Community Supported Agriculture - CSA Box Week 1

To keep is in yummy fruits and veggies this summer, I'm doing a CSA workshare weekly. In exchange for manning their Friday evening pickup, I get a full CSA share full of beautiful organic yumminess. This CSA in particular is awesome because they have a "Market Style" option which means I can pick and choose what I want to go into my box. If I'm gone for a week or don't need as much that week I won't lose my food. It also goes until December! So exciting. The farm is located in a national park and is a nonprofit and operated by awesome people that I'm happy to spend time with. They offer internships to educate new farmers and an market and farm tours on Saturdays. It's a great place that I'm happy to be affiliated with. An added bonus for me (as a SAHM) is this is 4 hours a week where I don't have a baby attached to me - although I miss my girls like crazy and can't wait to get home!

What is a CSA? Community Supported Agriculture means that you are buying into the farm. You pay a set amount for the season or year to help the farm with their costs and in exchange you get a box of their bounty every week. Depending on the season, weather and conditions you may get more or less. You may get a whole lot of one thing and not a lot of something else. What you definitely get is the feeling of giving back to your community and supporting small farms. 

So what did I get my first week??

 

Zucchini, squash (crookneck and pattypan) turnips, kale, rainbow chard, beets, eggplant, heirloom tomatoes.

Not pictured are the little grape tomatoes that I ate before I even left the farm. They were SO good. Sweet and still warm from the field.  

What did I do with my bounty? The squash and zucchini were eaten with garlic scapes, shrimp and a butter sauce in orzo pasta. Amazing and possibly my new favorite dish.

Beets and Turnips were roasted and eaten as a side dish. My first time eating them and were so good. I will definitely make again!

Rainbow chard will be added to a chickpea stew this evening and will also be tossed in some scrambled eggs in a few minutes.

Kale was made into chips. Unfortunately I still haven't quite gotten that down yet :(

Eggplant was coated and fried and eaten as an improvised eggplant parmesean. I didn't have any parm so Big and I had eggplant mozzarella. It was delicious.

The bigger zucchini and crookneck squash are going to be shredded and made into pancakes that are going to be eaten with some shredded chicken on Saturday.

Next pickup is tonight, I'm so excited to see what we get!

Do you have a CSA? Any good ideas for recipes? I'm new to having this much yummy veggies to use in a week!

For more information, check out The Ecosystem Farm.

Potato and Chicken Frittata with Carmelized Onions.

Let me start this out by saying I am not The Pioneer Woman. I try to channel my girl, Ree, while I'm cooking but I can't take pictures like her. Her food looks amazing. My food looks amazing in real life but not so much in pictures. One day when I have lots of money I'll buy a fancy butt camera and take nice pictures but for now, well, just know it looks good in person.

So, now that that's out of the way, what do you do when your egg basket looks like this?

 

You make a delicious frittata for dinner!

It starts right here, with a beautiful, well seasoned cast iron pan. 

To this beautiful piece of culinary equipment we'll add 2-3 T of butter (NOT margarine, butter.)

Once the butter has melted, add one onion, chopped. You're going to cook the onion until it changes from the Before to the After pic. This should take about 10-15 minutes over medium heat.

Before

After

 

 

 

Meanwhile, peel and dice three potatoes. Three smallish potatoes are good. If you have larger ones, just one may be enough. These are the ones I used. 

They chopped up into this

 The onions should still be working at this point. 

Since those take a little bit, I like to get everything else ready. Once they're done the train gets moving and it's best if everything else is ready to go in the pan so you don't burn the garlic. Burnt garlic is gross.

Make sure whatever chicken you're using is shredded and ready for adding. I recommend about 2 cups.

Crack and beat your eggs. If you don't have a weirdo cheese hating husband put in 1 cup of mild cheddar.

Mince 2-3 cloves of garlic.

Figure out your spices.

I like some tarragon in it, along with salt, pepper and a little Old Bay.

Onions nice and caramelized? Add your garlic and your seasonings. 2 teaspoons Tarragon, generous salt, few cranks fresh pepper, 1 teaspoon Old Bay. Stir until you can start to smell the garlic. Then you're going to add your potatoes and chicken. Stir that around to combine. Make sure that everything is pretty evenly distributed. Imagine the horror of a chickenless bite!

Once you're set and happy with your chicken and potato distribution, pour your beaten eggs over the top.

Let this set up for a minute. This isn't going to cook on the stove top but you want the bottom to set up a little before you put it into the oven. You can tell when it's ready to go in the oven by the little steamy geyser holes that start to appear on the surface.

Once the holes appear, pop it in the oven and let it bake at 350 for 20 minutes, or until it doesn't jiggle when you move the handle. 

Then slice it up!

This is a hit with my usually picky husband and daughter too!

 I always top mine with shredded cheddar. If you don't have a weirdo cheese hating husband your cheese will be inside already where it belongs. 

Frittata is pretty forgiving. I had a delicious one at my Blessingway for Little that had summer squash, tomato and spinach in it. 

Have you had or made frittata before? What's your favorite combination?

Menu Plan 6/10-6/16

For information on how I menu plan, check out How I Menu Plan.

This is the last week of school! For now, I only plan for dinner, we'll see how that goes with summer upon us. Father's Day is Sunday so that's kind of up in the air. If we're home, we'll have what's planned. If not, it'll get bumped to next week.

Monday - Crockpot Beef BBQ Sandwiches, broccoli cakes, homemade french fries

Tuesday - Beef Enchiladas

Wednesday - Red Beans and Rice

Thursday- Chicken and Potato Frittata with Carmelized Onions

Friday - Chicken Pesto Pizza (this dough from Weed 'em and Reap is delish!)

Saturday - Homemade Fish Sticks, French Fries, Corn

Sunday - Burgers, Coleslaw, Baked Beans

I'll post some recipes soon! A few of these are my own, others need verification and tasting. I love tasting.

I Got the 'Bootch

Kombucha.

Do you brew?

I DO!

What is kombucha? Kombucha is a lactofermented beverage made from tea that is rich in probiotics and antioxidants and is known for curing everything from digestive problems to gray hair to cancer. Most people note just *feeling better* after drinking it. Kombucha is made by introducing a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) to sweetened, cooled tea and letting them hang out for 7-10 days. Brewing kombucha is honestly, ridiculously easy. The hardest part is obtaining a SCOBY. They can be purchased online, made from a bottle of commercial kombucha or given to you be another brewing buddy. I made mine from a bottle of GTs kombucha. Pour it into a bowl, put a towel over it, leave it alone for a week or so. Eventually a SCOBY will grow.

When you brew LOTS of kombucha for a LONG time you gets LOTS of SCOBYs. Everytime you brew you get another one. Eventually you wind up with a “SCOBY hotel” that you have no idea what to do with but have to feed sweet tea like it was another pet.


My SCOBY hotel. There’s no pool.

Most of the time when I brew kombucha It’s a two part process. While brewing the next batch, I’m also bottling the previous. Here are my two brewing vessels, a one gallon and a two gallon glass jug.


Kombucha ready for bottling.

I find it easiest to first brew so that the tea has some time to cool before the vessels are ready.

First, you have to make tea. I begin by boiling 2 gallons (give or take) of water.


water in a pot. bam.

Once the water is boiling, I add 8 tea bags and 2 cups of sugar. We want to make kinda strong, sweet tea. I use 4 bags of green and 4 bags of black tea. Feel free to experiment with different kinds of tea but don’t use anything that is herbal or that may contain essential oils. It could damage the SCOBY and the SCOBY is your friend. Love her and feed her and she’ll take care of you. Also, speaking of taking care of your SCOBY, stick to plain old sugar. You may substitute with other kinds of sugar (for example sucanat) but don’t use honey. Honey is antibacterial and it will kill your SCOBY.

So anyway, once the water is boiling, dump in 2 cups of sugar and 8 tea bags.



Stir it all together and let it steep and cool. I put the top on to keep germies out but that’s totally counter productive to getting it cool. Let it cool for a few hours. Normally I forget about it at this point until I come into the kitchen the next morning. It’s good and cool by then.

At this point, I turn my attention to bottling. So here we are with 2 finished big jugs of Kombucha.



You can see the SCOBY at the top of the smaller jug. We’re just going to decant this into many smaller jugs for the second fermentation.

These should be enough for 3 gallons of kombucha. First we have to take off the SCOBY. I then pour the kombucha into the jug shown at the top of this photo to pour into the bottles. If you flavor your kombucha, leave a little room at the top. I flavor mine mostly with frozen fruit. I also use dried elderberries for elderberry kombucha. That, along with pineapple, are my favorites!



Once you’ve added your fruit, cap it and leave it out for a second fermentation. The second ferment allows for flavoring and also allows carbonation to build up. The longer it sits out, the more carbonation. I leave mine out for 2 days. Be careful with fresh or frozen fruit, I wouldn’t leave it out longer than 3 days.


from l to r – elderberry, blueberry, raspberry, pineapple

I’m always amazed by the colors when I bottle kombucha. Above picture was after about 20 minutes. I don’t use a lot of fruit – a few chunks of frozen, organic fruit, and it gives these vivid, beautiful colors.

When decanting into bottles, make sure you leave a cup or so of brewed kombucha to feed the next batch. I usually leave a little more than that, depending on how many bottles I have clean.



Now that that’s done and your kombucha is cooled, we just add it to this, plop the SCOBY on top and let it hang out for a week or so. Make sure to cover it with something breathable – a few layers of paper towels or a clean, white towel. The shorter the ferment, the sweeter. The longer the ferment, the more purported health benefits.

So that’s it. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Do you enjoy kombucha? What are your favorite flavors?