June 17th marks the beginning of our spring-summer-fall CSA membership! Officially, it’s still Spring for three more days, so this will be our first and only spring box. We are expecting the spring New England staples (asparagus, leafy greens, radishes and herbs) but hey, we’re not farmers so surprises are expected. Let’s see what we got!
Tasty Contents
- 1 Bunch Asparagus
- 1 Bunch Bock Choy
- 1 Head of Lettuce
- 1 Bunch Radishes
- 1 Bunch Red Mustard Greens
- 1 Quart Snap Peas
- 1 Bunch Spring Onions
Initial Reaction
Asparagus! Yay! This late in June, we’re never sure if Asparagus will be included, but we got some! We have the early makings of a salad, but don’t worry we are much more creative than that. Mustard greens might seem intimidating, but they will probably cook down to nothing. Time to plan!
The Prepping
First things first, we need to wash, dry and properly store the green stuff, to get it to last all week.
The lettuce we rinsed and separated into small batches. Each batch we put into the salad spinner, and spun to help dry. Once all batches had their turn, we dried out the salad spinner, put all the lettuce back in, secured the top and placed in the fridge for storage. There was so much lettuce, we had to “gently encourage” it all to fit. After a day or so of using lettuce, we figure it will all fit better.
The radishes needed to have their leafy green tops cut off. The bulbs we then cleaned of dirt, dried off, and stored in a resealable plastic bag.
The bock choy, spring onions, mustard greens, and asparagus, were rinsed, dried, placed in a plastic produce bag, and put into the crisper section of our fridge.
The snap peas came in a plastic bag. These we put directly into the fridge and plan to rinse as we use them.
The Planning
We are going to be practical about some of these items. As it is our first box, we already have some of these vegetables at home from last week’s grocery store run, onions in particular. So we chopped off 75% of the tops of the spring onions and add them to our freezer bag of vegetable scraps.
Mustard Greens
These do well a simple saute, following a recipe from Simply Recipes (link here). Spring onions are also part of this recipe, so it’s going to help get through those too. Cooking the greens down will really reduce the amount of food, so we plan to serve it as a side with the Smoky Black-Eyed Peas recipe out of the Thug Kitchen cookbook.
Asparagus and Snap Peas
We wondered if the internet would have a saute that included both asparagus and snap peas. The internet didn’t let us down, and we decided to give this recipe from Ina Garten on Food Network a try. Actually, we’ll also be adding one whole spring onion to the mixture.
Bock Choy
We love bock choy, and we have a go-to saute. We just finely chop up about 1 tablespoon of ginger, 2 cloves of garlic, and 1 spring onion. We get about 2 teaspoons of olive oil heating in a stainless steel saute pan, and then add the onion. 2 minutes later we add the garlic and ginger, 1 minute later we add the white part of the bock choy. We then add 2 tablespoons of soy sauce (or tamari), 2 tablespoons of water, 1 tablespoon of toasted sesame oil. One the white parts look a smidge more translucent (5ish minutes) we add the green parts of the bock choy. Stir the mixture to get the sauce on all parts and to prevent any burning. Once the green leaves have fully wilted, turn off the heat and serve. Serve up as a side dish!
Lettuce
The amount of lettuce is a bit too much for 2 people, especially 2 people who don’t regularly make salads. Our plan here is two parts. Make a salad everyday incorporating the radishes and find another recipe that uses lettuce.
We decided we would try the Yellow Split Pea and Green Onion Lettuce Wraps recipe from Thug Kitchen. The plan is to prepare the yellow split peas per the recipe but to substitute in the spring onions for regular onions and green onions.
CSAeats 