Saturday, November 26, 2011

Arugula Pesto

Love arugula and want a new way to enjoy it? In addition to mixing arula into salads and wilting into pasta dishes, try arugula pesto. Arugula pesto is easy to make, keeps for several days in the fridge, and is a nice alternative to basil pesto. Try it spread on grilled meats, tossed with pasta, as a sandwich spread, or crostini.


Thursday, November 17, 2011

CSA Box- Picking up your veggies on a bike.

There are only a handful of days until Thanksgiving and we're deep into November, but it's still sunny. Is this a bad thing? Certainly not. When the sun sets at 5:30 pm and you're buried in dark leafy greens, winter squash, and persimmons, it's unmistakably fall.

How does one take advantage of a crisp fall day? I suggest frolicking about in some fallen leaves, or pick up your CSA box on your bike. Watch out that you don't put your baby gem lettuces or persimmons underneath the delicata squash in your saddle bag.


I can't get enough of these delicate, tiny, little lettuces. 


You can leave your kale and leek greens peaking out the top of your saddle bag because 1) there's no way they'd fit in the bag anyway and 2) it looks pretty cool, especially when the kale is purple.



This week's box contents:


1 lb Fuyu Persimmons
1½ lbs French Fingerling Potatoes
½ lb Green Bell Peppers
1 bunch Red Beets
2 Delicata Squash
3-4 Little Gem Lettuce
2 Leeks
1 Celery Root
1 bunch Red Bor Kale

Menu Ideas:

- Little gem salad with apple cider vinaigrette, pomegranate seeds (from last week's farm box), and goat cheese.

- Roasted celery root, delicata squash, beets, and fingerling potatoes with roast chicken.

- Sautéed kale, italian turkey sausage, and roasted delicata squash atop penne or israeli couscous.

- Clean and slice the green peppers and freeze in a ziploc bag so they'll be ready for a pasta sauce, omelette, or stir fry at a moment's notice.

- Leek and goat cheese crostini.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Sweet corn chowder

I dropped the ball on this post. I didn't take any pictures of this recipe... So you'll have to use your imagination a bit. Picture a creamy soup dotted with bits of potato, sweet corn, and bacon that is flecked with fresh parsley and lemon thyme. A great summer-fall transition recipe, you can use summer's last sweet corn to make a cozy soup. High quality frozen sweet corn also might work well, but I haven't tried it yet.

Here's a photo from a recent trip that I took. Not necessarily the same as a corn chowder picture, but the view from Heavenly is not too hard on the eyes. All I think about when I see Tahoe during the summer months is, "I can't wait for it to start snowing!"