yumyumgeekyum

i think i'm kind of geeking out on the whole farm box thing. i love it more than words can say. it's kind of ridiculous. wednesdays are now one of my favorite days of the week, because we go get the farm box that day. tuesdays are also exciting because i get to find out what will be in the farm box that day. kind of lame, i know, but that's me.


this week we got collard greens, dumpling squash, broccoli, leeks, potatoes, a celery root, and navel oranges. we were also supposed to get some cayenne peppers, but there were none in our box. i looked in one of the other boxes and they were in a small bag, so i guess i could have taken a different box and gotten some, but i am a total wuss don't eat spicy stuff so it wasn't really a loss to me. i wouldn't really know what to do with them anyway, because apparently according to the scoville scale they're pretty hot, only a step or two down from habaneros, and what do you do with a pepper that hot?

the collards got braised with bacon and were so. good. i just love collards, and pretty much any green. (i have not yet developed a taste for kale though i have tried hard because i know it is so good for you, sigh.) there is also potato-leek soup in our future, of course. i'm such a foodie, i know. it's ridiculous.

in other news, i got all my chores done this week, every single last one of them! crazy, but this is an accomplishment for me. generally there are one or two things i let go until the next week, or the week after that, or... . this week, i did everything. this is part of my goals for this year. it's kind of silly how i made myself do it, i'll yap about that later, but the important thing is I DID IT. i'm going to go give myself a treat now.

today's farm box

i am so deliciously excited for what we got today:


carrots, red leaf lettuce, two heads of cabbage, three oranges, green garlic, a butternut squash, red chard, and a large bunch of arugula. we were in san diego last week visiting family and my mother sent me home with another butternut squash, so now there is one for hannah and one for us, which means we are all lucky.

i'm pretty sure i'm getting my $17 worth each week. (plus, i just paid in advance for three months instead of paying monthly, which brings my weekly cost down to $16.50. hooray!) and this week, we did not even get lost. we had a bit of an adventure picking up our first box two weeks ago, but this week i was an old pro and got us there just fine. it even stopped raining long enough for us to get the box no problem.

as jenny mentioned a while back, one of my hopes in joining a csa is that we would be putting a bit more variety onto our dinner table. one thing we got in our last box that i never buy is a celery root (celeriac). i used it once before in a root vegetable soup. i brought it down to san diego with me and my mother, uncle, and i all sampled it raw. we jokingly called it a "celery carrot" because it tastes like celery, but has the texture of a carrot. we ended up dicing it, steaming it, and then sauteing it with other vegetables and tossing it with pasta, olive oil, and cheese. yum!

fresh from the farm

we joined a csa, and got our first box today! if you don't know already, csa stands for community-supported agriculture. we pay a fee each [week, in our case] to the farm and in return get a box of seasonal produce. the one we joined is called full belly farm, which i just love. this is what we got for our first box:


carrots, broccoli, beets, onions, celery root, and mandarins. the mandarins were THE BEST i have ever tasted. ohmyheaven they were good. yes, they are gone now. there was also a good-sized butternut squash that i forgot to put in the picture.

we have a recipe (two actually) from the farm for a couple yummy soups that use the celery root. i am looking forward to that. the beets though... i'm a bit perplexed there. good thing there are only three. i am not particularly fond of beets. i did find a recipe for roasted pesto beets, so we'll see.

yum.

hopefully hannah will be like me and love fruit desserts and such, because i made this blueberry pudding cake for breakfast on new year's day and would like it to become a tradition. brian is not big on fruit stuff. on the other hand, even if she doesn't, it just means more for me, and it is not difficult for me to eat the entire thing all by myself. over the course of a couple days, obviously, what kind of glutton do you take me for?


this is so insanely delicious and easy too. and the best part is, it is all stuff i always have in my house. well, not the whole milk, but i just use 1%. i usually have frozen blueberries on hand for smoothies, and that is pretty much the only "strange" ingredient. i found this recipe a couple years ago in an issue of gourmet magazine, i think, and oh my heavens is it ever good. yum yum yum.

blueberry pudding cake
serves 6-8 (breakfast or dessert)

1/3 c. plus ½ c. sugar
¼ c. water
1 T. lemon juice
1 tsp. cornstarch
10 oz. blueberries (2 c.)
1 c. flour
1¾ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 egg
½ c. whole milk
1 stick (½ c.) butter, melted
1 tsp. vanilla

preheat oven to 375º and butter a 9-inch square baking pan. in a saucepan, stir together 1/3 c. sugar with water, lemon juice, and cornstarch, then stir in blueberries. bring to a simmer, then simmer 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. remove from heat. whisk together egg, milk, butter, and vanilla in a large bowl. whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and remaining ½ c. sugar, then stir into the wet ingredients, whisking until just combined. spoon batter into the baking pan, spreading evenly. pour blueberry mixture evenly over batter; berries will sink. bake until a knife inserted into the center of the cake portion comes out clean, about 25-30 minutes. cool 5 minutes.

* my note: i might cut the sugar in the cake portion down to 1/3 c. in the future. it seems a bit sweet to me, almost overwhelmingly so, but not really in a bad way.