Summer CSA

Summer is totally the best season with the CSA - lots of variety, lots of colorful stuff, some fruit (we get almost entirely vegetables the rest of the year), and almost no greens! This week we got summer squash, sorrel, red onion, yellow onion, more red potatoes (we're practically drowning in potatoes at the moment), grapefruit, wheat berries, green onions, and peaches!! Ok, so what did I/am I doing with my produce this week?

The peaches are just about the best peaches I've ever had. They're super tiny and cute, and absolutely delicious. They've been snacks. And the grapefruit was for breakfast.

The wheat berries were actually also breakfast. I've ground them and used them as flour a couple of times, but I'm not a huge fan. It's essentially like using whole wheat flour, which most recipes (unless they called for it in the first place) need to be tweaked to work right with wheat flour. Sometimes using the wheat berry flour for part of the flour in the recipe works ok. Anyways, I'd been boiling the wheat berries and mixing them into oatmeal, but it's way too hot for that now. So I boiled them, and then mixed them (once they were cool) into yogurt. It's kinda like putting granola in yogurt, and it was actually pretty good.

Earlier this week I used my summer squash and sorrel with penne. While the penne cooked I sauteed the squash and yellow onion in olive oil. When the pasta was done, I dumped it in with a bit more oil and added the chopped sorrel. And then topped all of it with freshly ground black pepper and sea salt, and grated parmesan cheese. It was totally delicious. Sorry for the mediocre picture - the lighting in my kitchen stinks...


Sorrel is kind of a mystery to me still. Not so sure what to do with it. Fresh it tastes a little bit like kiwi of all things. It gave this pasta dish a slight lemony taste. The only other thing I've done with it is mix it in with other salad greens. We don't seem to get it terribly often - this is actually the first season we've gotten it in the 2+ years I've done the CSA.

So the other interesting thing I've made this week are sweet potato sandwiches. I actually had this dish for lunch at a restaurant earlier this week. It's got hummus, spinach, sliced tomatoes, red onion, and sweet potatoes. At the restaurant the sweet potatoes were grilled, but I microwaved them and then pan seared them - just because it was easier than grilling. I like the hummus instead of mayo idea - so much healthier, and does just as good a job at "moisturizing" the sandwich if you will. I'll definitely make this again, there are only a few ways I like sweet potatoes, so another good one is great. The only thing I'd do differently is cut the sweet potato pieces bigger, not thicker, but bigger. I think they'd work better on the sandwich that way. And I'd try to get more spinach in there...


Ok, so the yellow onion, (some of) the red onion, summer squash, last week's sweet potatoes are accounted for. Tonight we're making breakfast for dinner (yay special waffles!), and we're going to make fried potatoes, so there goes the red potatoes and the rest of the yellow onion. And the egg-eaters in attendance will have eggs, and some of the scallions will go into that.

Doing pretty well...always some odds and ends to figure out. I'm sure we won't get through all the red potatoes we've got, and then I'll still have some red onion, more summer squash, and wheat berries left. All stuff that will keep for a bit still.

P.S. What do CSA people in cold climates do? Do CSAs only exist in the summer? Or are they spring through fall? Summer CSA is by far my favorite, but I'm still glad I get fresh, local, organic produce all year-round. Hmm...no year-round CSA might be another con against moving somewhere cold after grad school...