It's a new record, folks! It's only Thursday (13 days in) and my CSA basket is gone! Week 5 (I have a bi-weekly pickup, so this was my third of the summer) was another bonanza. There's snap beans (basically red green-beans), zucchini, green onions, fennel, beets, chard, lettuce, and turnip greens:
First up, taco salad. This is lettuce and green onions from the basket, plus romaine, Beyond Beef Feisty Crumbles, black beans, tomatoes, and blue corn tortilla chips. For hot-weather food, it was pretty hearty and delicious.
After a decade of being vegan, there's not many vegetables I haven't tried. That said, I've always avoided fennel because I'm not an anise fan and assumed it would taste like licorice. But in the spirit of using everything, I roasted the fennel with beets and zucchini and threw it on top of some greens. I pride myself on not being a picky eater (except, you know, anything with meat, eggs, dairy, honey...), but I can now decisively say that I do not like fennel. I picked it all out of the salads. The fennel-less salad was good, though. And that's right, I repackaged my salad in the greens package.
While I'm certainly no believer of the protein myth, I am trying to drop a few pounds and figured cutting back on my usual carb-bonanza would be a good place to start. Here's Beyond Chicken grilled strips with some boiled snap beans (and broccoli, and more repurposed packaging in the background):
Outside magazine had a great (albeit long) profile on Beyond Meat this winter, where the company basically said they were taking plants and turning them into meat using a machine instead of an animal, which was a far more efficient and humane practice. I've used that logic ever since on skeptical omnis who don't want to eat fake meat because it's too "processed." I explain that meat is processed, too, just by an animal's body instead of a machine. Given a choice between the two methods, I'll take the machine product.
Last up, more fake chicken (this time Simple Truth Meatless Griller Strips from Kroger), with brown rice and a random mix of greens: beet greens, turnip greens and chard. I'd never had turnip greens before, but I really liked them, especially mixed with the slightly sweet chard. I also thought they also paired nicely with the Simple Truth strips, which have a different taste and texture than the Beyond Meat ones.
These super boring fake chicken dishes are great examples of why I love having a CSA - even when making the most plain, lazy meals, I think "oh hey, I have veggies I need to use up", and so I add a serving of greens. Totally worth $20 every other week, IMO.
After successfully using everything in the first week of my 2015 City Commons CSA, I eagerly set off to pick up the next one. [I have a bi-weekly pick up on odd weeks, so to keep things consistent, I'm using their weekly numbering system on here. This is my second basket and second post.] This week was another awesome showing:
There's lettuce, baby kale, collards, chard, cabbage, beets, oregano and sunflower sprouts. You can't tell in the picture, but that container of sprouts was huge -- it probably would have cost $10 at the grocery store. I think this CSA is very reasonably priced; my 10 week share worked out to $21.50 each. That pile would have cost a lot more to buy at the grocery store, plus I know that it's local and the quality and freshness can't be beat.
I normally try to scan my cookbooks for recipes to use the ingredients, but I winged it this time. I call my first dish "omni salad." It's essentially a chef's salad, which is one of very few omni foods I miss. The salad is lettuce, baby kale and sunflower sprouts from the basket, plus carrots, avocado, cucumber, and cherry tomatoes to round out the vegetable offerings. Now get ready for analog overload, it's also topped with: Oven Roasted Tofurky, Follow Your Heart Provolone, and Beyond Meat's Beyond Chicken Grilled Strips, plus Follow Your Heart Vegan Bleu Cheese dressing. I'll save my love of the new FYH products for another post, but suffice it to say that this salad was hearty and delicious. I also really liked the added texture from the baby kale. I'd never had it before and it was a great compliment.
While I was buying all processed/pre-made items for the salad at Whole Foods, I also picked up some Rising Moon Organics Butternut Squash Ravioli. I saluted the chard with garlic, added the cooked ravioli (tossed with a little olive oil) and topped it with oregano:
This was my first time trying the ravioli and it was pretty good. The chard was a nice addition, but I picked most of the oregano off. I'm not sure if I just had too much or it was too old, but it was not a wise addition. This would have been better swimming in a creamy sauce, but for the calories, it was good.
Much like last time, I went out of town (to Cleveland) for the weekend and lost cooking momentum. With time running out, I turned to my trusty copy of Appetite for Reduction, and found plenty of options. With the collards, I made Ye'abesha Gomen (Stewed & Sautéed Collards). I also threw in the greens from my beets and added a can of chickpeas. I felt like this dish belonged in r/ShittyVeganFoodPorn, so I I just decided to shovel it into my mouth while on the computer, rather than setting the table.
Isa is spot-on in her recipe description, these do taste just like the ones in Ethiopian restaurants. There are a lot of onions in there, but I think they were a perfect addition; the slightly soft and sweet taste was a good balance with the slightly bitter and chewy greens.
Next, I made the Braised Cabbage with Seitan (also from AFR). I couldn't find any plain seitan (and was too lazy to make it), so I bought the Italian Style from Upton's Naturals. This was another super simple, super delicious meal.
And last but not least - beets!!! There were only a few and they were small, so I just boiled them and ate them as a snack with some of the FYH bleu cheese dressing mentioned above. I love beets and these were certainly a better way to get through the afternoon than a bag of chips. (Please forgive the phone pic, taken with fluorescent cubicle lighting.)
I'm pretty psyched that I'm 2/2 on using every last bit of produce in my CSA! Though I didn't technically eat the oregano, I used the beet greens, so I feel like those offset each other.
Summers in Detroit are great for so many reasons, but one of my favorites is the City Commons CSA. I was a member in 2014, and couldn't wait to renew this year. I've belonged to a few CSAs over the years (as mentioned here), but City Commons has been my favorite. It's very reasonably priced, hyper-local (all grown in Detroit), and most importantly, has a super convenient bi-weekly half share pick-up. I've struggled in past years to use all the produce (especially living by myself, in a location where I can have vegan pizza, Indian food, and sandwiches/curly fries all delivered to my door), but vowed this year will be different. No waste allowed!
In an effort to keep myself honest, I'm going to try to post the bi-weekly haul and how I used it. Without further ado, here's week 1:
There's lettuce, chard, kale, bok choy, oregano, dill, garlic scapes, and strawberries. Yes, strawberries!!! Another great thing about City Commons is that they post what will (likely) be in the baskets on Tuesday and I pick up on Saturday, so I had time to game plan. First up was bok choy, used in Ginger Bok Choy & Soba from Appetite for Reduction:
This was pretty good, though next time I'd use half as many noodles. The recipe notes suggested adding tofu, which I mistakenly read as adding the Hoisin-Mustard Tofu. After making it, I realized the suggestion was to dry fry the tofu like the first step in that recipe. Since it was already made, I decided to use up the lettuce to prepare the tofu as lettuce wraps (the original recipe). I should note that the decision to make wraps occurred when I got home from the Windsor-Detroit fireworks (and related drinking), so the "wraps" very quickly devolved into "tofu on lettuce". I'm including this picture because it pretty aptly describes my attempt at drunk food prep:
And a close up:
These were good, but weirdly reminded me of egg salad. I think it's just that for a decade, any time I've had cold tofu cubes in mustard sauce, it's been vegan egg salad. It was good though, and probably would have been better as a lettuce-wrapped appetizer.
Next up, strawberries, dill and oregano. I lifted my 18-month cookbook buying moratorium to buy Salad Samurai by Terry Hope Romero specifically in anticipation of the CSA. The very first salad recipe in the book is for Spring Herb Salad with Maple Orange Tempeh Nibbles. The recipe had a number of steps (roasting pecans and cooking tempeh), and I assembled it over a few days, but it was so delicious and worth every minute of effort. I wish I had staged this better than in a Pyrex container, because this salad deserves to be on a silver platter sitting on a bed of diamonds:
After my early cooking marathon, I went to Craft-A-Way Camp (another favorite summer tradition) and lost my cooking momentum. At the last minute (literally, I woke up, cooked, then picked up my new basket), I used the garlic scapes, chard and kale. I just steamed the greens with the chopped scapes, and added some tofu dry-fried with a little soy sauce. And you know what? It was DELICIOUS. So amazing. Sometimes I forget how good plain food can taste. Even two weeks old, the greens were fantastic and the garlic scapes were also a great addition. They added a great texture and plenty of flavor.
Whew! I made it through my first week!
