Adventures in CSA (week 8): Fall CSA days come to a close

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Amazingly enough, I just brought home the last Fall CSA box. (Fear not! The Winter CSA starts up – improbably – this coming Tuesday, so we’ll be under a deluge of fruit and vegetables by Wednesday.) This last Fall box had an interesting variety of items, most of which I expect to find at the grocery store. The purple potatoes are questionable – that may be more of a specialty item, but the rest are pretty mainstream.

I also have to make a confession: we’re giving away the parsnips. I KNOW, I KNOW! BAD MONKEY! But, here’s why: dh isn’t too enthused about them, and I think my stomach woes from the other weekend were related to having too many parsnips with dinner. While I understand that just eating fewer might be the solution to that particular problem, it’s a little harder to accomplish if you’re the only one in the house that will eat them. Thankfully, one of my co-workers admitted her love for ‘snips, so I brought them home to weigh them and then they’ll head back to work to be handed over to a loving home.

Looking at the box, I’m somewhat at a loss as to what I’m going to do – we have red and new and sweet potatoes already in the house, so what on earth do we do with the purple potatoes?! I got cranberries. I’m used to those arriving in liquid form, often mixed with grape juice and bearing the “Ocean Spray” label. So, once I have a moment, I need to go digging through my cookbooks and see if I can come up with some inspiration for what to do with this bounty.

 

Week 8 CSA

YUM and YUM some more

 

This week’s box contained:

  • Buttercup Squash
  • Cranberries
  • Parsnips
  • Apples
  • Yellow Onions
  • Purple Potatoes
  • Cabbage
  • Garlic
  • Carrots
  • Rainbow Chard

The apples present a slight conundrum in that I’m just not 100% sure which kind they are. Last time, I thought I had macouns but they may have been empire. Some of these resemble the empires from last week, but others are so deeply purple that I’m not sure WHAT they are. Then again, I refuse to feel badly about this. At a conference this week, I was discussing the varieties of apples grown locally with one of the attendees who’d traveled up to Massachusetts from Florida, and his eyes got wider as I kept naming more and more types of apples. Then again, his idea of “fresh whole fruit” includes oranges year-round, so there’s something to be said for geographic variety.

Since we’re gearing up for snow (before Hallowe’en? for reals?!), it’s unlikely that we’ll want to grill anything this weekend. Still, as long as we have power to handle the thermostat, I can imagine that the buttercup squash may find a temporary home in the oven. And I think I can promise – without a shadow of a doubt – that the cabbage will be used in some fashion OTHER THAN cabbage and corned beef. I can’t describe a dish I feel more ~meh~ about than that one. That doesn’t mean it won’t go into the crock pot; I can just promise it won’t be with corned beef.

Back in a day or so with the pricing, as well as the overall assessment of the Fall CSA. I’m already looking forward to the Winter CSA, although I do fear being buried under an avalanche of potatoes and apples. Good thing we have a Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook around here somewhere…

Bok-os!

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Problem #1: the week 7 veggie box shows up with just over 2lbs of bok choi in it. Holy carp…what am I going to do with TWO POUNDS of bok choi?

Problem #2: the usual Saturday evening blahs over what to have for dinner on the one unplanned night of the week, and we were missing one of the usual key ingredients. We decided to make tacos, and though it took some convincing, I was finally able to persuade dh that if you have no ground turkey in the house, the taco gods will still approve of you making tacos with diced chicken. [We don’t typically use ground beef – the one exception being the “meatloaf mix” of ground beef and pork that we get from BJ’s a couple of times a year.]

…and then I said, “What if we use bok choi instead of taco shells?” We had taco shells in the house. As a matter of fact, we had two boxes of them, due to a shopping oops on my part a few weeks before. Still, the idea intrigued him. “So, what – it would be like the lettuce cups from PF Chang’s?” he asked. Yep, that was the idea.

So, we created the tacos in the usual fashion (less the ground turkey) and then put them on bok choi leaves instead of taco shells. The verdict? OMG, this may be the only way I have tacos again if I can ever help it. And thus, we proudly present…

BOK-OS!

Note also that this is a bit healthier than using the shells – at least 100 cal less. And, you get all the benefits of the hard shell (crunch!) with the benefit of the soft taco (no breakage!). It’s really a win-win situation.

Bok-os

Bok-os: Crunchy, soft, healthy...what a combination!

Prep Time: 5 mins

Cooking Time: 15-20 mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 Tb olive oil

1/2 pkg reduced sodium taco seasoning

2/3 cup water

4 leaves bok choi, washed

toppings of your choice (we went with reduced fat sour cream, shredded monterey jack/cheddar blend, and medium-heat salsa)

Make it Happen

1. Dice the chicken breasts (small pieces) and cook with the olive oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat.

2. When the chicken is fully cooked, add the taco seasoning and water; stir to combine and stir frequently throughout cooking to ensure no sticking.

3. Once the majority of the liquid is gone from the pan, remove the chicken from the heat. Serve on leaves of bok choi (one per person), with the toppings of their choice, and fold the leaf as you’re eating it (like a soft taco shell).

Roasted Garlic Eggplant Dip

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First off, let me say that I’m not a fan of eggplant. I’ve tried it in parm form – meh. I’ve tried it in grilled form – meh. I’ve never been a fan of baba ganoush. In other words, eggplant’s just never worked for me. I tried to make things out of it when it showed up in earlier weeks’ veggie boxes, and it just never found a warm spot in my heart.

Until now.

I’ve FINALLY found a way that I like eggplant! My theory about it still stands: eggplant is a delivery mechanism. Just as pita is often a means of delivering hummus, eggplant is typically a way of delivering something else. In the case of the most common use for eggplant (eggplant parmesan), it’s for delivering cheese and red sauce. You might as well be eating cardboard that was breaded and fried – and in some cases, you’d get more flavor.

So, when I got yet another eggplant in the CSA box (albeit a small one), I knew I had to find some way to turn this thing into a delivery of something I wanted. It didn’t exactly help that I’m slightly under the weather and have a completely variable appetite. As I was thinking about what to do with said eggplant, I was struck by the idea of roasting it until it was mushable. Just roasting the eggplant by itself seemed silly and wasteful, though. As long as the oven’s on, why not roast some garlic with it and put them together in a bowl? YES! I would turn eggplant into a roasted garlic delivery mechanism! GENIUS!

How did it turn out? I LOVED IT. Given that it was a small eggplant, it made enough for about one person, or *maybe* two people (if they’re friendly). I saved a small amount for dh, since he was out of the house while this was made. And, now, if I *ever* have another eggplant cross my path, this is the first thing I’ll want to do with it. This could totally be done with a larger eggplant; all of the other ingredients just need to be scaled up proportionately. Given the size of the eggplant that I used, if you got the standard 1lb eggplant, you’ll just want to double the rest of the ingredients and probably add about 5-10 min cooking time, to make sure that you get it to the desired consistency. The eggplant should be browned (not blackened) on top.

The other nice thing about this recipe is that it requires very little “active” time in the kitchen. And it’s easy. I’m a big fan of easy. Note that I don’t use a blender or food processor. For one thing, this was done with a small eggplant, so it was a small enough quantity that A) it wouldn’t have worked well in a machine, and B) I had a sleeping child a few rooms away and was afraid to wake him up! With a larger eggplant, a machine may be employed – but I don’t feel that the dip was lacking because it had a less-than-smooth consistency.

(Apologies for the chip being in better focus than the dip…my camera REFUSED to believe that the dip was focus-worthy. IT WAS WRONG.)

Roasted Garlic Eggplant Dip

My new favorite way to eat eggplant!

 

Prep time: 5 min (active) + 30 min (inactive)

Cooking time: 30 min

Serves: 1-2

 

Ingredients

1 small white/Italian eggplant (about 6oz)

1 small head of garlic (about 4 small/medium cloves)

1/2 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp grated parmesan cheese

olive oil

salt

 

Make it Happen

1. Wash the eggplant and pat it dry. Slice it lengthwise and leave it with the insides (meat) facing up. Sprinkle salt over top of the eggplant meat and pat it down gently, to distribute it evenly across the top of the eggplant. Leave it to sit for 30 minutes to draw water out of the eggplant.

2. While the eggplant is sitting, prep the garlic for roasting: slice off the top and a thin layer of the bottom of the head of garlic, so the tops and bottoms of the cloves will be exposed. Set the head of garlic aside on the same cutting board as the eggplant.

3. Preheat the oven to 400F about 15 min. into the eggplant’s resting phase.

4. When the eggplant is done sitting, use a paper towel to wipe off the water and salt from the top of the eggplant. Place the eggplant halves (still meat-side up) on a cookie sheet covered with a sheet of aluminum foil.

5. Lightly brush olive oil on the meat of the eggplant halves.

6. Take a smaller piece of foil and pour a little olive oil on the center. Place the garlic head on top of that olive oil, then lightly pour olive oil all over the head of garlic, until it’s fully coated. Fold up the tin foil around and over the head of garlic, so as to make a closed pouch, then place that on the cookie sheet next to the eggplant halves. Roast at 400F for 30 mins.

7. Remove the cookie sheet from the oven and scoop the inside of the eggplant out into a bowl with a large spoon. Mash the eggplant gently with the spoon.

8. Squeeze the roasted garlic cloves out of the skin, then add those to the bowl. Mash those gently, as well, then stir to combine.

9. Add the lemon juice and the parmesan cheese to the bowl; stir to combine.

10. Serve with chips of your choice (or good dipping veggies – like carrots, celery or peppers). I served mine with multi-grain tortilla chips.