4 inch thick
2 C onions, thinly sliced
1 28 oz. can of whole tomatoes, torn into small pieces (just the tomatoes, not the juice)
3/4 t. dried oregano
1/2 C water
1/3 C olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix potatoes, onion, tomatoes, oregano, 1/2 cup water, and salt and pepper.

Put 1 T. olive oil in a large casserole dish and spread it around to coat the bottom and sides of the dish. Put potato mixture into dish and pour in the remaining olive oil.

Roast 1 hour or more on the top shelf of the oven until the potatoes are tender and yummy, turning potatoes every 20 minutes while they roast. Let sit to cool a little, serve warm, not hot. Or better yet, let them sit for at least a day. The flavors just get better and better.

Artichokes and Fennel ~ Week of September 19th

What came in my box this week:
Artichokes – 3
Yukon Gold potatoes – 1.5 pounds
Baby bok choy – 0.75 pounds
Mustard greens – 1 bunch
Fennel – 1 head
Hass avocados – 2
Red beets – 1 bunch
Lacinato kale – 1 bunch
Bartlett pears – 2
Strawberries – 1 pint
Cantaloupe – 1
Red Flame grapes – 0.75 pounds

A lovely Fall box, my contents looked like a still-life when I arranged them for photographing. (I realize that technically that’s what you call any arrangement of non-sentient things that are being interpreted through an artistic medium, but you know what I mean – they looked like an arty still life.) I was especially pleased about the artichokes, for some reason. I haven’t been into them much in the past few years but I was excited to see them in my box.

I made several substitutions to my order this week, mostly prompted by an oversupply of some of the things scheduled to come in my box. I still haven’t used that poor red cabbage from several weeks ago, so I subbed baby bok choy. Red onions were substituted with mustard greens, Bibb lettuce went in favor of beets, and plums were switched out so I could get pears instead. I’m feeling super content with my Full Circle box in terms of the amount and type and quality of what I receive and in terms of how it’s working in my life right now.

I’ve also, now that I’ve switched down a box size, started ordering from Full Circle’s “green grocer” option, which is an à la carte list of additional produce and groceries you can add to your regular box. This week, once I realized I was getting beets and potatoes and that I already had scallions and carrots, I added fresh dill to my order so I could make vinegret, my ultimate Russian comfort food. I also got some locally made tea-infused tofu. I ate that today with rice noodle ramen, the baby bok choy from this week’s box, and some long, tangy chives.

Vinegret (Russian beet salad)

The artichokes are long gone – I boiled all three right away (steaming is better, I just didn’t want to babysit the pot) and ate them as my lunch. The kale and avocado will go into another perennial favorite, raw kale salad, which I think is best with Lacinato kale. I’m curious to see if I can make an appetizing green smoothie with mustard greens (what do you think?). The fennel will become roasted fennel if I’m feeling energetic, and get thinly sliced into salads if I’m not. Pear and fennel salad sounds great, actually. As for the beet greens – the best bonus vegetable ever, if you ask me: buy beets, get chard for free! – I’m thinking of trying out a new recipe, Swiss Chard ‘n’ Lemon Stir-Fry.

Raw Kale Salad with Avocado & Cherry Tomatoes

I’m linking this up to two different link parties this week! In Her Chucks continues to be a delightful – and ever-expanding – place to check out What’s In The Box? for CSA bloggers everywhere. In Her Chucks pointed me towards a blog called Gastronomical Sovereignty (great name!) that does a weekly Wednesday Fresh Food Linkup. (I know it’s Friday now, but my box came on Wednesday, so that’s gotta count for something…) The Fresh Food Linkup is meant to encourage fresh food production, consumption, activism, and awareness and should have some great links to check out.

An old nemesis revisited

So I had this eggplant. One medium-sized eggplant. And these zucchini, a whole bunch of them. And I wasn’t cooking them, and every day I’d poke them to see if they had developed the dreaded soft spots that those veggies get shortly before they turn into produce bags full of mush and slime. (Sorry, that’s a pretty gross way to start a food post.) Eggplant I’d normally make into baba ganoush, but if I’m going to wash the food processor I want to be making more than a spoonful; my usual recipe calls for three eggplants and only one had come in my box. Zucchini I’ve been roasting all summer, and it’s been excellent and easy, but I was starting to get a little bored.

So I went online to see what you could make with eggplant and zucchini. And mushrooms. I had this paper bag of mushrooms that I was also anxious to make use of before they left the edible zone. And the internet told me… ratatouille.

Ah, ratatouille. Years of choking you down at Mediterranean restaurants where you were the only vegetarian option on the menu. And these were the eggplant-hating years, even. I look at ratatouille the way soldiers in the field probably look at their MREs. Pure sustenance, nothing more.

Here are the problems I have with ratatouille: 1) It’s bland. It’s basically just a bunch of vegetables, cooked for a long time. Back in Provence in the 19th century or whenever it was invented, I bet that tasted amazing. But modern vegetables just don’t pack that kind of flavor wallop anymore, especially not tomatoes. 2) It’s usually served over couscous or, occasionally, rice. Because it’s bland, it doesn’t sauce up the grain, rather the grain pulls it even further into tastelessness. 3) The eggplant is ALWAYS undercooked, and therefore spongy, bitter, and unpalatable. Undercooked eggplant is the reason I hated eggplant. Now that I understand this I mostly only eat eggplant in three culinary situations: at home, where I control the cook time; in Chinese food, where they fry the heck out of tiny tender eggplants; in Indian food, where they cook the eggplant so long it’s barely recognizable as such by the end (mmm baingan bharta!).

But that got me to thinking. Here I was with eggplant, zucchini, tomato, onion, and mushrooms (I wouldn’t have thought of mushrooms in ratatouille ’til I came across a yummy-looking variant online). I’ve loved eggplant now in many forms when I’ve cooked it at home (click the eggplant tag at the end of this post to see) so who’s to say that being the author of the experience couldn’t transform ratatouille the same way?

Making the ratatouille took a long time because the each of the vegetables was first cooked separately so it could brown rather than steam. I believe the extra time is worthwhile in this case since that’s the very process that is going to transform your vegetables from bland, stewed mush to something more transcendent. It’s also important to me to make the distinction with recipes between difficult and time-consuming. This recipe is incredibly easy, just throw on an apron, turn on an audiobook, and chop and sauté and simmer your way to ratatouille bliss in a few hours.

And bliss it was indeed. This ratatouille was delicious. Deep rich caramelized flavors and a heartbreaking melting texture. I ate it for three meals straight and then I put the last remaining bit into tacos for a some fusion fun. I could go either way on the mushrooms – if I had them on hand I would include them again, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to get them for this recipe, which I think would be excellent without them as well.

I’m linking this recipe up to the weekly What’s In the Box linkup hosted by CSA blogger In Her Chucks. I love contributing my weekly CSA box-contents post to the linkup, but I also love when people post recipes they’ve made using their CSA veggies, so I thought I’d try out doing the same. Do check out the links – there are some seriously yummy things being made out there.

Non-Disgusting, Totally Not Bland Ratatouille (vegan, gluten-free eggplant, tomato, zucchini, onion, mushroom stew)
This is a lightly adapted version of a recipe from The Kitchn, which is definitely worth checking out since it’s a real recipe from a genuine Frenchman, as opposed to my perhaps inauthentic – but delicious! – version. I originally made half a recipe because I only had one eggplant, and it worked out fine, but if I was planning on sharing this yumminess with anyone else I would make a whole recipe’s worth.

2 eggplants
2 yellow onions
6-8 zucchini
1 pound cremini mushrooms
4 large tomatoes
1 1/2 – 2 tablespoons olive oil
3-4 cloves garlic
1 bay leaf
1 T. herbes de Provence, or more to taste
Red wine suitable for cooking, about 1 cup
Chopped fresh parsley (optional)
Salt and pepper

Begin by peeling the eggplants and chopping them into bite-sized cubes. Put them in a strainer set over a bowl (or in the sink) and toss with a tablespoon of salt. Let the eggplant sit while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Dice the onions. Warm a teaspoon of olive oil in a large (at least 5 1/2 quart) Dutch oven or pot over medium-high heat. Add the onions and a generous pinch of salt. Sauté until the onions have softened and are just beginning to brown, about 10 minutes.

While the onions are cooking, you can cut up the rest of your vegetables. Keep them separate because you’ll be cooking in batches. chop the zucchini and tomato into bite-sized pieces, slice the mushrooms, and mince (or press) the garlic.
When they have softened and begun to brown, transfer the onions to a large bowl.

At this point The Kitchn offers some helpful advice which I followed liberally, using much red wine: During cooking, a brown glaze will gradually build on the bottom of the pan. If it looks like this glaze is beginning to turn black and burn, turn down the heat to medium. You can also dissolve the glaze between batches by pouring 1/4 cup of water or wine into the pan and scraping up the glaze. Pour the deglazing liquid into the bowl with the vegetables.

So after you move the onions, go ahead and deglaze with 1/4 cup of red wine and then pour that off into the bowl with the onions.

Add another teaspoon of oil to the pot and sauté the zucchini with a generous pinch of salt until the zucchini has softened and is beginning to brown, about 5 minutes. Transfer the zucchini to the bowl with the onions. Deglaze!

Add another teaspoon of oil to the pot and sauté the mushrooms with a generous pinch of salt until they have softened and released their juices, about 10 minutes. Put them in your big veggie bowl. You know the drill – it’s probably time to deglaze!

While the mushrooms are cooking, rinse the eggplant under running water and squeeze the cubes gently with your hands to remove as much moisture as possible.

Warm two teaspoons of oil in the pan and sauté the eggplant until it has softened and has begun to turn translucent, about 10-15 minutes. Don’t skimp on time here. A cube of eggplant should taste edible – maybe not scrumptious, but cooked enough to be edible – before you transfer the eggplant to the bowl with the other vegetables. (You’re about to add the tomatoes, which are acidic, like wine, so they will take care of the deglazing on this step.)

Warm another teaspoon of olive oil in the pan and sauté the garlic until it is fragrant and just starting to turn golden, which will only take a few seconds or a minute at most. Add the tomatoes, bay leaf, and herbes de Provence. As the tomato juices begin to bubble, scrape up the brown glaze on the bottom of the pan.

Add all of the vegetables back into the pan and stir until everything is evenly mixed. Bring the stew to a simmer, then turn down the heat to low. Stirring occasionally, simmer for at least 30 minutes or up to 1 1/2 hours. Shorter cooking time will leave the vegetables in larger, more distinct pieces; longer cooking times will break the vegetables down into a silky stew.

Remove the bay leaf. Stir in some chopped parsley if you like, or sprinkle some over each bowl when you serve it. Enjoy ratatouille alone, as a stew – not as a topping for something else.

The Kitchn says: Leftovers can be refrigerated for a week or frozen for up to three months. Ratatouille is often better the second day, and it can be eaten cold, room temperature, or warmed.

Baby Spinach and Hass Avocadoes ~ Week of September 12th

Here’s what came in my box this week:
Hass avocadoes – 2
Zucchini – 1 pound
Beefsteak tomatoes – 2
Cremini mushrooms – 0.4 pound
Green kale – 1 bunch
Red chard – 1 bunch
Green leaf lettuce – 2 small heads
Baby spinach – 0.5 pound
Thompson grapes – 0.75 pound
Strawberries – 1 pint
Cantaloupe – 1
Gingergold apples – 2

A fair bit of substituting this week. I’m still not caught up to the potato backlog, so I subbed out Yukon Golds for Cremini mushrooms. Same with onions – it seems like I’ve got bushels of them – so I replaced red onions with green kale. I’m trying to get back into the green smoothie habit, so I’ll hopefully be going through a lot of greens. I just bought a giant bag of oranges at Trader Joe’s, so Valencia oranges were replaced by Gingergold apples. Angeleno plums were switched out for Thompson grapes, because I’m pretty sick of plums, plus the last round weren’t even that good.

I still have a red cabbage and an eggplant left from my previous box and I’m not sure what I want to make with them. I do find that veggies I have to make more complex dishes with – as opposed to kale, say, which I can just steam and eat plain – tend to linger longer in the fridge. If I get the energy I may make some baba ganoush, though it’ll be a tiny amount with just one eggplant. Searching the internet, all anyone seems to make with red cabbage, besides slaw, occasionally, is sweet and sour red cabbage. I do have a recipe I’ve been making for years but it’s lost a lot of its luster now that I can’t eat it with cottage cheese, which was my favorite combo, with the fat richness of the cheese cutting through the acidity of the cabbage dish.

I’m adding this post to the CSA “What’s In My Box” roundup over at In My Chucks. She’s hinted at the possibility of other red cabbage recipes, so I’m eager to see what she ends up doing with hers this week!

Beefsteak Tomatoes and Red Bibb Lettuce ~ Week of August 29th

This week’s box was a pure, unadulterated CSA box, in that I forgot to check what would be coming and make any changes. Except for the fact that I am getting overwhelmed with lettuce and radishes, I am pretty pleased with everything that arrived.

Box contents this week:
Red potatoes – 3 pounds
Yellow Onions – 3
Cauliflower – 1
Green beans – 1.25 pounds
Red radishes – 2 bunches
Beefsteak tomatoes – 2
Rainbow chard – 1 bunch
Red Bibb lettuce – 1 head
Red plums – 5
White flesh nectarines – 7 (the insert that came in the box says 3 peaches/4 nectarines)
Cantaloupe – 1
Slightly melted, broken in half, but still delicious tractor-shaped piece of chocolate from Theo Chocolate in Washington – 1

Bonus chocolate! That was fun. It was looking seriously the worse for wear by the time I came across it at the bottom of the box; the plastic wrapper was full of condensation and the poor little tractor had been severed in two. But it was really good chocolate, which is really all that matters, right?

My fridge is getting way too full, I am not keeping up with the influx. I’ve changed my box order to a smaller size for next week, and hopefully that will help. The main problem, I think, is that I haven’t been able to find a place in my home besides the fridge where I can keep onions, potatoes, or garlic without them quickly going bad. So these veggies, which most people store elsewhere, are taking up the whole bottom shelf of my fridge. It’s a drag – this is prime potato season and I’d love to be able to keep a stash for the months to come, but I feel pressured to use them as quickly as possible so my poor roommate can have back the tiny corner of the fridge where he gets to keep his eggs and almond butter.

I’m trying out a couple of new cookbooks this week, both slow-cooker cookbooks. There’s this idea going around on Pinterest of putting together everything you need for a crock pot meal in a freezer bag and freezing it, thawing it the night before and throwing it all in the slow cooker in the morning, and coming home to a hot meal at night. It’s like once-a-month cooking only you just do the prep in advance. The idea has some problems (for one, I think you’re not supposed to put frozen meat in the crock pot for safety reasons – some folks are saying they don’t even thaw first, just dump it in in the morning still frozen [luckily meat safety issues fall firmly in the “not my problem” camp] – and stuff like raw potatoes and onions don’t freeze very well. I don’t think raw veggies freeze very well in general, unless you have the capability to flash freeze them.) but it piqued my curiosity about slow cooking in general, and when I investigated I found a whole slew of vegan slow cooker cookbooks. This week I’m trying, from the library, The Vegan Slow Cooker by Kathy Hestor and The Indian Slow Cooker by Anupy Singla, which isn’t vegan but most of the recipes are, as Ms. Singla doesn’t call for ghee in her vegetarian recipes. So far I’ve only tried the first book and I’m not blown away, but there will be a more detailed review to come.

Plans for my box contents this week include: melon popsicles (which I am shocked to realize I’ve never blogged, they’re kind of the best thing ever!), potato and leek gratin, perhaps a new recipe for cauliflower gratin from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, LOTS of salads with lettuce and radishes, and a slow cooker yellow dal with tomato, red onion, and rainbow chard.

And hurray! I am finally in sync, rather than scrambling to catch up and back-post and all that, and can join in the wonderful CSA link party round-up over at that grand uniter of CSA bloggers, In Her Chucks.

Plum Yum

Many, many plums. That is what I was facing as I began using up perishable food a few days before the weeklong retreat/intensive that begins my school year. I am not a great fan of plums, and even less of pluots. The ones that have been coming in my Full Circle box have been very good, but even still I am not likely to eat 3 or 4 in a day the way I can with nectarines or peaches. So I had about 15 plums and pluots hanging out, looking lovely and ripe but definitely not like they were going to survive for another ten days until I returned from my trip.

In another life, I would have made clafouti. Summer used to be an endless cascade of clafouti, moving through nectarines and cherries and plums as they came into season in turn. However, though there are indeed recipes out there, vegan, gluten-free clafouti is just nasty. So I needed something else to turn my pile of plums into an appealing and easily scarfable treat.

I ended up making a crumble (a crisp? I don’t really know the difference), taking inspiration from Deborah Madison and Jennifer Katzinger of the gluten-free Flying Apron Bakery in Seattle. It was delicious! Sweet enough to be dessert but fruit-focused enough to make a passable (if indulgent) breakfast. I had my auntie over for tea and we enjoyed some Plum Yum and a good chat.

Plum Yum (Vegan, Gluten-Free Plum Crumble or Plum Crisp)

Topping
6 T. Earth Balance, cut into 1/2 inch chunks (Deborah Madison says you can also use 6 T. canola alone or mixed with walnut or hazelnut oil)
1/4 C. brown sugar, packed
2/3 C. sorghum flour (I used sorghum because it was handy, I think rice flour or GF baking mix would work equally well here)
1/2 C. GF rolled oats (or sub the same amount of chopped nuts instead)
1/4 t. salt
1 t. ground cinnamon

Plum filling
3 lbs plums and/or pluots (skin still on), each cut into 6 or 8 slices
1/4 C. maple syrup
1 t. grated orange zest
tiny pinch of ground cloves

Preheat the oven to 375.
In a large bowl, toss the sliced plums with the maple syrup, orange zest, and cloves and set aside.
Using your fingers, work the Earth Balance with the rest of the topping ingredients so that you end up with a coarse, crumbly mixture. You don’t want big chunks of margarine remaining un-crumbled.
Arrange the fruit in a 2-quart gratin dish or sufficiently large casserole (I used a brownie pan) and cover evenly with the topping.
If you’re worried about spillage, set the dish on a sheet pan to catch drips.
Bake until the juices are bubbling and the topping has browned a bit, about 1 hour and 15 minutes. GF topping usually won’t brown as promptly as wheat flour topping, but on the other hand it’s hard to overcook this unless you actually burn it, so use your best judgement – once the plum juice is bubbling, take it out or leave it in til it looks like something you’d want to eat.
Let cool for 10 minutes and serve hot, or serve cold any time. (I recommend breakfast!)

Red Bibb Lettuce & Dapple Dandy Pluots ~ Week of August 1st

I’m way behind on posting box contents posts. But that is the fundamental purpose of this blog so, no frills, here’s what came in my box the week of August 1st. (I didn’t record July 25th, sorry!) Oh, and by the way, I am not trying to be hip & fancy with my artistically blurry indie square-bordered photographs. When I don’t get around to taking pictures until daylight is mostly gone, Hipstamatic’s Loftus lens is actually the best way to get a light-enough-to-see shot without using a flash.

What came in my box:
Russet potatoes – 3 pounds
Honeydew melon – 1
Carrots – 1 bunch
Cucumbers – 2
Broccoli – 1 bunch
Green beans – 1.25 pounds
Mixed heirloom tomatoes – 1 pound
Green chard – 1 bunch
Red Bibb lettuce – 1 head
Zee Lady peaches – 4
Dapple Dandy pluots – 6
Santa Rosa plums – 6

Two of the peaches arrived already moldy, as you can see if you look closely at my artistically blurry photograph. It seems weird that it’s August and I haven’t gotten tomatoes in my regularly scheduled box (these tomatoes were substituted for something else – so they are available, they just aren’t going into our boxes). It’s a bummer because I pretty much only eat tomatoes July-September. Unless I’m really excited about a particular recipe, I never buy out of season tomatoes. And since my whole plan with the CSA box is to not have to go the market, I’m missing out on all of tomato season!!

Potatoes, tomatoes, green beans, and Bibb lettuce – I am definitely making (vegan) Niçoise salad!

Let’s Turn Up the Heat

It’s summer! I love summer. Summer means gorgeous produce I only get a few months out of the year – corn and tomatoes and peaches and nectarines. Summer means it stays light until late and the days feel like they might go on forever. Summer means bundling up in my warmest scarf and wool socks, turning the oven up to 450, and huddling beside it in my unheated kitchen. Wait, what? Oh, I should have mentioned, this is summer in San Francisco. It is, in fact, colder here in the winter than it is in the summer. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get damn cold here ‘twixt May and September.

This has also been a very tired summer for me. Since finishing up my first year of grad school, there has been a distinct increase in bed days and rest days. No problem, that’s what that 450 degree oven is for.

It started with the corn. I love corn. My favorite way to eat summer corn is in fresh corn polenta. But that requires me to shave the kernels off the cobs, which involves a bowl and a knife and stuff. Too tired. I could steam it, but I have a bad habit of putting things on to steam and then getting back into bed, having one of my famous memory blips, and coming back far too late to find a scorched, dry pot. Consulting my trusty copy of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (love that “what do I do with this vegetable?” section in the middle!), I learned that corn can be roasted. IN THE HUSK. Here are the steps: Turn oven to 450 degrees. Take corn ears out of CSA box. Lay corn ears onto oven rack. Come back in 15 minutes (give or take, if you space out it’s cool, they are far from burning). Give a little tug and all the husk and silk come gently off at once. WOW.

As an experiment I tried sprinkling it with nutritional yeast. It was pretty great. And I wasn’t the only one thought so! Miss Violet went absolutely bananas. She’s usually pretty good about not being on the table. She might jump up to check something out, but if I say her name or give her tail a little whack she’ll jump down right away. She knows she’s not supposed to be up there. But this time I had to forcibly remove her, picking her up off the table, with her struggling the whole time to get back to the nutritional yeast-covered corn. A little internet research seems to indicate it’s okay for cats to have (or very good for them, depending on the source) so Miss Smushyface was ultimately distracted with a little saucer of her own so I could eat my corn in peace.

I had such a good time with the corn that I tried some zucchini next. My favorite way to eat summer zucchini is Pan-Seared Summer Squash with Garlic and Mint but that requires slicing the zucchini thinly, searing it a few pieces at a time in a pan, flipping and searing more, then repeating until all the slices have been cooked. Mint must be chopped, lemons must be squeezed, garlic must be minced. My new method: Chop zucchini into chunks. Toss with a teaspoon of olive oil, salt, pepper, and herbes de Provence. Put in a parchment-lined baking dish (or rimmed baking sheet) for ~45 minutes or until your desired texture. WOW.

I also tried this with some russet potatoes and cauliflower that came in my box. I don’t have a picture because we ate it too fast. Disher said it was one of the best things he’d ever put in his mouth. I have to concur. Roasted cauliflower is amazing.

So I have my new summer formula. And as an added bonus, it helps keep the house warm on those foggy damp summer nights.

Summer Roast Corn

Fresh corn, still in its husk

Preheat oven to 450. When oven is heated, lay corn on oven rack. Let roast for 15 minutes. Remove corn and, using some sort of heat protection on your hands, pull away the husk. All the silk and husk will just slide right off. Sprinkle with nutritional yeast if desired.

Summer Roast Zucchini

Fresh summer zucchini

Preheat oven to 450. Cut each zucchini lengthwise down the middle, then cut across into 1-inch chunks. Toss with a little olive oil (I use a 1 1/2 teaspoons for 4 zucchini), salt, pepper, and herbes de Provence. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Roast zucchini 45 minutes to an hour, or until meltingly tender and browned.

Summer Roast Potatoes and Cauliflower

Potatoes (I’ve tried Russets and Yellow Finn)
Cauliflower

Preheat oven to 450. Cut veggies into small pieces. Cauliflower florets around 1 inch, potatoes around 1/2 inch. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Roast veggies 45 minutes to an hour, or longer, or until tender and browned.

Yellow Finn Potatoes & Donut Peaches ~ Week of July 18th

I’m catching up, this post is only two days behind! This week was another gorgeous box. At the end of this post I go through my pros and cons for Full Circle and absolutely perfect produce is definitely a pro. (Although also potentially a con, as I discuss below…)

What came in my box:
Cauliflower, Organic – 1
Baby Bok Choy, Organic – 1.25 pounds
Eggplant, Organic – 1
Bunched Carrots, Organic – 1 bunch
Yellow Finn Potatoes, Organic – 1.5 pounds
Cucumbers, Organic – 2
Red Leaf Lettuce, Organic – 1 bunch
Green Chard, Organic – 1 bunch
Nectarines, Organic – 4 *These were not actually in my box. 😦
Santa Rosa Plums, Organic – 6
Donut Peaches, Organic – 5
Strawberries, Organic – 1 pint

My substitutions this week: baby bok choy instead of red bell peppers (those guys are on my permanent exemptions list!), bunched carrots instead of onions (I’m out of carrots, not out of onions), nectarines instead of pluots (just because I can, although apparently I can’t, since they’re not here).

Some of the carrots have been dispatched into a smoothie (Farmer B and I are calling it the “Sunset Bunny”: carrot, banana, strawberry, ginger, lettuce, coconut water). More carrots, cucumber, lettuce, plums, nectarines, and strawberries went into sushi (I love fruit sushi so much right now, maybe it’s a summer thing). One of the cauliflowers and several of the potatoes were roasted with homemade herbamare and olive oil. I’m not sure what I’ll do with that eggplant. It’s quite handsome, but I mostly only like Italian eggplant in baba ganoush, and this would make a tiny batch. Not sure if it’s worth the effort (of washing the Cuisinart, mainly!) I do love caponata, too, but that would require going to the store for olives.

A note on donut peaches: I have always wondered what the point was. They’re small and their shape means they have a much higher ratio of icky furskin to yummy fruit goodness. But in the spirit of having some actual CSA adventurousness, I didn’t substitute them in my box. And boy am I glad! I get it now, I totally get it. If a weird flat shape and high furskin ratio is the price we must pay for such flavor, I will pay it every time! Donut peaches are the best. I’m not even going to try to describe the flavor in words, but there were glades with unicorns and rainbows and stuff.

I’m adding this post to the marvelous round-up of CSA posts spearheaded by In Her Chucks. I remember back when I started in 2007 that CSA blogs were few and far between, and how thrilling it would be to come across some distant stranger who was documenting their box as well. Heck, any information at all about CSAs was hard to find, which is why I started this blog in the first place. But now CSAs are more widely available and better known, and there are oodles of sexy box-contents photos for me to ogle across the web.

Mushroom and white bean paprikas over “caulipots,” mashed potato & cauliflower (from Appetite for Reduction)

So I wanted to fill you guys in on what I think of the Full Circle box so far. That is, after all, pretty much the entire point of this blog. I checked back to see why I stopped my last box (Farm Fresh to You) and it was a combo of financial and lifestyle. Full Circle is really working for me right now, which is great. The cons are not inconsequential; however, they are mostly cons in comparison with a traditional CSA (like Eatwell). Since I can barely make it to the farmer’s market anymore, what I’m really comparing Full Circle to is running out to the Whole Foods down the street to grab some stuff. In that comparison, considerations about carbon footprint and miles traveled and farmer sponsorship are likely equal or better in favor of Full Circle.

Pros:

• So far I have been thrilled with EVERYTHING that has come in my box. This is due to a few different things:
• Very high quality produce. Sometimes there are little bugs in the cauliflower or bug-bitten leaves of baby bok choy, but I don’t mind this since I am currently embracing eating insects (unintentionally, but not going to any lengths to avoid it) as part of eating organic, real food. There has never been anything bruised or brown or wilted. Even the fruit hits this magical spot where it’s mostly ripe enough to eat when it arrives but not so ripe that it goes bad by the next morning.
• Ability to customize. Full Circle is very easy (and enticing) to customize. You can replace any fruit or vegetable on the list with a second batch of something else on the list, or you can choose from a list of substitute options that is as long as the box contents themselves. This enables me to ensure I don’t end up with an overflow of something I haven’t used fast enough. No more dreaded “lettuce graveyard.” I usually end up subbing 2 ingredients, sometimes 3 or 4.
• Large size. Because of money concerns, I’ve always ordered the smallest size my CSA offers, sometimes even dropping it down to delivery once every two weeks. I got my first two Full Circle boxes free, however, through a promotion they offered when they first opened in the Bay Area, so of course I went for the largest size, the Harvest box. What I discovered, and the reason I have continued to get the Harvest size (clever marketing, guys!) is that with this size, the ability to customize, and the really nice balance of fruits & veggies in the box, I don’t need to go to the store. Ever. At some point I suppose I’ll need to go restock grains and beans and rice vinegar and stuff, but I haven’t needed to buy produce since I started getting my box. I don’t know if I’m saving money in the sense that what I pay is averaging out to a lower price per item, but the savings in energy & time is overwhelming.
• I was suspicious about whether Full Circle would be in line with my food values. They’re too slick, too well organized, they span several states! I wondered where my food would come from with this Washington-based organization, particularly because Full Circle recently bought Eating With the Seasons, which I felt was pretty cavalier about sourcing locally. But upon closer investigation, Full Circle actually seems pretty awesome about sourcing from (mostly) local, small-scale farms. On their website, each item on the list of things that will come in my box links to an information page about the farm where it’s grown. I know it’s easy to write a compelling pastoral narrative that makes you feel all warm inside and has no actual relationship to reality (remember the Petaluma Egg Farm scandals?) but Full Circle’s stories have won me over. Why? Because both Full Circle and many of the specific farm stories focus on how the farm employees are treated. In my mind it’s easy to spin pretty tales about being a steward of the land and lie about the happiness of your chickens, but claiming you give health benefits to your workforce and are dedicated to eliminating the toxicity in their work environment seems like a much more brazen level of deception. This may be my own particular naiveté, and I welcome any comments correcting my mistaken beliefs, but for now at least it really goes a long way towards making me feel glad to be part of this organization.
• Home delivery. I’m tired. Home delivery works really well for me. I’m not sure I could actually do it the other way. Part of why I was excited to start a box again is that I kept missing the Wednesday farmer’s market in my neighborhood when I was too tired to go out that day.
• Great customer service. Full Circle is super responsive to queries, they call and email to check in to see how everything is going, and when the credit card I had set up for my automatic payment stopped working, they notified me but assured me my regularly scheduled delivery would still happen. They also let you put deliveries on hold for any reason, which is not always the case with CSAs.
• Easy to use web interface. It’s very easy to navigate the customer part of their site, make changes, check information, etc.
• Green Grocer – I haven’t used this yet, but you can also order other food a la carte to be included in your delivery. You can order more/different produce as well as all kinds of other food.

Cons:

• The biggest con for me is that Full Circle is not a real CSA in the traditional sense of the word. As I wrote in the past: “I love the concept behind community supported agriculture, the idea of giving reliable financial support to the necessary and extremely valued people who grow our food. The whole point of CSA-style relationships between farmers and consumers is that farmers can experiment and learn and go through disasters and medfly quarantines, and still know they’ll have an income, even if the plums are mealy or the tomatoes are quarantined. Because this is the bottom-line reality of our food system: If no one took the risks to grow the food, there would be nothing to eat. Organic and sustainable and ethical and biodynamic and all that may seem like a luxury (which they aren’t really, in the long run), but food itself is not. The burden of producing a necessary commodity under variable and uncertain circumstances (no widget factories to make our fruits and veggies) should not have to be entirely assumed by the producer. I really believe this. I am, in fact, quite passionate about it.” With a system like Full Circle’s, particularly with the option to customize, I am not making a commitment to the people who grow my food, advancing them cash in exchange for taking on the burden of growing in uncertain circumstances. It’s possible that Full Circle makes this kind of commitment to its farms/growers, but the exceptional quality of every piece of produce makes me wonder what happens to the less-than-perfect crops, and to the farmers who grew them.
• Full Circle has an immense carbon footprint compared to a traditional, single-farm CSA. Produce comes from different farms all over the state – maybe most of the farms are within 100 miles of SF, but that means much less with this kind of plan. Ten farms driving 100 miles to get their produce for that week to the Full Circle clearinghouse means 1000 miles of travel, I might as well be ordering from Mexico. Home delivery also adds to the miles traveled for each box.
• Newsletter is Meh. I think everyone in the Full Circle system (including Washington & CA) gets the same newsletter, which makes sense from an efficiency standpoint. But that means the recipes rarely use items that are actually in my box and the farmers profiled aren’t usually the ones who grew my food. My favorite part of the Eatwell CSA, my first CSA, was the newsletter, full of that week’s news and photos from the farm and recipes that all involved the produce came our box. This newsletter I usually scan quickly and recycle.
• Packaging. This is partly a pro and partly a con. The pro is that all the produce that is bagged comes either in biodegradable “plastic” bags or paper bags. The con is that the huge cardboard boxes don’t get reused as they do with most CSAs. Undoubtedly on their end there’s some math of human labor/sanitation/post-consumer recycled cardboard/etc where this is the most sensible plan, but I feel weird having this giant cardboard box to toss every week. (I don’t even toss them, in fact, they’re piling up in a corner. I think the guilt is paralyzing me!)
• I’ve also noticed that sometimes I seem to customize just because I can. I don’t have a problem with pluots, and if they came in my box I would enjoy them, but if I can have nectarines *instead* – well, who wouldn’t want nectarines?? This isn’t a real drawback, just something I’ve noticed about the psychology of choice as it pertains to CSA-style systems.