CSA Charleston: mustard greens SUCCESS!

Another delicious week with our Pinckney’s Produce CSA!

This week we received:

• 1 cantaloupe
• 3 winter squash
• 1 bunch kale
• 3 turnips and greens (in addition to 3 large turnips left over from last week)
• 1 bunch mustard greens
• 5 ears corn
• 5 tomatoes
• lots of little okra
• 4 large carrots
• 4 radishes
• 6 banana peppers
• 1 bunch lettuce

The first night I roasted the squash, and made them into a puree, which I added to last week’s saved squash puree and made into a soup (no real recipe, I sort of made it up, but leave me a comment if you want me to detail the process).  I served the soup with a salad made from the bunch of lettuce, 1 banana pepper, 1 carrot, 1 radish, and 1 tomato, along with some No Knead Bread.  I also saved the seeds from all the squash, rinsing them and getting all the squash gunk off, and I tossed them in olive oil with some Greek seasoning and toasted them in the oven.  Never knew you could toast and eat winter squash seeds just like pumpkin seeds, but you can! They made a nice snack for a couple of days!

The next night, still smarting from last week’s mustard greens FAIL, I decided to attempt this frittata recipe.  I figured I can eat anything if it’s covered in yummy fontina cheese, and I was right.  It was delicious served with some homemade No Knead Bread toasts.  It was also a super quick meal on a night when I volunteer and don’t get home until after 7:00.  I am so happy to know that there is at least one way I will eat mustard greens, and I imagine the recipe would work well with other greens too.

Friday we went out to an art walk and ended up eating Five Guys Burgers and Fries at like 9 pm.  I guess eating all these veggies earns us a night of burgers and fries every once in a while, which is a good thing, because Five Guys is SO GOOD.  (I know I said yesterday that I was worried about E. coli, but hubs did some research and says they’re probably safe since they cook all their burgers well-done.)

Saturday morning I started a batch of Quicker No Knead Bread, we made French Toast from the last of our previous loaf, and we biked to Earth Fare, which is a nice sort of smaller version of Whole Foods just a mile and a half down the greenway (a jogging/biking path where a train track used to be) from our house.  I love Earth Fare because of the bulk bins.  And also because it’s one of the few places you can reliably find a bunch of friendly hippies in South Carolina.  Especially now that I’m baking bread, it’s awesome to be able to stock up on organic flour for 89 cents a pound.  I also buy cane sugar, whole wheat flour, wheat bran, arborrio rice, and cous cous from these bins.  We also grabbed some bacon, eggs, milk, yogurt (I’m hooked on Stonyfield Farm’s whole milk french vanilla yogurt– can you tell we’re not a low-fat household?), toothpaste and wine while we were there.  Those are really the only things we need to buy at the store these days!

For dinner  Saturday night we had a caprese salad made from the tomatoes, basil from our garden, and mozzarella cheese, along with the okra, which I fried (I am a real Southern girl after all), and hunks of fresh bread.  I also made a batch of turnip risotto with last week’s large turnips and greens, planning to have it for Sunday lunch and to take for lunches at work this week.

Sunday evening I got the idea to turn the corn and turnips, along with some potatoes I had on hand, into a sort of chowder.  There’s no recipe for this, but here’s what I did:

1. Place shucked ears of corn on baking rack on cookie sheet under preheated broiler in oven, remove when it starts to char a bit on the outside.  Set aside to cool.
2. In a large pot, fry 2 slices bacon until crispy, then remove to paper towel lined plate.
3. Cook 1 diced onion and a couple cloves of garlic in bacon drippings until soft.
4. Add 3 turnips and 3 small potatoes diced into small cubes.
5. Meanwhile, slice kernels off ears of corn.  Add corn to pot.
6. Add enough chicken stock to cover, bring to a boil, then simmer until potatoes and turnips are softened.
7. Season with cumin, salt and pepper, thyme, and a smidge of red pepper flakes.
8. Place 3/4 of soup in food processor and blend until it looks chowder-y.
9. Put everything back in the pot, crumble the bacon into the soup, add some cream or milk or half and half, stir thoroughly.
10. Serve.

It came out delicious, was served with home made bread, and Jon raved.  Plus, as someone who isn’t a huge fan of turnips (I don’t hate them, I just don’t love them), you would never even know there were turnips in this dish.

So that left the radishes, banana peppers, 3 carrots, and the kale.  I used them to make a stir fry, along with garlic and onion and Thai basil, with a homemade soy-lime sauce, which I served over rice alongside some seared ginger-soy marinated tuna steaks.  It was delicious! Just goes to show that anything, even radishes and kale, can become a delicious stir fry.

And that’s our week! We managed to use everything except those beets from two weeks ago…. I promise I’m going to do something with them soon.  Can’t wait to see what this week brings–we pick up another box today!