The Weekly Share

That’s right – I used “cookie” and “vegetables” in the same sentence!  Last night I made Martian Cookies with the zucchini from last week’s share.  Guess what?  The cookies are good…really good!  And the kids love them!  Yay!  Yes, they ARE a dessert, with butter and chocolate and sugar.  But they also have shredded zucchini, oatmeal and walnuts – you know, good-for-you stuff!

Here is the recipe as I made it:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup sugar (I use Demerara sugar, also known as Turbinado sugar)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups flour (I used 3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose & 3/4 cup whole wheat)

Martian Cookie dough

• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt (I use kosher)
• 1 cup quick cooking oats
• 1 cup grated zucchini (about 1 medium zucchini)
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips (I used mini chips because that’s what I had)

• 1/2 cup butterscotch chips (I used white chocolate chips because I did not have butterscotch)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).  In a large mixing bowl, beat butter until soft.  Add sugar and beat until fluffy.  Add egg and vanilla, beat well.  In a medium bowl, stir together flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt.  With mixer on low speed, gradually add flour mixture to butter mixture.  Beat until well mixed.  With a wooden spoon, stir in oats, zucchini, walnuts, chocolate and butterscotch pieces.  Drop by rounded teaspoons about 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheets.  Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.  Cool sheets and then cookies on a cooling rack.

My batch made 39 cookies.  We still have a few left…Mmmmmm!

Martian Cookie

Our shares are really growing now!  This week, we received:

1 cucumber
1 zephyr yellow squash
1 zucchini
4 oz. salad mix
1 head lettuce
3 oz. spinach
2 oz. parsley
4 sprigs basil
4 garlic scapes
1 bunch green onions
4 easter egg radishes
2 lbs. new potatoes

I used the spinach Tuesday night in Tortellini with Bacon, Greens, and Brown Butter (see 2nd pick-up post for recipe modifications).  Yum!  I had to add greens from our garden, too since we like extra greens in the recipe.  I plan to make parsley-buttered potatoes later this week, using the new potatoes and parsley from the share.  Dave has asked for Basil Chicken over Angel Hair Pasta (see post of same title for discussion) , so that will use the basil and garlic scapes.  Plus we’ll have fresh salads using just about everything else.  I think I’ll make zucchini bread using the zucchini and yellow squash.  I’ll take pictures as I go this week…  I didn’t take pictures Tuesday night – we were too hungry!  And now it’s all gone!

I went to the grocery store on Wednesday for the rest of our pantry needs.  I will follow up with how our share matches up with the grocery store produce section.

OK, the grilled squash did not go over well at dinner last week.  The comments were:  “Yuck!”,  “It’s kinda slimy in the back of my throat…”, and “I don’t really like it.”  I thought the taste was good, but the texture was too soft.  Can anyone give me some recipes?

Here’s how I made the squash:

Squash marinating in italion dressing

I sliced in into 1/4″ planks, marinated it in my favorite dressing for 5 hours (I marinated chicken breasts in the same dressing).  Then I grilled the planks over direct medium heat for 5 minutes a side.  Here is the end result:

marinated chicken and squash

Looks good, but…  (The chicken was really good, just not the squash)

Help, please!  I’m sure I’ll get more squash this afternoon!

I went to Myers Pick-Your-Own Strawberry Farm on Tuesday and came home with 4 quarts of beautiful red berries!  YUM!

4 quarts of strawberries from Myers PYO Berry Farm

The kids and I went there last week and picked 5 quarts of berries.  I’d blog about those berries…but they’re all gone!    Anyway, today I processed the berries.  I washed, hulled, and sorted them.  The nicest berries were dried, then placed on a waxed-paper covered cookie sheet.

Hulled strawberries ready for the freezer

They are currently in the freezer.  When they are partially frozen, I will vacuum-seal them into a bag with lots of extra “bag” on top so I can open the bag, take out what I need, then reseal the bag.  The rest of the strawberries were quartered and sprinkled with turbinado sugar.

Sliced strawberries with turbinado sugar

They are currently in the refrigerator waiting for me to decide what to do with them!  I will probably freeze some, maybe puree some – and I know we will EAT some!

Strawberry-picking season is just about over.  Mr. Myers said he’d only be open a few more days.  The season is only a few weeks long, from the end of May until mid-June.  Mr. Myers said that they had twice as many customers this year than in previous years.  He believes the increase is due to people wanting to save money any way they can these days.  You can spend a hour picking strawberries and pay $1.50 a quart for a product that is so much better than anything in the stores AND you know exactly where it came from, or you can go to a grocery store and pay $2.99 for a quart of  inferior, unripe strawberry imposters!  Pick-You-Own farms support local agriculture in the same way as CSA’s.  Small farms, local produce, better prices = improved economy!

For a pick-your-own farm near you, check out http://pickyourown.org

It was thin picking on Tuesday.  It took me over an hour to get 4 quarts.  But now we can have “fresh” strawberries for the rest of the year… or at least until we eat them all! 

What do you do with fresh strawberries?

I picked up our second share of the 2009 season on Tuesday, June 16th.  We received:

• 1 zepher yellow squash
• 1 head lettuce
• 4.5 oz. Salad mix
• 4.5 oz. Spinach
• 8 oz. snap peas
• 4 radishes
• 1 bunch green onions
• 2 garlic scapes

I love having all of the fresh greens available again! Tonight, we finished off the lettuce from last week as a salad. I still have some arugula from last week that I will saute with garlic tomorrow for lunch. I think I might be the only family member who likes it . Usually I don’t like “hot” or “peppery” greens, but I think the arugula is great! Dave can have all of the green onions, though!

I think I will grill the squash this week. I plan to slice it lengthwise into ¼ inch planks, marinate in italian dressing, then grill it to carmelize the marinade. How do YOU cook squash? I’d love some ideas because I know this ONE squash is just the tip of the squash iceberg coming this summer! We had zucchini coming out our ears last summer. I have a great zucchini bread recipe( see “Z-Word” post) – but there is only so much of it one can eat… I shredded and froze some of last year’s zucchini. I guess I should use that soon, huh? I had planned to make zucchini bread at Christmas time for gifts, but it never happened. I’ll remember this year though – it’s already on my calendar!

Here is my favorite greens recipe. My whole family loves it. My boys even tell me to put MORE spinach in it – how can a mom say no to that ?!  Plus they want more bacon, too – you give a little to get a little, I suppose! Give it a try and tell me what you think…

Tortellini with Bacon, Greens, and Brown Butter

From Real Simple Magazine, May 2007

hands-on time: 15 minutes total time: 30 minutes serves 4

• 1 pound cheese or meat tortellini
• 4 oz. Sliced bacon *My family likes MORE!*
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter *We find 4 tablespoons to be plenty of butter*
• 2 cups arugula (OR spinach OR basil OR watercress) *My family likes spinach – and MORE of it!*
• ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper

For the last few weeks that favorite summertime squash, zucchini, has been a common staple of our weekly share. Let’s face it a zucchini is no small vegetable and they can last for up to two weeks if care is taken. So when receiving 1-2 zucchini a week it is best to have a plan to use them up. I was thinking about this recently as Amy made a delicious Zucchini Bread recipe. Then on Saturday, J.D. over at the excellent blog Get Rich Slowly has a guest post by his wife covering the topic of “What to Do with All That Extra Zucchini“.

Now both Amy and J.D. have some excellent ideas on how to use zucchini, but let me add my own $0.02 to the conversation. By far my favorite use of zucchini is to make Connie’s Zucchini ‘Crab’ Cakes. Note, it is the Old Bay that puts this recipe over the top. Better yet, mix in a little jumbo lump crab meat to stretch the recipe and make it authentic. I fry these cakes on my grill’s side burner while also roasting some summer sweet corn on the grill itself (note, you soak the corn in water first and grill it with the husks on). Makes for, as Alton Brown would say, ‘Good Eats’.

Have more tips or suggestions for using zucchini? Let me know by posting a comment.

Photo of Zucchini Cakes from Allrecipes.com

With the second week’s share we found ourselves with some ingredients we don’t normally keep around the house. Namely, fresh basil and garlic scapes. Using one of our favorite websites, AllRecipes.com, my wife found the recipe for Basil Chicken over Angel Hair.  She made this for dinner last night and I thought the recipe was delicious.  Using the garlic scapes in place of a clove was a great way to change it up.  The scapes have the taste of garlic but without so much of the garlic ‘heat’.  Thus the garlic flavor, while there,  doesn’t overpower the flavors of the other ingredients and as a whole the final result was savory.

Besides the fresh basil and garlic cloves, the recipe also calls for tomato and onion.  We had already used the most of the tomatoes and onions so we had to go with store bought, but had we planned ahead we could have made use of four different share items in one recipe.

For us the garlic scape was a new food and we asked the basic questions of what is it and how do you use it?  Here are a few interesting links about the garlic scape:

Once unused, garlic scapes a delicacy

Garlic Scape Pesto

Seems like June is best month for scapes and with any luck we’ll get some more in the next share.  The pesto recipe sounds good.