Community Supported Agriculture...and carrots!

We've come to the decision that, while we've loved the CSA this year and the produce has been excellent, we don't plan to continue next year, mostly because we'd rather have more say in what we buy and when we cook. The CSA food has been delicious, but there's a lot of guilt if we don't do something with it immediately. And goign to the farmers market has come to seem like a crazy extravagance. But we really, really like visiting different farmers markets and being able to see what's in season and make out own decisions about what we'll cook and eat. The CSA has made us try a few new things, but it makes more sense to spend our money on things our family loves rather than bravely tolerating turnips. And it's not like won't still support local farmers next year--we'll just be supporting more of them.

I will miss the weekly surprise. What did we get? Ooooh! Purple peppers? Strawberries? Funny carrots?

I've seen lots of carrots with legs:



but this was the first time I'd seen a carrot that needed to pee!

What to do with.....

...collard greens? We got a big bunch in our CSA box and, while I can turn most leafy things into smoothies when out of other ideas, I was afraid that tough collards might just do in my blender.

I did a quick blog search for ideas and came across fresh365, a food blog that's new to me but has already joined the crowd in my RSS reader. I enjoyed browsing through the varied vegetarian recipes and ogling the lovely photos. Yesterday's entry was a collard green and green olive pesto which sounded, frankly, a little odd so I had to look closer. Upon reading the recipe it was clear how it could work and I jumped into action.

Of course I was missing various key ingredients like pine nuts and sun dried tomatoes and didn't want to dash to the store. I improvised with roasted cashews for the nuts, but couldn't think of anything to replace the tomatoes. The cashews worked well, and the final dish was quite good, but I can see where the tomatoes would balance out the tang of the vinegar and the salty olives.

I served this spread on crispy toast as part of our patio lunch today. Surprisingly, my kids liked it quite a bit. It was definitely a bigger hit than the regular old basil variety, which I thought was very interesting. I have leftovers and I'm thinking about how it might work over a good whole wheat pasta with tiny tomatoes. The idea has potential, for sure!

The printable recipe is here, with permission from fresh365. Thanks, Erin!

Unexpectedly Good

There's been lots and lots of dairy action around here, now that I've met Ed, my local goat guy. I've turned 4 gallons of milk into yogurt, chevre, feta, and a my own invention which I'm just calling The Awesome Cheese . If I can duplicate my results, I'll be sharing that here since it's pretty straightforward and doesn't require exotic specialty ingredients--except for goat's milk.

Honestly, I've been just a wee bit obsessed with the cheese, but wasn't sure how many people shared my obsession and thought my next post here at Magpie Eats should be of a non-dairy nature. And so I bring you.....Turnip Soup!

Did I scare you away? I hope not. This turned out so much better than I'd imagined possible. It's rich and creamy and only lightly turnip flavored. It was such a pleasant surprise I thought I'd share this simple and unusual soup.

This is our first season with the Winter Green Farm CSA. I've always worried that my picky family wouldn't be able to handle an ever changing weekly supply of fresh veggies but one of the things that sold me on the CSA was when a friend mentioned the recipes that accompany the weekly box. Which is how I ended up with a plan for my bunch of young turnips.

The recipe is credited to Fresh from the Market which may or may not be this book. My apologies for failing to give credit appropriately--I'm just working with the information I have.

Summer seems to have left us here in Portland so it's soup weather again. Give this one a try and let me know what you think.

Printable recipe here.

A little housekeeping: I'm trying out a different way of of storing recipes and making them easily printable. Please let me know if this is better or worse than my previous setup. Also, I have a question for you. Would you like to see the entire recipe in the blog post as well as having a link to a printable recipe? I've always stayed away from that because I wanted to keep the posts trim and easy to read, but maybe having the recipe is more appealing. Please let me know what you prefer. Thanks!