Sunday and Monday's CSA produce usage

The Fail: a cautionary tale -

I tried to make a stuffed acorn squash with what I had on hand. I read several recipes online but didn't have all the ingredients for any of them. I tried to make it work with a frozen veggie mix, leftover chicken, cream cheese and some spices. It wasn't terrible but it wasn't something I'd want to force anyone else to eat. The best part was when the filling was gone and I was able to eat the acorn squash on it's own. Basically the moral of this story is "don't improvise a recipe with a veggie you've never eaten before."

The Win: waste not want not-

I'd heard of roasting the seeds after you carve a pumpkin so I thought I might be able to do something similar with other winter squash seeds. I looked it up online and pretty much everyone agreed that any recipe that works for pumpkin seeds should work for all winter squash. I (mostly) followed these directions and made some yummy roasted squash seeds to snack on.

And an old favorite-

Since I'm almost out of the chicken broth I made in this post and this post back in January I decided to use the chicken bones and some of the veggies (especially one really old onion) to make another big batch of chicken stock. I really like making my own stock. I can put the spices I like into it and it's a great way to use veggie scraps.

Total produce used so far -
2 heads garlic
1 banana
1/2 bunch spinach
2 carrots
1 onion
2 sticks of celery
1/2 c chopped fresh parsley
1/2 acorn squash

Friday and Saturday's CSA week produce usage

This is actually pretty fun. I've experimented with making my own recipes and everything has been pretty tasty so far.

Friday I started by roasting two heads of garlic in tin foil (for the first time). The beautiful white heads of garlic were just too much to resist. I'd missed lunch (bad Lyneya) so the first head's worth was spread out on bread for a quick snack. The second head was split between a chicken dish and making some garlic cream cheese.

My first disappointment occurred when I tried to find out how to store my spinach and discovered how quickly the nutrients in spinach disappear (considering how long it took to get to Alaska there are probably no nutrients left in my spinach). In an attempt to use my spinach while it had the possibility of some nutritional value, I tossed some chopped spinach, leftover roasted chicken and half a head of roasted garlic in a frying pan with some olive oil. I fried it up a little and it made an amazing dinner with some dehydrated apple chips on the side. (In the future I'd probably use more spinach since it shrunk a lot more than I expected.)

Then I mixed the last of the roasted garlic with about 8oz of cream cheese and a little basil, oregano, sage and onion salt. It made an amazing spread and a great breakfast on toasted bread this morning (no one else had to smell my breath).

This evening I got home pretty late and wasn't in the mood to cook. Instead of cooking I decided to make a "green smoothie" like the wonderful ones I'd seen Sheri post on her Green and Crunchy blog. I tossed a bunch of spinach, a banana, some blueberry syrup I made last fall, and some strawberry Kefir in a blender and made a really tasty (kinda weird looking) green smoothie.

Total produce used so far -
2 heads garlic
1 banana
1/2 bunch spinach

My pretend CSA box

The CSA I'm thinking of joining requires that you pay for your box a couple weeks ahead of the expected delivery date so even if I join today it would be about three weeks until I could expect my first box. Since I'm pretty excited about this concept I decided to get enough veggies and fruit to pretend I'd received a CSA box and see if I actually use it. Honestly, I probably didn't buy as much as I'd get in a box. However, since honey isn't here and I'm the only one eating I thought I'd be a little conservative. I went to the local grocery store and gave myself a free pass to buy anything that interested me (and looked good because not all their veggies do). I lucked out because some of the veggies were being restocked and I was able to wander behind the store employee and get amazingly fresh veggies.

What I'm starting with -
1 bunch Spinach
1 bunch parsley (Usually I have my own window grown parsley but my plant needs a break so I get store bought)
1 Acorn Squash (I made extra money in college working at a farm picking Acorn Squash so I think I should see what it tastes like)
2 bananas (they didn't look great but I really wanted some for smoothies)
1 bunch Celery
2lb Alaska grown Carrots
3 yellow onions
5 heads Garlic (picked them right out of the restocking box. Beautiful and fresh)
1 big bag shredded Cabbage (leftovers from my sauerkraut making class)
1 lemon
1 orange
8 lb apples (leftovers from a big bag bought in bulk a couple weeks ago. I should probably dehydrate some of them)

To some of you this may seem a pitiful amount of fresh produce but if you knew how little fresh produce normally lives in our fridge you would understand how overwhelming this amount of produce looks to me. Where my family lived when I was younger necessitated canned or frozen goods because fresh produce would spoil before it reached us. Plus going to the store was not a regular occurrence. Now that I have regular access to fresh food I need to change those habits.