The Weekly Share

We received some new items in our share this week:

Share - 4th Pick-Up

1 cucumber

2 zucchini or zepher yellow squash

10 oz. sugar snap peas

4 beets

1 head of lettuce

7 sprigs of basil

1 oz. cilantro

4 garlic scapes

1 bunch green onions

8 oz. swiss chard

2 lbs. new potatoes

1 box of tomatoes

I’ve already cut the cucumber into slices to eat with meals.  The potatoes, basil, some green onions and some garlic scapes will be used to make Laura’s Pesto Potato Salad.  I’m going to steam the sugar snap peas to go with tonight’s dinner.  The lettuce, tomatoes, and some of the green onions will be used for salads and burger toppings. I may make zucchini bread with the zucchini and squash.  My mother-in-law was telling me how she sauteed swiss chard with garlic scapes and some other stuff and added crumbled bacon.  I will have to get that recipe from her.  That leaves the cilantro unaccounted for.  Last year I kept making salsa with it when we were getting lots of tomatoes, but since I only have 2 small tomatoes from share, I will either have to buy more tomatoes or find another use…  Stay tuned!

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

This is how we used our share items last week:

• Tortellini with Bacon, Greens, and Brown Butter (spinach) – sorry, no picture!
• Basil Chicken over Angel Hair Pasta (basil, garlic scapes)

Basil CHicken over Angel Hair Pasta

• Fish with Parsley-Buttered Potatoes

Parsley-Buttered Potatoes

• Fresh salad with cucumbers (salad mix, cucumbers, green onions)
• Sauteed yellow squash with green onions, garlic scapes, and swiss chard (yellow squash, green onions, garlic scapes)

Sauteed yellow squash

• Fresh salad with radishes and cucumber (head of lettuce, radishes, cucumber)
• Martian Cookies (zucchini)

Martian Cookie

That leaves us with 2 radishes from 2 weeks ago and 4 radishes from last week.  We harvested our own radishes 3 weeks ago and had to use those up first.  I found a recipe for steamed radishes that I will try this week.  All in all, I think we did really well using up our share products.  Hopefully we will do as well this week.

I asked for help and you came through!  Thanks to Laura ’s comment on my squash disaster, I have found a squash recipe that my family really likes.  I modified Laura’s suggestion based on what I had to use up, and this is what I came up with:

Sauteed yellow squash

1 yellow squash, peeled, halved and sliced into 1/4 inch pieces

4 garlic scapes, diced

5 small green onions, diced

5 leaves of swiss chard, torn into large pieces

olive oil

butter

Heat a large skillet over med-high heat.  Add olive oil and butter, then add onion and garlic scapes.  Saute for 1-2 minutes, then add squash.  Saute for a couple of minutes, until squash starts to brown.  Add swiss chard, stir over heat for 1 minute then remove from heat and stir until wilted.

My 2nd trip to Cherry Hill Orchard this past week was a success.  My 1st attempt to pick cherries was met with whole trees of split and rotted fruit.  But 4 days of hot, dry weather allowed those cherries that had been unripe on Monday to ripen to perfection by Thursday!  The dark, sweet cherries were a lost cause.  They ripened earliest.  The ones I picked on Thursday were light, sweet cherries.  They are sweet and juicy with more of a bright red skin, rather than the deep purply-red of the dark sweets.

beautiful light sweet cherries

I picked 9.2 lbs.  Some of those are going to my mother-in-law, since she struck out with me on Monday.  The rest…  Well, I’m sure we’ll eat some just as they are.  I will freeze some.  I will coat some in chocolate (Mmmmmm!).  I will soak some in rum (MMMMMMM!).  Maybe I will coat some rum cherries in chocolate (OMG!)

Yum!

Aside from the health benefits of having local, fresh produce in our diet, we joined the CSA hoping to lower our grocery bill for the summer and fall.  As I went through the produce department yesterday , filling out our fruit and veggie needs, I wrote down how much our share items would have cost if I had purchased them at the store.  Here are the results:

PRODUCE STORE PRICE SHARE COST (based on store price)

1 cucumber                                          2/$3.00                                            $1.50

1 yellow squash                                  2/$1.99                                            $1.00

1 zucchini                                              2/$1.99                                            $1.00

4 oz. salad mix                                    $6.99/lb.                                          $1.75

1 head lettuce                                      $2.99                                                $2.99

3 oz. spinach                                       $6.99/lb.                                           $1.31

2 oz. parsley                                       $1.29/pk (4 oz.?)                              $0.65

4 sprigs basil                                      $2.99/2 oz.                                       $1.50

4 garlic scapes                                   N/A                                                     priceless!

1 bunch green onions                     12/$2.00                                            $1.00

4 radishes + 1 turnip                        3-1lb. bags/$5.00                           $0.21

2 lbs. new potatoes                          $2.29 lb.                                            $4.58

TOTAL ………………………………………………………………………$17.48

We figured, based on the cost of joing the CSA divided by the number of share pick-ups, that our share was worth about $20 a week.  This week, our produce fell slightly short of that, BUT the grocery store produce was NOT organic OR, in most cases, local.  I’m guessing none of it had been freshly harvested that morning, either.    We also know that our share-size will double in the next few weeks.  I will continue to compare costs throughout the season.   I will also compare prices with Central Market -  and any other market I happen to get to.  How does your CSA cost compare to the grocery store?  To market?

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!

My Mother-in-law and I struck out at the pick-your-own cherry orchard at Cherry Hill Orchards yesterday.  All of the rain has caused many of the cherries to rot on the trees.  The cherries that were not rotten or split were either squishy or sour.    It was so sad to see all of those lovely fruits rotting away (OK – it was a little gross, too!).  The gentleman I spoke with at the weigh-in booth said that the harvest season is really only a few days long, so there is no chance of the crop “coming back.” There were still many unripe cherries on the trees, so I will head back out later this week to see if a few days of sunshine can help the last round of cherries.

I forgot to take my camera, but trust me, you do not want to see what a tree full of rotting cherries looks like.  It will make you cry!

We came home with less than a pound of cherries to split between us – here is my take:

So sad!

We’ve had great luck at Cherry Hill Orchards for all kinds of fruit: cherries, peaches, nectarines, apples.  The last 2 years have been great for cherries.  I think we brought home 19 pounds of cherries the 1st year we did it (note to self: that is A LOT of cherries!).  So this is not a good “cherry” year, but nectarines and peaches are right around the corner!  Yay!

Do you go to a PYO farm?  What do you pick?  What was your best crop ever?

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?