Our biggest worry when signing up for a CSA is getting a lot of greens that we just can’t keep up with. For some people, it might be bitter greens. For us, it chives. The challenge to eat the whole box is real.
Tasty Contents
- 1 Pint Blueberries
- 1/2 Pint Raspberries
- 1 Bunch Chives
- 1 Head Lettuce
- 1 Quart Pickling Cucumbers
- 1 Quart Snap Peas
- 1 Bunch Spring Onions
- 1 Quart Zucchini
The Prepping
First things first, we needed to wash, dry and properly store the veggies, to get it to last all week.
The lettuce we immediately rinsed and separated into small batches. Each batch we put into the salad spinner, and spun to help dry. Once all batches had had their turn, we dried out the salad spinner, put all the lettuce back into the spinner, secured the top and placed in the fridge for storage. The size of our head of lettuce seems a bit down from last week, so it all actually all fit in the salad spinner.
The cucumbers, spring onions, and zucchini were rinsed, dried, placed in a plastic produce bag, and put into the crisper section of our fridge.
The snap peas once again came in a plastic bag. These we just put directly into the fridge and plan to rinse as we use them. Similarly, we just put the blueberries into the fridge to wash as we use them.
The raspberries looked a little rough this week. Possibly due to the hot, humid week we just went through. To make sure we eat the good ones, we went ahead and washed the yummy looking raspberries, placing them on a piece of parchment paper in our freezer, for some future smoothie creations.
The chives we’ve stored in the fridge, standing upright in a mug with a few inches of water. We’ll wash those too once we start using them.
The Planning
Once again, we chopped off 75% of the tops of the spring onions and add them to our freezer bag of vegetable scraps. We’ve got two full gallon size bags of veggie scraps now in our freeze, so we plan to make a pot of vegetable broth.
Time to Embrace The Salad
With lettuce, spring onions, cucumbers, chives, and snap peas, we’ve got the start of a beautiful salad. We always add protein to our salads (so that we’re not hungry thirty minutes later) and hummus is sounding good this week. So some sort of salad, bread, and hummus meal will be our lunch staple for a few days. Did we mention that this is a holiday weekend and we’re also feeling eager to spend more of our time on house projects than cooking? Having some hummus around will also encourage is to eat the snap peas as yummy hummus shovels.
Lettuce
No more spring rolls! At least not this week.
Raspberries and Blueberries
With the weather turning hot, we’ve started making the refreshing Watermelon Hibiscus Coolers from Thug Kitchen. Since we preemptively froze the raspberries, we plan to add them to this recipe later this week. We’ll probably add the blueberries too, if they’re not all gone.
Zucchini
There are more zucchinis this week than last week, and they are large too. Turning these veggies into spaghetti with our zucchini spiralizer was so satisfying that we’re going to do it again this week! We have a head of cauliflower hanging out in the fridge, so some of these will go towards a modified Cauliflower Cream Pasta recipe found in Thug Kitchen (subbing in the zucchini noodles for spinach), some will go in the Moroccan Style Vegetable Stew recipe found in Joy of Cooking, and the rest will go into something that we’ll make up when we get there – if there is any left over. Grilling zucchini is fun and an option we’re keeping on the table. The Moroccan Style Vegetable Stew recipe also calls for onions, so we’ll be subbing in the spring onions.
Chives
As intimidated as we are by the chives, we will think through a plan. Ok, here’s the plan. The CSA we joined actually recommended we chop up a bunch into 1/2 inch pieces, and add to a pint jar with olive oil. This they say, makes an excellent dressing. We can add them as topping to the hummus and salads and the many versions of spaghetti we plan on making. And then if push comes to shove, we’ll put them in the veggie freezer bag. Phew, a plan!
Summary
We feel this is a solid plan this week. We need to start soaking some dried chickpeas for hummus, Moroccan Stew, and salads – so we are prepping 2 16oz bags of dried chickpeas, following the directions on the bag this evening. Other needed ingredients include some butternut squash.
CSAeats 