CSA subscription - week two

After a week off for Thanksgiving, the CSA food subscription is back again. The newsletter included a few other blogs that plan to record how they're using their subscriptions; it should be interesting to see the different approaches. I'll post links to their second-week posts just as soon as they get them up. [edit: it looks like only Trina at Miami Dish is going to be posting each week and that she generally does an end of the week round-up. That's probably a better idea, but I'll stick with my own bad idea of posting as I go along until it becomes oppressive. Here's her week two post.]

My first impression is that it's going to be a salad heavy week. There's lettuce, tatsoi and arugula and there's not much to be done with any of those but to just put them in a bowl, add some dressing and dig in. I'm going try using the tatsoi and maybe the arugula as a replacement for rice accompanying stir fries, but that's all I've got.

Next are some mustard greens. Braising's definitely the way to go here. I've got a ham hock in the freezer so it's going to be southern style rather than anything innovative.

I still haven't used the dill from two weeks ago (which seems to be holding up pretty well) so this new batch isn't a welcome sight. At least there are a couple of cucumbers. They're not Kirbys, but they'll do. I usually use Emeril's recipe for garlic dills; I think it's the only Emeril recipe I like. His recipes seem designed for someone with a sous chef and end up more trouble than worth without one.

Some more yellow squash this week, too. I did a quick recipe search and you can bread and fry them, you can use them in a casserole, and there's not much else. I saw one interesting recipe that shredded them, squeezed out the liquid and made a pizza crust out of them. But if these are actually good, tasty, organic vegetables it seems a shame to use them purely for their structural properties. They'll probably end up roasted next to a piece of meat. I don't normally eat that way, but I bow to circumstances.



Finally, there's some honey. Wildflower honey is too strong for using in tea or smoothies, where most of my honey ends up. It should be suitable for cooking, though. I'm thinking chai ice cream.

[It's later and I've just double-checked and found that the honey I'm using in my tea now is the selfsame wildflower honey that I got from CSA this summer. But chai ice cream is a better use so that's where it's headed.]