Fall CSA: The Missing Weeks

My plan was a simple plan. I would write about what I got every week in my fall CSA. It was supposed to get me back in to the saddle of writing after taking a bit longer of a break than anticipated for the holidays.  That was the plan.  I made it two weeks in, and then time skipped forward and I couldn't catch up before the next box of fresh veggies and fruits would arrive.

This is me playing catch up and trying to figure out what to do with sweet potatoes. The last time I wrote I was lamenting over what to do with collard greens and turnips.  My friend, Dr. Jolly is a turnip genius, and I can day that I am no longer afraid of them. Oven roasted with spices and sugar made them an acceptable substitute for potatoes and quite tasty, that even my husband will eat them and not grumble too loudly.  I still want to leave them out for the Hogfather, but seeing that the Hogfather only comes once a year and I have plenty of turnips, there will be more turnips in my future menus until next Hogswatch.

Collard Greens are one of those things that I have to thank Dr. Jolly for also, since otherwise I might have left them out for the rabbits. Instead they ended up in homemade  Kung Pao Chicken.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it turned out well. I don't think that Collard Greens were meant to go in Chinese Food, but it didn't hurt anything and I can say that I ate my veggies. Even if they were cooked down and slathered in a spicy sauce.  It still counts as eating my veggies.

Week Three

Gala Apples
Kabocha Squash (Yippee another new squash that I have never heard of and have no idea what to do with!)
Broccoli
Sweet Potatoes (Still not done with the last ones, and now I have a small army of sweet potatoes, and yet can't help but thing about The Bloggess and Sam the Yam.)
Kale

Week Four

Apple Cider
Fresh Greens (Looks like baby Spinach to me)
Brussel Sprouts (I still think they look like alien pods like I did when I was 8.)
Apples
Acorn Squash

I never realized what a lazy cook I was until joining a CSA.  I thought I was a pretty active cook, and that my cook book challenge was keeping me from falling into a culinary lull.  That was all a lie until I joined the CSA, because now I am challenge to figure out what to do with the items in my white box every week. It is not as easy as throwing stuff on the grill and calling it a day. I guess I could do that, if I wanted to stand out in the dark and the cold wind while I try to figure out if the potatoes are done, which I don't.  I don't want to hang out in the cold where the wind has a habit of cutting through you like a hot knife to butter. I like my creature comforts, which means I have to put a little more effort in to my meals, and possibly eat an apple a day to combat the growing number of apples in my fridge.

Despite the challenge that this presents me, I can't help but feel like I won the lottery every week when I open my CSA box.  I never really know what I am going to get, and since my friend, Lizzy is doing it with me, it is a pleasure to know that she also has a sweet potato/apple infestation and I am not alone in this.   It is two days until my next box, and I have only used up about half of both boxes, and part of me wants to laugh hysterically if I end up with another potato and the other part of me wants to cry, because I know I will end up with another potato or possibly some other item bigger than my head that has never graced my kitchen before and I won't know what to do with.  I have begun to believe that laughing and crying are two sides of the same coin.

Sweet Sweet Nuts

I will admit that I have a sweet tooth. It is one of the reasons that I have a fair number of dessert cookbooks. Like many people I know, there was a barbecue that I was invited to attend over the Labor Day holiday. One of my esteemed co workers was  hosting and I was pretty excited to attend. Good educate demanded that I should contribute to the feast.  I needed something easy to transport and that wasn't missing a slice out of it. The pie I had made the day before was out of the question, despite how awesome it looked with the ninja battle on the crust, it was no match for the fork and knife battle. 

 Flipping through the You Deserve Dessert cookbook by The Cooking Club of America I settled on something that I knew I could handle making and would not get disgusting if it sat out for hours, or would crumble if I hit a bump to hard on the way there. Sugared Pecans  seemed like the best option.  I had pecans in the freezer and cinnamon and sugar didn't sound too dangerous.  It was probably about as dangerous as getting lost in the driveway. 

Truth be told there is some danger in melting the sugar and cinnamon together on the stove until all the sugar has liquified, however the real danger is not in sugary molten goodness, but in the end product.   Dividing the nuts between home and the barbecue it quickly became apparent that the pecans were pleasing to the palate. It was really easy to try just one or two and then go back for one or two more.   

I have a couple of books from the Cooking Club of America that I had some what been gifted. It was one of those gifts that you either pick something out or your get the entire collection. I did not need the entire collection, nor did I have room for it. I have four Cooking Club of America cookbooks, and sometimes that seems like too many.  Being well acquainted with Taste of Home cook books, the Cooking Club of America cookbooks have the same sort of feel to them. They are all member submissions and all of the recipes ranges from medium to easy cooking skill.  I almost feel like I cheated by using this recipe, because it was so simple, that if I actually thought about how to make Sugared Pecans, I  wouldn't have needed a recipe in the first place. I would not be surprised if I see the same recipes and possibly the same contributors in both of the publications. 

Challenge: 10 of 60 completed!

Fine On The Side

 Bradley's Complete Gas Grill Cookbook looks scarier than in really is. I thought that this hard back book from 1982 was going to have dated and possibly some recipes that were going to make my husband cringe and me question my sanity, especially since the cover shows a family that is grilling way more food then the four of them were going to consume. I am trying to intermingle the scary cookbooks with the not so scary cookbooks, so I don't have a month and the end where I am writing about nothing but jello molds.   

It took me a while to figure out where we had acquired this cookbook, since it isn't in usual fair to purchase cookbooks prior to when I was born. After much soul searching and brain racking I figured it out, and figured out why I have this book that I have never cracked open until yesterday. My grandmother gave this cookbook to my husband for Christmas along with instruments of grilling destruction years ago. The cookbook when with the other cookbooks and the grill tools went to hang out with the grill for future use. 

The book survived the great and terrible purge of books, because it came from my grandmother. I don't talk to my grandmother all that often, mostly because the older I have gotten, the more we clash. I use to be much closer to my grandparents and it was really nice to be around them and to chat with them, but now it is just awkward.  I am not doing anything of interest for them and I am past the age of asking for advice and I have grown out of cute grand daughter stage a long time ago and married a boy who doesn't tuck in his shirt and has long hair.  We are people that hold different interests in life and we don't have a lot of common ground anymore. It is sad, but true. When there is something that can link us together even for a moment I hold on it, which is why I held onto this cookbook. 

The recipe that I chose was the Mushrooms On Skewer on page 110 in The Fine on the Side section of the book.   Basically it calls for mushrooms, butter and dried rosemary leaves with some pepper and chives. There was only one way that I could mess this recipe up, is if I stabbed myself with a kabob stick and bled all over the place. I had a little bit of fear that I would die because of a kabob stick puncturing a vein and my part vampire red head abilities would flair up causing me incredible bits of agony and a slow and terrible death like I had been staked in the heart, because after all a mini stake is still a stake and heart and hand start with the same letter, so there was a slim possibility of death. With this in mind I  added was a little bit of garlic powder, because I am convinced that everything is better with garlic and if I am going to die by being skewered by a stake, then might as well add garlic to that burn. I fortunately did not stab myself and die by skewer and have lived to cook another day.   

I made four skewers of the mushrooms and then decided that I would really like some bacon with my mushrooms and the rest of the skewers got wrapped in bacon, because who doesn't want more bacon in their life and grilled bacon and mushrooms sounds like an awesome pizza selection to me.  Mostly because I am a grilling champion and because I had a glass of wine in me to keep me from fussing with the mushrooms every five seconds like I normally would,  everything turned out well. The tasted good, but didn't knock my socks off the way that balsamic vinaigrette mushrooms do. The smoke and the rosemary was a good combo that was pleasing to the taste buds. 

Will I use this recipe again? Probably not, but I am willing to try other recipes out of this long forgotten cookbook.  There were actually quite of few off beat recipes that sounded good and look relatively simple to make. There were also a few other recipes that might require me to learn how to butcher a pig if I ever want to get the exact right cut of meat.  At this point I am going to forgo the butchering and stick to the simple.  I now have completed 2 cookbooks out of 57 for those that are keeping score on this cooking challenge.