100 mile diet

In March, I wrote about the adventure Jeff and I are embarking on this year in our support of a Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) initiative. Our weekly vegetable box began while I was in Victoria for my 3-week term on campus, so Jeff was left to find creative uses for the mounds of green onions, green garlic, spring greens and mesculun mix that we received. The first week I was home, I dove into the veggies before taking a picture. Here's how they looked last week and this week.

Our lovely farmer Kelly keeps apologizing for how small the boxes are right now, but it's been a good transition for us into the CSA system. Both weeks, we received radishes, green onions, green garlic, herbs, beet greens and kale. Last week, we were pretty excited about the new potatoes and this week, the pint of strawberries was polished off in record time because they were out-of-this-world fantastic. This week's box also had bunches of arugula and swiss chard.

I have to admit that until last summer, I had not cooked much with hearty greens. This week, I sautéed the beet greens, chard and kale with a bit of olive oil, garlic and mushrooms until just done, then splashed in a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar (as adapted from a recipe on one of my favourite food blogs). It was DELISH.



My challenge seems to be with the green garlic (the larger onion-type things in the above photo on the right). I have been adding them into cooked things (sauces, a frittata, soup) because the greens are a little tough. Does anyone have any other ideas or advice to share?