CSA: Charleston — squash!

After last week’s poor CSA performance, wherein Jon and I were both out of town for long stretches so we ended up giving most of our CSA produce away, I was determined to do fun things with the bulk of our CSA goodness this week, and I think I succeeded! Man, I love Pinckney’s Produce! If you’re interested in signing up for the fall season, there’s a waiting list forming now, so check them out.

Here’s what we got this week:

That’s:

• 1 bunch mustard greens
• 2 bunches kale
• 1 cabbage
• 4 onions
• 2 carrots
• 4 banana peppers
• 1 bag broccoli
• 5 pattypan squash
• 9 yellow squash
• 8 cucumbers
• 8 zucchini

What I did with it all:

Tuesday:

Tuesday night, I made a stir fry using the carrots, broccoli, peppers, and 2 pattypan squash, which I served with a soy, ginger, and sriracha sauce over rice. Yum! I had leftover stir fry for lunch the next day.

I also made two batches of refrigerator pickles, the first using my usual dill pickle recipe for the cucumbers, and the second batch using a modified form of this bread and butter pickle recipe for half the squash and zucchini.  This recipe is really special because it uses maple syrup for the sweetness rather than sugar. Though I think the maple syrup contributed to the flavor and color, if you don’t have that much real syrup on hand, I bet brown sugar would work well!  Also, I couldn’t find red chiles, so I added red pepper flakes. I basically did a refrigerator pickle method for the squash pickles too, just heating up the liquids and then putting the squash in their liquids in jars (and yogurt tubs) in the fridge and letting them “pickle” that way, rather than boiling them in jars for 20 minutes and sealing them.

Wednesday

Wednesday night I made squash and zucchini pizzas following the Smitten Kitchen’s Lemony Goat Cheese and Zucchini Pizza recipe.  I made the crust before going to work and left it to rise all day, which makes for a much better crust than just letting it rise for an hour.  I also didn’t have goat cheese, so I subbed in Laughing Cow cheese, because my husband had recently picked up a bunch of it at Costco because it was on sale.  It came out great! I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, so you’ll just have to extrapolate that it was browner and meltier and glistening with olive oil.  I had leftover pizza for a couple of breakfasts and one lunch.

Wednesday night I also cooked lentils and caramelized onions to use in Thursday night’s dinner.

Thursday

Thursday night we ate the kale in this kale and lentil pasta, which came out delicious! I forgot to take any pictures, unfortunately.  We had the leftovers for lunch a couple of times.

Friday night I went out to eat with a friend.

Saturday

Saturday I went and saw Sex and the City 2 with a bunch of girlfriends.  We pre-partied with cosmos at a friend’s condo, so I decided to bring a very appropriate snack: red velvet cupcakes made using Magnolia Bakery’s recipe.

This is me eating an actual Magnolia Bakery red velvet cupcake at 30 Rock in New York:

And here’s how mine turned out (the coconut was strategic, to keep the frosting from sticking all over the container or other cupcakes in transit to the party):

One thing to note about the Magnolia Bakery’s red velvet recipe is that, unlike many red velvet recipes, it does not use cream cheese frosting, and uses a creamy vanilla frosting instead. I like the changeup, because I find cream cheese frosting a little sickeningly sweet for red velvet cupcakes.

Sunday

Sunday lunch was a mustard green frittata with fontina cheese.

On Sunday evening we had a few friends over for a bring your own meat cookout.  I made a grilled squash and zucchini salad following this recipe from Real Simple, as well as a grilled cole slaw (really!) using the cabbage and an additional red cabbage.  I liked this slaw a lot because it’s got a vinegar dressing instead of being drenched in mayo.  Warning: two heads of cabbage makes a LOT of slaw!!  The squash and zucchini salad was also a big hit, and my one big change was adding the sweet onions to the grill instead of using the called-for green onions.  Our meat was grilled chicken which I had marinated in Greek yogurt, garlic, cumin, and chili powder.  We snacked on pickles and had cupcakes for dessert.

Wrap-Up

Overall, a very delicious week, with no major failures! We even managed to be mostly vegetarian, with the exception of the chicken we ate at our cookout!   Outside of the CSA veggies, we also made some homemade salsa and some tabouli on Sunday, which we snacked on at the beach on Monday along with some yummy watermelon, all washed down with mojitos made with mint we grew in our yard.

Did you cook anything good this week?