Seasonal Produce Menu Planning (Chard, Brussel Sprouts, Cabbage, Carrots, Potatoes, Leeks, Rutabaga, Oranges, Bay Leaves, Parsley, Baby Bok Choy.)

I love Community Supported Agriculture. I get great organic produce for my family at an affordable price and increases the variety of produce that I eat. This week's box includes: Chard, Brussel Sprouts, Cabbage, Carrots, Potatoes, Leeks, Rutabaga, Oranges, Bay Leaves, Parsley, Baby Bok Choy. Plus, I added 10 pounds of apples for $3.

Here's the menu items I'm planning.

1. Stir-fried Bok Choy & Chard (half of the chard) - I stir fry it with a little bit of ginger, garlic and a dash of soy sauce. It's so yummy (one of the few green things the toddler eats with me).

2. Lemon-marinated brussel sprouts (probably to pair with a roasted chicken which I will roast with herbs, lemon, garlic and bay leaf stuffed inside). This is the biggest question mark for me, but I'm excited to try this recipe. I will be using red onion instead of shallots and will be adding some pancetta. (Here's another brussel sprout recipe that looks good.)

3. Mayo-free slaw. I usually do this with shredded carrots, cabbage and cilantro using lemon juice and vinegar for the dressing. This will be served alongside the popular grilled turkey burgers with mushrooms that are such a hit at our house.


4. Swiss chard frittata - I made this last time we had chard and it was yummy. I referenced this recipe, but did not have any mushrooms, so I made it without and didn't miss them at all.

5. Potato Leek Soup - I've featured my potato leek soup in a past blog. It's really good. I think I'll be adding the rutabaga to it this time.

6. Carrot & Squash Soup - I love trying out different carrot soups. With this one, I'm going to use an acorn squash that I have instead of the summer squash.

7. With the carrots, I also plan on making carrot muffins or bread and carrot-oatmeal cookies. (Recipes will be posted soon).

8. White bean dip with parley and quinoa tabbouleh. (Will serve both with pita bread or pita chips and quinoa burgers, in place of falafel). I love making white bean dip using dried white beans. After simmering them in veggie broth until they are soft, I puree them in the food processor with olive oil and add the herb of choice, in this case the chopped parsley. It's simple, but really yummy. (Here's a good quinoa tabbouleh recipe - given that really good tomatoes can be hard to find this time of year, I might just not include tomatoes or might use sun-dried tomatoes instead.)

9. Finally, with my 10 pounds of apples, I shall try my hand at applesauce, apple butter and different apple baby food items. (Plus, my toddler will eat several of them as well as the oranges, so no menu planning needed for those).

So, as I make different items on the list, I'll post updates on the recipes and how they went, but thought I would share these plans in the spirit of posting ideas for seasonal produce.

Soup Week - Soup #3 - TPP Soup (Turnips, Potatoes and Pears)

I'm a few days past the official "week" of soup week, but I had to share today's soup inspiration. TPP soup may sound a bit odd to some, and I was a little worried about trying to make a soup with these key ingredients, but I also thought it just might work -- and it did. This soup is smooth and tasty. It is definitely one of my most creative and unusual recipes/soups, but was inspired by the items in my Farmshare box. I had lots of pears and some turnips, so I decided to try it all together in a soup.

Ingredients:

1 white onion (diced)
2 russet potatoes (diced, I didn't peel them, but you could)
3 pears (diced and peeled-make sure pears are ripe and soft)
4 turnips (diced, I didn't peel them, but you could)
1-2 pats of butter (or so)
About 4 cups of chicken stock (I used homemade, but you could use store bought or use vegetable stock to make it vegetarian).
1 tsp cinnamon
2-3 tsp thyme
2 tsp curry powder
Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a large, heavy, thick-bottomed pot, melt the butter. then add the onions and cook until translucent about 5 minutes. Next, add the diced turnips and potatoes and stir to coat with the butter (add more butter, if necessary. I did).

2. Pour in enough chicken stock to just cover potatoes, turnips and onions. Bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat to low - adding salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the turnips and potatoes are tender, about 15-20 minutes.

3. Add pears and the rest of chicken stock and spices and stir. Bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 10-15 more minutes, until all vegetables are tender. (This is the part where the soup starts to smell amazing because of the spices).

4. Puree in food processor or blender.

5. Enjoy!!

Roasted Carrot Soup

Another vegetarian gem -- and this one I created purely on my own, no other recipes consulted or adjusted or used as inspiration. Instead, the inspiration was the veggies!

Ingredients

• Carrots, three sliced for roasting
• 1 Potato, cubed
• 2 small turnips, cubed (if you don't have turnips or don't want to use them, you could probably add another potato and an additional carrot or two)
• 2 shallots, diced
  
• Vegetable stock or broth (1/2-1 quart, depending on how thick you want it)
• Cumin
• Olive Oil
• Curry powder
• Salt and pepper

Preparation

1. Slice carrots for roasting - once sliced, place on a cookie sheet and drizzle with olive oil, then sprinkle salt, pepper and cumin (toss to coat evenly)
2. Roast at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes (start checking it at 15)
3. While the carrots are roasting, chop the other ingredients
4. Sautee shallots in olive oil (for about 5 minutes)
5. Add potatoes and turnips and cover with vegetable stock/broth - I only had 1/2 quart of stock, so it ended up being a thick puree, but I found I really liked it that way.
6. Cook until tender (typically about 15)
7. Combine ingredients in a food processor or blender (I use a blender, since I don't have a food processor) and puree. (You may need to stop and stir it around a bit to get everything to puree evenly). I recommend adding a bit more cumin as well as some curry powder during the puree process (I just add a little at a time and taste, instead of measuring).
8. Enjoy!

As you can see from my blog, I'm really getting into soups. They are easy and a great way to use a variety of vegetables (I had never used turnips before) and you can get several meals out of one batch or freeze some for later. This makes soups great for a new mom like me.

Coming soon -- my first attempt at making curry/Indian food and a blog about stock - making your own and store bought.

Potatoes

I am not a foodie. I don't know that much about food, but I am learning and love reading recipes and experimenting in the kitchen.

Recently, I signed up for Abundant Harvest Organics, a weekly locally farmed, organic produce program. Every week , I get a small box of in-season, organic produce. This has encouraged me, as I had hoped, to cook more and eat better and to experiment (finding new recipes etc.).

So, I've decided to write a blog where I share my love of food and cooking. The last two batches of produce I've gotten included potatoes, so that is the subject of today's posting and compilation of recipes. Hopefully, I'll be able to include photos of dishes next time, though they certainly aren't always very pretty, but usually they taste pretty good. I typically start with a recipe and then adjust it and go from there.

My top potato recipes of the week are: potato leek soup (sans cream), Nicoise salad (a major favorite of mine) and a home fries with gooey egg breakfast concoction I came up with this morning (feel free to give this item a better name). Most of the time I'm cooking for one since I'm really into veggies and the hubbie is really into meat.

1. Potato Leek Soup - I've never cooked with leeks before, but since they came in my box and since I had potatoes, potato leek soup was an obvious choice, but I didn't want to make a version that was saturated with cream and a lot of fat, so I found a recipe online and made adjustments. Here was the result:

Ingredients:

• 4 Tbsp. butter
• 3/4 1 large yellow onion chopped
• 1 leek, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 Russett potatoes (about 2 lbs. total), peeled and chopped
• 4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• Sea salt and black pepper to taste
  

Preparation:

1. Melt butter in a large pot over medium-low heat. Add onions, leeks, and salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture is a bit creamy looking, about 10 minutes (adjust heat so mixture cooks but doesn't start to brown).
2. Add garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add potatoes and broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to maintain a steady simmer and cook until potatoes are very tender to the bite, about 20 minutes.
3. Purée soup in a blender.
4. Add salt and pepper to taste

That's it! Simple and delicious. (The original recipe suggested adding milk, rather than cream, but I didn't even do that and I didn't miss it). I discovered 2 things -- I love leeks!! (I was munching on it raw as I cooked) and I love soups (something I've discovered through making soups at home -- what I don't like is canned soup, but I love making soups myself from fresh ingredients).

2. Nicoise salad - a typical Nicoise salad consists of tuna, green beans, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes, onion, capers, and potatoes with a vinaigrette. I love this salad, but rarely have all of the exact ingredients around and really try to focus on cooking with what I have, so based on what I had, I made a wonderful (and beautiful) Nicoise salad for dinner last night. Since it wasn't recipe based and I'm going off memory, I will estimate with amounts.

Ingredients:

• a handful of torn romaine lettuce (kudos to abundant harvest, the romaine was beautiful and delicious)
• a handful of organic herb salad from Trader Joe's
• 5-7 small fingerling potatoes
• 2 soft-boiled eggs
• a handful of green beans
• white wine vinegar
• brown or dijon or spicy mustard (depending on your preference)
• olive oil
• 1 can solid white albacore tuna
  

Preparation

1. Boil eggs and potatoes (I did it together in one pot to save on dirty dishes and just took the eggs out a bit earlier than the potatoes. I put my eggs in ice cold water because I prefer my eggs to be soft or medium-boiled, not hard boiled)
2. Sautee green beans in sesame oil with salt and pepper
3. Toss salad in vinaigrette (whichever you choose), I made a small amount quickly just for this salad with a dash of white wine vinegar, olive oil and one squirt of mustard
4. Put it all together - I like to put the lettuce on the bottom, of course, with the tuna (drained) on top and the green beans, egg and potatoes around the edges. I think it looks beautiful and tastes great.

3. Potato and Gooey Egg Breakfast Concoction - Like many of you, I love breakfast and this morning I was feeling rather adventurous. So, I put together a not-so-pretty, but extremely delicious (to me, anyway) breakfast mess using the organic potatoes, onion and shallots from my box.

Ingredients

• 2 eggs (over easy -- well that was my intent)
  
• 1 potato (if it is large, 2 if they are not) - any type you like for breakfast potatoes
• 2 shallots
• onion (in this case the onion that was leftover from when I made my soup, probably 1/4 of a large yellow onion)
• 3 cloves of garlic
• tri-colored peppers (frozen) from Trader Joe's
• salt, pepper, creole seasoning (creole seasoning is optional - I love making breakfast potatoes with creole seasoning)
  
• olive oil
• butter (a pat)
• A handful of torn spinach
  

Preparation

1. Chop potatoes (you can do strips or chunks, whichever you prefer -- I felt like strips this morning). Season with creole, salt and pepper (to taste)
2. Chop onion, shallots and garlic
3. Pan fry potatoes in a drizzle of olive oil and pat of butter
4. Once potatoes start to get about half-way done (see, I'm definitely an amateur), add onion, shallots and garlic and continue to sautee
5. After a few more minutes (as onions start to become translucent), add peppers (fresh would be great, but I had frozen)
6. At the end (when potatoes and onion mix is about done), add spinach (I did this to add some iron, calcium and additional protein to the mix and because I love spinach and had just picked up the fresh, organic spinach this morning in my produce box)
7. Once spinach is cooked - add additional seasonings to taste and remove from pan (to plate)
8. Add a bit more oil and butter to the pan (just a small pat) and cook the eggs (over-easy) -- mine didn't quite work this morning and using a separate pan might have worked better, but I have a 3 month old and no dishwasher, so for me less dishes is better). My goal was to just have some nice runny eggs to put over top of the potatoes and that I did accomplish.
9. Put eggs on top and enjoy!

I know this last recipe sounds like a bit of a mess, but it was an experiment that I enjoyed making and eating. Delish.

I'm looking forward to dinner tonight, which will not include potatoes, but will be a delicious grilled shrimp fettuccine alfredo, which my husband will eat (and will help cook). I'll make a caesar salad to go with it.

Tomorrow is all about Quinoa - check back in for Quinoa Tabbouleh, Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Quinoa on top and maybe some Quinoa muffins, we'll see.