And Then We Came To The End

The email in my in-box this morning took me by surprise: “Today will be our last CSA drop off for the year,” it said, followed by a terse “thank you for your participation,” and not much more.

Huh? Whaaaa? – or as I might say of I weren’t so very, very ladylike and well mannered: WTF???

What happened to all those gorgeous fall squashes I was looking forward to – the butternuts and acorns and who-remembers-what-else the farmers told us they were planting?

What happened to the promise of deliveries until “right before Thanksgiving”?

Deer happened, that’s what.

The deer that roam the farm have, apparently, been crashing the fences and eating everything besides the onions and potatoes. And more onions. And more potatoes… which is pretty much all we’ve gotten for the past few weeks, save for the occasional head of cabbage or tiny bunch of kale – which, when divided into the amount of money we spent to join the CSA are some very, very expensive green leaves.

Of course, this is exactly what my husband predicted when I told him I’d signed us up for the CSA early last summer.

He was right and I was wrong.

Luckily, he's not only smart but funny, and has already turned this whole thing into a story we'll be laughing at --or pretending to laugh at -- for years. But still, I'm pretty steamed. Yes, I understand that when you sign up for a CSA, your luck is tied directly to the farmers’. Rain wipes out the crops? The farm dudes are out of luck, and so are you. Early frost kills the first-planted seedlings? Better luck next year, CSA members; this is what it means to support a family farm. But really? They couldn’t figure out how to keep the deer out of the pumpkin patch? Sorry, pals, but I don’t think this ought to be my problem.

And yet, it is. That's how a CSA works -- or doesn't, as the case may be. Oh, well. As my mother says in Yiddish, we live and we learn.

So, to summarize, here are some of the things I learned this summer:

1. Steve was right and I was wrong.
2. No matter how much you love kale, you won’t want to eat it week after week.
3. Steve was right and I was wrong.
4. No matter how much you love your sister-in-law, you’ll eventually get tired of having to drive to the CSA pick-up point at her house three towns over to pick up abovementioned kale every $%^& week.
5. Steve was right and I was wrong.

AND DID I MENTION THAT HE'S REALLY, REALLY HANDSOME?  

And so, while I eat a big ol’ plateful of humble pie for dinner, I’m going to serve him one of his favorite soups, made with the last kale of (I promise!) our last attempt at belonging to a CSA.

Here’s how to make it:

1. Put on your sexiest dress and your highest-heeled shoes. (Hey: As my mother also says in Yiddish, "It couldn't hurt.")
2. Slice 12 ounces sweet Italian sausage into rounds and brown in a drop of olive oil in a large saucepan. If the sausage gives up a lot of grease, wipe some but not all of it out of the pot.
3. Add 2 cups chopped kale, and saute until wilted.
4. Add 1 cup peeled, diced potatoes, and a quart of really good chicken soup that you slaved over a hot stove to make from scratch. I'm just sayin'.
5. Cook over medium-low heat until the kale and potatoes are soft and the broth, somewhat thickened, tastes of sausage – the longer, the better. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with really great bread, and a nice bottle of wine.

A really, really nice bottle.

And that's all she wrote -- at least for now. Thank you for reading along as I cooked through my CSA summer. See you next year, in  the produce aisle of the Stop & Shop. 

CSAngst

I am sick and tired of our CSA. 

There, I’ve said it. I feel much better now.

And so, just for good measure, I will say it again. I’m sick and tired of our CSA. Sick of having to wash acres of mud off every vegetable before I can cook it; tired of having to drive to the third town over to pick up my produce. I’m sick of five weeks of chard, chard and more chard followed by six weeks of green beans, green beans, green beans, in Soviet-Union-like monotony. And most of all, I’m tired of having someone else dictate – however benignly – what I am going to have for dinner.

Of course, as the I’m-not-gonna-say-it-but-I-told-you-so look on my husband’s face reflects, none of this should be a huge surprise to me. We did a CSA before, a few years ago, so I knew how the program goes. Also, the farmers running this year’s program were very clear and communicative up front about what crops would be ready when – and the vegetables themselves have been delicious -- so I have no complaints against the good people who are working so hard to grow my food.  

Nope. This one’s all on me. Mea Culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. (For those of you whose eighth-grade math teachers didn’t stroll the aisles of the classroom chanting in ecclesiastical Latin even though you were in yeshiva, that translates roughly into “my bad.”)

So, there I was this afternoon, with about two months of the CSA stretching out before me, a renewed vow to pull up my socks and use everything…and a ginormous pile of onions and green beans.

Here’s what I did:

Wash and trim three large handfuls of green beans. While doing so, decide that Clarence Birdseye was a freaking genius.

Steam, par-boil or nuke the beans. Wonder idly if you can sell your green beans to the Birdseye company for a tidy profit.  

Meanwhile, dice 8 small or 3 large onions (you’ll need about 3 cups of chopped onions, all told). If you are a good multi-tasker, you can use the time you are steaming and chopping to consider whether there was a traumatic event in your childhood that makes it so difficult for you to learn obvious, clear lessons the first time around in your adult life.

Sautee the onions in 3 Tablespoons olive oil over medium heat, and when they start to color, adjust the heat to low and caramelize the onion, stirring occasionally, till nice and brown. This may take as long as half an hour. Use the time to mentally rehearse admitting to your spouse that s/he was right about signing up for a CSA and you were wrong.

Add 1 Cup chicken or vegetable broth and ¼ cup white wine. (I used chenin blanc.) Resist the temptation to drown your annoyance at the whole enterprise in the rest of the bottle.

Cook until most of liquid is evaporated, the beans are comfort-food mushy, and sauce is thick, glossy and onion-y. This will give you at least another half hour to get down on your knees (even if you went to yeshiva) and swear, with God as your witness, that you will never again criticize parents who feed their kids McDonalds night after night after night. You are beginning to see the appeal of that.

Enjoy the green beans (they really are quite tasty) and enjoy them a LOT – because if you’re in a CSA you may be making them five or six more times.

Dippity Do

Of my many, many vices, just about the only one I’m about to discuss on a blog my father reads is dip.

Yeah. You know: Dip. Those creamy, drippy, fatty, spread-y tasty substances served at social gatherings to help the addictive potato chips and tortilla crisps go down our gullets that much easier (which is exactly what we ALL need, isn’t it?)

From guacamole to chili con queso; from pretentious truffled-white-bean dip to proletarian Lipton Onion Dip… (And can we count chopped liver? Yes! Let’s count chopped liver!) I’ve never met a dip I couldn’t love. Which can be somewhat problematic (see “creamy” and “fatty” above). So imagine my pleasant surprise when I discovered a dip (in the first Barefoot Contessa Cookbook) that I can eat without even a dollop of guilt and can serve to just about ANYONE on the planet because it’s vegan, nut-free, gluten-free, low-fat, low-cal, high fiber, not terribly high in sodium, Halal and kosher for Passover. (Okay, that last one's not a huge concern in August, but go ahead and bookmark this, because come April you’re going to wish you remembered where you saw it.)   

But never mind how healthful it is, this dip is really, really delicious. And easy to make. And a great way to use up the peppers and eggplants that were in my CSA box this week. And it'll last for at least a week in an air-tight container in the fridge.

The original recipe calls for a tablespoon of tomato paste, but I skip it, because I hate being left with the rest of the can. So, here’s what I do:

Preheat the oven to 450.

Cut 1 large or 2 medium eggplants into 1-inch cubes.

Slice 1 red onion and 2 sweet red peppers.

Peel 2-3 garlic cloves.

Spread the veggies out on 2 cookie sheets (Don’t try to fit them all on one; everything will end up steaming instead of roasting if it's too crowded.)

Drizzle with a few Tablespoons of olive oil and sprinkle with a little coarse salt. Toss to coat the veggies with the oil.

Roast for 20 minutes. Stir the veggies around and roast for 10-20 minute more (checking often) until the edges of the pieces start to brown but don’t start to burn.

Let cool completely. (Be patient. Cooling the veggies before you puree them is safer, and letting the steam escape prevents the dip from becoming watery.)

If the vegetables seem oily, blot them with a piece of paper-towel, the way some folks do with pizza.

Puree (the veggies, not the Bounty) in a food processor or with a stick blender.

Add freshly ground black pepper and more salt to taste. Serve with crackers or fresh cut up veggies or wedges of toasted pita bread.     

Shakshuka Shake-Up

Last Friday, out of the blue, my husband and I were talking about a lunch we had 11 years ago at a Tel Aviv restaurant called Dr. Shakshuka.

On Saturday, my copy of a fabulous new(ish) cookbook called Plenty came from Amazon, and there on page 87 was a recipe for the Dr.’s very own shakshuka, an Israeli dish of tomatoes, peppers and onions with eggs fried on top. 

On Sunday, our friend Todd, who is in Israel with his family, uploaded a picture of his lunch to Facebook. What was he eating? Mm-hhm: Shakshuka.

So when I opened my CSA box on Tuesday and took out tomatoes, peppers and onions, I got the hint.

The Plenty Shakshuka recipe calls for a bunch of things I didn’t have on hand (saffron, fresh thyme, whole cumin seeds); a few things I had but didn’t really envision liking in this dish (Moroccan preserved lemons, sugar) and one thing I can’t serve my husband without having to look at his sad, “don’t-you-love-me-anymore?” pout (namely cilantro, which I love and he loathes). On the other hand, I had things I wanted to use up (a zucchini from last week’s CSA box; some of the za’atar my Israeli friend smuggled through customs for me a few months ago) that seemed like they’d enhance the dish.

So, with apologies to Doctor Shakshuka, here’s Ms. Kleinman's version: 

Heat ½ Cup olive oil (yes, that much) in a large skillet. Add ½ teaspoon dried cumin.

When the oil starts to bubble, add 3 large onions, cut into half-moon slices, and two garlic cloves, minced. Sautee over high heat until onions and garlic are golden, about 10 minutes.

Add 4 sweet red or yellow peppers, (or a combination of the two), cut into strips, and one zucchini, julienned. Add 1 Tablespoon za’atar, 1 teaspoon salt, and a pinch of cayenne pepper (or a few drops of hot sauce), and cook for another 10 minutes. If you don't have za'atar, leave it out or substitute some fresh or dried thyme and/or oregano.

Add 8 smallish tomatoes, (or 4 big ones, or whatever) chopped, and cook the whole mess down until it has the consistency of a chunky pasta sauce, not a soup.  

At this point, you can proceed or wait a while.

A few minutes before you’re ready to eat, make sure the pan and the sauce are really hot, and carefully crack 8 eggs into it. (You can make little spaces for them, or cook them right on top of the veggies.) Cook over medium heat just until the whites are set.

Eat with lots of crusty bread to sop up the sauce.

Serves  4 VERY hungry people. For two, either halve the recipe, or make all of the the veggie sautee and save half of it in the fridge or freezer for another day and proceed using just 4 eggs.

B’tayavon! (that’s how Dr. Shakshua says Bon Appetit!”)

Z is for Zucchini

The avalanche has begun! Last week’s CSA box held a single zucchini. (Is one a zucchino?) This week there were three, which means next week there’ll be five or nine (depending on which algorithm Mother Nature is using), and the week after that, nine or 27 summer squash.  

Okay, I get extra points for using “algorithm” in a cooking blog.

In any case, it’s clear that if I don’t use my zucchini as quickly as they come in, I’m soon going to feel like Lucy Ricardo in the chocolate factory. 

But that’s okay. I happen to love zucchini. They’re great roasted in the oven or grilled on the barbecue, perfect on top of make-your-own pizza, and, of course, yummy baked into muffins and breads.

But the favorite zucchini recipe of all, in our house, is this easy, delicious side dish. It’s healthful (and gluten free. And vegan)… even better the day after you make it, and highly versatile. Here’s what you do:

In a large skillet over medium heat, sautee 2 medium onions, diced, in some good olive oil. (Use enough so that the squash doesn’t stick, but don’t drown it.) Cook until the onions start to caramelize.

Add 3 zucchini, diced, and about ½ a teaspoon of salt. Cook until the zucchini is cooked through and starts to brown at the edges, but don’t let it get too dark.

Taste and add more salt if needed, and toss in a handful (or two) of chopped, fresh dill, and a handful of toasted, chopped walnuts or pine nuts.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

This is delicious as a side dish, but if you pulse it a bit in the food processor, it’s also a great spread for toast or crackers – or use it to top slices of roast or grilled polenta. You can leave out the nuts and fold it into an omelet (with some soft goat cheese, if you like that and are NOT a vegan) or put it over pasta -- goat cheese, parmesan or feta optional.

Summertime, and the Pasta is Easy

The first of our CSA tomatoes are in… and as anyone who has ever grown tomatoes (or has ever known anyone who has known anyone who’s grown tomatoes) can tell you, we’ll soon be drowning in them. So, while they’re delicious eaten whole (just like apples), or sliced on sandwiches, it’s good to have a few go-to recipes for using tomatoes up wholesale.

This pasta dish is my family’s summertime favorite, and it takes only as long to make as a pot of penne. Serves 4 very hungry people, or 6 people who have lost their appetites to the heat.

Put a large pot of well-salted water up to boil, and when it’s ready, dump in a box of penne rigatte.

While the pasta cooks, core, seed and dice 6-8 tomatoes. Mix with 1 or 2 garlic cloves, minced fine, and a handful of basil, finely chopped.  Add salt to taste.

When the pasta is ready, drain well and toss with a little bit of good olive oil.

Divide the pasta among four (or five or six) bowls. Mix some of the tomato salad into each, and top with a large dollop of part-skim ricotta cheese. (A one-pint container will give you more than enough.) Stir, so that the ricotta gets warm and a little melt-y.

Top with freshly ground black pepper. Enjoy!

... To a Crisp

Our CSA is vegetables-only right now, and I’m nuts for summer fruits. So the other day, I bought some supermarket peaches…

They were gorgeous.

So voluptuous…

So rosy…

So ENTIRELY disappointing. Sigh...

Oh, well. Into every life, some substandard fruit must fall. But as long as you have the ingredients for fruit crisp on hand, you can always turn disappointment into dessert and avoid wasting produce.

I like to make a big bag of the topping and keep it in the freezer, so that I can use it when I'm stuck with imperfect peaches, not-so-hot nectarines or just waaaay too many blueberries.

Here’s the basic recipe for a big batch of topping, enough for several family-sized fruit crisps:

Cut two sticks of very cold butter into ¼” cubes.

In a food processor on the pulse setting, add in

1 ½ Cups Flour,

1 Cup (uncooked) old fashioned rolled oats,

1 Cup brown sugar,

¼ Cup white sugar,

1 Tablespoon cinnamon

a  6- ounce bag of shelled pecan pieces (1.5 Cups.)

Pulse until crumbly but not dough-like.

If you want, you can use the topping right away, but it will also refrigerate for a few days, or freeze for up to several months. Just keep it in a Ziploc bag with the extra air squeezed out.

To bake the fruit crisp:

Preheat oven to 350.

Cut pitted fruit (peaches, plums, nectarines) into chunks about 1” square, or use whole blueberries or half cherries. Feel free to mix and match depending on what you have on hand. If you're using an 8-9" pie pan or baking dish, you'll need about 6 large peaches, 8-9 plums, or 2 pints or so of blueberries. You can also make just a couple of individual crisps in ramekin dishes, or a giant one for a party in a lasagna-sized baking dish. (That's the beauty of being able to stick your hand into a big bag of topping and use exactly the amount you need.)

Place fruit in dish, filling to just above the rim, and toss with a few tablespoons of confectioner’s sugar. Toss in some cinnamon if you want, too. (My six peaches took 2 Tablespoons of confectioner's sugar.)

Cover fruit with a layer of topping about ¾” thick. Pat the topping down so that it sticks, but don’t compact it into a crust.

Bake for 1 hour (or 45 minutes for little ramekin dishes). If the top seems to be browning too quickly, cover loosely with aluminum foil.

Serve warm or at room temperature, and if you want to top it with ice cream, go right ahead.

Note: leftover crisp should be refrigerated. Reheat it briefly before serving; otherwise it’ll be more of a “sog” than a “crisp.” 

Getting Dressed

The folks who run our CSA are enjoying a bumper crop of lettuce this summer -- which means our weekly boxes (and my refrigerator) have been full of the green, leafy stuff. And while there's no lunch I enjoy more than a fresh-made Caesar salad swathed in creamy, eggy dressing... blanketed in grated cheese and generously decorated with fried croutons... I've got my annual physical coming up, and I'd really like to score lower on the triglyceride test than I did on my SATs.

Yes, I know the supermarket shelved are full of low-fat dressings, but most of them are full of sugar and chem-lab compounds. And plain oil-and-vinegar is healthy enough... but about as exciting as watching spackle dry. So instead, I’ve been tinkering with different combinations of heart-healthier oils, vinegars and flavorings, and have come up with a few dressings tasty enough that my salads don't have to swim in them to be flavorful. Here are two that I've especially enjoyed. The recipes make about 3/4 of a cup each -- plenty for several salads -- and will keep in the refrigerator for at least a week.

Soy-Ginger-Orange Dressing

In a blender or food processor, combine

½ Cup toasted sesame oil
2 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar*
1 Tablespoon mirin (rice wine; Eden brand has no added sugar)*
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 Tablespoon orange juice
1 Tablespoon-size piece fresh ginger (about 1” piece)
1 teaspoon-sized piece fresh garlic (1 small or half a large clove)
pinch cayenne pepper

Strain (so that you don’t end up chewing on apiece of raw garlic) into an air-tight jar or container.

To turn a salad with this dressing into a full meal, add strips of cooked chicken or cubes of baked tofu.
*If you like Asian food, these are good ingredients to have on hand. They’ll keep almost indefinitely in the fridge.



Lemon-Mint Dressing

In a blender, food processor or jar with a tight-fitting lid, combine:
½ Cup olive oil
1/3 Cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice (about 3 lemons)
2 Tablespoons mild honey
2 Tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint
plenty of freshly ground black pepper
salt to taste

Great on a salad with lots of tomatoes, cukes and red onion. To make it a meal, add some chickpeas and/or a bit of crumbled feta cheese.

“Waste Not, Want This” Tip:
If you buy a typical supermarket-size bunch of mint to make this dressing, you’ll be left over with a good bit of it. Brew up a big batch of tea, let the mint steep in it and chill for refreshing mint iced tea.

Cream of the Crop

Modified food starch.

Hydrolized corn gluten.

Autolyzed yeast.

Dextrose.

No, that's not the answer key to your high-school chemistry final. It’s the ingredient list on a box of Birds Eye frozen creamed spinach.

Makes the 15 minutes it takes to whip up a batch from scratch seem like time well spent, doesn’t it?

But there was no spinach in this week’s CSA delivery, so I made creamed kale instead. Here’s how.

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, melt 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter.

Add 3 cloves garlic, finely minced. Sautee till garlic just starts to turn color, 2-3 minutes.

Add 3 cups finely-chopped kale leaves. (Discard the tough stems.) Cook, stirring frequently, until kale is well wilted, about 5 minutes.

Add 6 Tablespoons (about a 1/3 cup) cream. Cook until kale is very soft and cream is just about all incorporated/evaporated, about another 5 minutes. Add salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste.

Makes two smallish but very rich servings. Recipe size is easily adjusted up or down, depending on how much kale you have. (Each cup of raw, chopped kale takes 1 garlic clove, 1 T butter and 2 T cream.) 

And if you don’t have kale, go ahead and use baby spinach. It cooks even more quickly, and will be ready in just a few minutes more than it would take you to nuke up a box of Clarence Birdseye's Chemistry Project.

The '90s Called. They Want Their Brunch Dish Back.

In the 1990s, I lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, just a “scone’s throw” (ha!) from a dozen brunch joints with almost identical menus: Waffles, pancakes, or French toast, all drowning in maple syrup and toasted nuts.

After a few hundred sluggish Sunday afternoons, I had to face the fact that the protein in three-and-a-half pecans was not enough to offset the carbohydrate coma of a hubcap-sized pancake, so I looked for a less enervating alternative.

The most balanced option I found in most places was Eggs Florentine – a toasted English muffin topped with sautéed spinach and poached eggs, with Hollandaise sauce (served on the side for those of us who preferred NOT to have to unbutton our jeans midway through brunch). In other words: Eggs Benedict made with greens instead of meat.

Those Manhattan brunches are a distant memory now, and I haven’t had Eggs Florentine in ages. But when I found myself staring at a bunch of about-to-wilt beet greens in my fridge earlier today, I wondered if I could make an updated brunch dish with them.

Here’s what I did to serve just myself, alone in the kitchen on a Tuesday afternoon. You can double the recipe for a two-person brunch, but don't plan on serving this to a crowd. It'd be hard to make in a non-commercial kitchen without starting from scratch with each couple of servings. 

Updated Eggs Florentine

Wash and dry 3 Cups chopped greens (beet greens; chard; kale or good ol’ spinach)

Heat 2 teaspoons olive oil in a skillet. Add 1 garlic clove, minced, and a few gratings from a whole nutmeg or a tiny pinch from a jar. (If you hate nutmeg or don’t have any on hand, just skip it.) Sautee over medium-high heat just until the garlic starts to color. Careful not to let it burn.

Add greens and a pinch of salt and sautee until cooked through, 3-5 minutes depending on what greens you're using. The tougher the raw leaves, the longer they'll need. 

Toast 2 slices good whole-grain bread (I like Chabasso’s Raining Grains Ciabatta; if you buy it at Stop and Shop, the bakery-counter folks will be happy to run the loaf through the slicer for you so that you have thin, even pieces.)

Meanwhile, poach two eggs.  (To poach eggs in the microwave, put  ½ Cup water in each of two tea cups.  Gently break an egg into each of the cups. Nuke for a minute. If the egg whites don’t look opaque yet after a minute, microwave for another 10 seconds at a time until ready. Drain into a bowl with a slotted spoon, discard water and, ta-da! Poached eggs!) Or, you can fry the eggs sunny-side up, if you prefer.

Put toast on a plate. Top with the sautéed greens and then the eggs. If you want, you can grate a little parmesan cheese on top – but skip the Hollandaise. When you puncture the egg yolks, they become their own sauce, anyway.   

What "retro" brunch dish would YOU like to see made healthier? Let me know, and I will give it a whirl…  

Beet This!

Last night’s CSA box contained a small bunch of small beets. (That’s small beets squared, for you math types.)

I love roasted beets -- served hot as a side dish, or cooled and sliced on top of arugula with crumbled goat cheese and pecans. But I really didn’t feel like killing this unusually crisp and cool summer day by running my oven at 450.

So I thought maybe I’d just keep the beets around for a while… but we all know how THAT turns out. Seven months from now, I’d find them at the back of my produce drawer, growing fifth-generation penicillin.

Instead, I decided to use them raw. (Uh-huh, yes you can. You wouldn’t want to eat big ol’ chunks of uncooked beets, but if you shred them, they are delicious in cold salads.)

My favorite cold-shredded-beet recipe is a wheat berry salad I found in a free booklet from Whole Foods a few years ago. But I can only get wheat berries back at Whole Foods (so much for “free” booklet…) and I didn’t feel like battling their bumper-car parking lot this morning. And besides, wheat berries have to be soaked overnight and contain gluten, which a growing number of my Very-Most-Favorite people cannot eat. So I just went ahead and made the salad with brown rice, and it came out really well.

It’s a little chewy and a little zingy; sweet and savory.  Because the beets are so finely grated, they don’t have that beet-y taste that a lot of people hate… and they turn the whole dish a delightful shade of magenta. Beware, though: They will turn your hands and your clothes a much LESS delightful shade of magenta, so wear gloves and something other than your favorite white shirt when handling the beets.

Brown Rice, Beet and Citrus Salad

Cook 1 C (raw measure) short-grain brown rice according to package directions. (Short-grain rice is nuttier and chewier, so it more closely resembles wheat berries.)

Toss cooked rice with 1 Tablespoon canola oil, and let cool.

Meanwhile, wash, peel and then finely grate two  2-3” beets.

Add the beets to the rice, along with 1 Cup raisins or currants and three scallions, thinly sliced.

Add 1 or 2 carrots, grated, and the grated zest and juice of one lemon and one small orange.

Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve cold or at room temperature.

Serves 6-8 as a side dish. To make this into a main dish for 4, just add some cubes of cold roast or poached skinless chicken, and serve on a bed of lettuce.

Chips Ahoy!

There are people who lose their appetites when they are nervous... and then there are those who get the munchies when they're stressed. 

Me? Let’s just say that if you are in a 25-mile radius of my house today and hear a crunching sound, it’s probably coming from my kitchen. And my office… and my family room…  My daughter just left for her first summer of sleep-away camp this morning. And while I know she’s in good hands and will have an amazing summer, I’ll feel a little better when I get that first letter saying, “Camp is great!”

In the meantime, I am trying to keep my hands out of the cookie jar…  (and the chip bag, and the pretzel bag….)

Good time for kale chips, wouldn’t you say?

If you’ve never had them, kale chips are small pieces of kale leaves roasted in the oven with a little bit of olive oil till crispy and crunchy, and sprinkled with a little bit of salt and/or spices. I’ve had them a few times at parties and keep meaning to make them, and with a bunch of kale from last week’s CSA pick-up still sitting in my refrigerator, today seemed like the perfect day to try.

Here's what I did:

Preheat the oven to 375.

Cut the leaves off a bunch of kale (discarding tough stems), and cut or tear into pieces about 2x2” Drizzle with just a little olive oil. (If you use too much oil, the chips won’t crisp up.) Sprinkle with seasoning. You can use plain salt, or seasoned salt. I used some za’atar, an Israeli herb blend with sumac, hyssop and sesame seeds. (Given what it looks like, I’m amazed my Israeli friend was able to get the Ziploc baggie of it she brought me through customs, but I’m glad she did.) Roast for 15-20 minutes – or for about as long as it takes to log on to the camp website 374 times to see if there are any pictures of your kid up yet.

Let the chips cool, and munch away, pretty much guilt-free!

Blueberries for Sal[e]

One day, I will learn that “2-for-1 Sale” means “Buy as much as you need for half as much money!” and NOT “Buy twice as much as you need!”

Clearly, last Wednesday was not that day.

Which explains how I ended up with 4 pints of blueberries in my fridge, despite the fact that I don’t even LIKE blueberries all that much, except when they’re baked into things. And so, committed to using up not only our CSA veggies but also the fruit I buy in local stores, I hauled out my Kitchen Aid and whipped up a double batch of blueberry cake.

The recipe (below) is very similar to the delicious plum torte recipe from the New York Times that has been emailed around my circle of friends so many times that it has whiplash. But don’t let the word “torte” put you off if you’re an inexperienced baker. This is an easy, homey cake, the kind that makes you feel as if you’ve stepped into a favorite great-aunt's kitchen. 

In June, I make it with blueberries. But as the summer moves on and into fall, it works with just about every fruit I can think of (except maybe bananas), and it’s a perfect way to use up extra fruit – even pieces that are a tad-bit past their prime. Just be sure to grease the pan really, really well, as the fruit/sugar syrup that forms as the cake bakes has a tendency to stick.

Blueberry (or Plum, or Peach, or Apple or Strawberry-Rhubarb, or Pear…) Cake

Preheat the oven to 350.

1. Cream together 1 Cup of sugar and ½ Cup (one stick) butter or flavorless, non-hydrogenated shortening, such as Earth Balance.

2. Add 2 large eggs, lightly beaten and ½ a teaspoon of lemon extract. (If you want to ramp up the zing factor, you can also grate in some fresh lemon zest. When I use plums, I use about a half teaspoon of almond extract instead. Or, with any fruit, you can just use a teaspoon of vanilla.)

3. Add 1 Cup all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and a pinch of salt. Beat just until it’s all mixed.

4. Grease an 8” or 9” spring-form or cake pan really, really well. (Or, better yet, if using a cake pan, grease the pan, line it with a circle of parchment paper, and grease THAT.)   Pour/spread cake batter in pan.

5. Spread about a pint of blueberries on top, (or 1.5-2 Cups of other sliced or cut up fruit) pressing fruit slightly into batter. Top with about 2 Tablespoons of sugar and a few sprinklings of cinnamon.

6. Bake for 50 mins-1 hour, until a tester stuck in the middle of the cake comes out with moist crumbs but no gooey batter. Cool the cake COMPLETELY before trying to get it out of the pan. 

Makes one 8-9" cake. Recipe doubles easily.

Chard Day's Night

Like many people who like to cook, I have dozens of cookbooks and several looseleaf binders full of interesting recipes I’ve clipped from magazines. And, like most people who have cookbooks and notebooks full of recipes, but also have days full of chores, obligations, work and errands, I tend to let the “interesting” recipes sit unused,  while I make the same 10 or 20 easy and adaptable dishes again and again.

One of my favorite fast fixes is Swiss chard with raisins and pine nuts. It’s easy to make and keeps for several days in the fridge. You can play pretty fast and loose with the measurements, and it is highly versatile. Sometimes, I serve it as a side-dish with fish or chicken; others, I pile it on toasted ciabatta for crostini. Last night, with two bunches of chard from LAST week’s CSA haul still sitting in my fridge, somewhat wilted, and another two perkier bunches from yesterday’s brand new box staring up at me like a dare, I made some of the chard/raisin/pine nut mixture and tossed it with pasta and crumbled feta cheese for a fast and easy dinner. 

Did my children eat it? Nope. But luckily, they’d both be happy to eat pasta with pesto every night of the week (which they may well have to, come July’s bumper-crop of basil) so I whipped some pesto up and we all ate together, happily.

Swiss Chard with Raisins and Pine Nuts:

2 Tablespoons olive oil

nutmeg

half a medium-sized red onion, minced

2 bunches Swiss chard, washed REALLY well, dried and cut into tiny pieces (stems included)

one or two plum tomatoes, or a cup or so of cherry tomatoes, chopped

raisins or currants

pine nuts or walnuts

honey and/or balsamic vinegar

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet and saute the red onion till it’s translucent. Grate a little nutmeg into the pan, or add a pinch of dried nutmeg from a jar. Add the chard and saute until it is all good and wilted. Add in the tomatoes and the raisins (about a generous handful*, but more if you want) and continue cooking until the chard is cooked through and soft and the tomatoes have collapsed. Add the nuts (also a handful or so). Season with salt and black pepper to taste. If you want to make the dish sweeter, add a squeeze of honey. If you want a little zing, add a drop of balsamic vinegar. Like things sweet-n-sour? Add a drop of each. Serve hot or at room temperature, as a side-dish, crostini topping or on a short pasta like farfalle, tossed with crumbled feta or goat cheese.

Okay: Two bunches of chard used; two more to go… (and some kale, and some zucchini and some peas and some lettuce… and it’s only the second week!)

*I have small hands; adjust accordingly.

And So We Begin...

“Just out of curiosity,” my husband asked me last week, surveying the two bunches each of dewy-fresh  Chinese cabbage and Swiss chard in our refrigerator, “how much did it cost to join the CSA, (Community-Supported Agriculture co-op) anyway?” 

As anyone who has been married for more than 5 minutes knows, “just out of curiosity” is married-people code for “at least one of us is probably going to regret my asking this.”

“Six hundred dollars,” I answered, cool as a local, organic cucumber.

“SIX HUNDRED BUCKS???” (Okay, sometimes we BOTH regret his asking…)

“Well, it’s for 26 weeks,” I answered, trying not to sound defensive.

“So, you’re telling me that four bunches of green stuff cost us 23 dollars?!”

“Well, it’s just the first week,” I said. “In August we’ll need a U-Haul to bring all the produce home, just wait!”

He scowled and said nothing.

“And it supports a family farm,” I said. “And,” I added, with all the conviction I could muster, “I’m really, really not going to let any of it go to waste.”

To which my everlovin’ husband just grumbled, “Yeah, this I gotta see.”

This is probably a good time to mention that my husband is neither a tightwad nor a controlling jerk. In fact, he is one of the most generous and easygoing people I have ever known. But he is also a realist. A realist who has probably emptied THOUSANDS of dollars-worth of forgotten-'til-it's-rotten produce from our refrigerator in the dozen years we’ve been married, and who also knows that I have thrown out thousands of dollars-worth more on top of that when it was my turn to clean out the fridge – which, I admit, does not make us the ideal candidates for a CSA (or Community-Supported Agriculture co-op) in which you pay a flat fee up front and get a percentage of a farmer’s crops every week throughout the growing season. Some weeks it’s a lot; some weeks it’s a little. Some weeks it’s stuff you like; others it’s the veggies that make even grown-ups wrinkle their noses and say “eeeeew.” Last time we signed up for a CSA, 6 or 7 years ago, we ended up giving half the stuff to our kids' babysitter.

But -- call it the triumph of hope over vegetable-chucking experience – I have committed myself, again, nevertheless. To the farmers. To a half-year of eating local/organic/sustainably-grown produce. And (me and my big mouth…) to using ALL of it.

And to shame myself into doing just that, I am going to be writing about it here. I hope you’ll check in to see how I am doing. Thanks for stopping by.