Stone Soup

BD dubbed my latest stone soup because I started to look up recipes and then realized I was just going to put everything I had in it anyway, so why bother trying to find a recipe. Of course, before he remembered stone soup, he referred to it as rock stew, but we'll keep that our little secret. Between the stone soup and the pesto pasta, the only thing I have left from last week's farm share is one cucumber.

I'm Sensing Yet Another Soup....

Yesterday's farm share left us one head of broccoli, two uncured onions, some carrots, some green beans, a cucumber, and some greens richer. I'm picturing combining my pasta e fagioli recipe with some kind of vegetable soup thing: carrot, onion, greens, green beans, white or red beans, and pasta--maybe blended a bit for thickness.As for the broccoli, I'm planning on using it in pasta with pesto made from my bazillion basil plants.

Score!

Last week I finally scored some chard in my farm share. All the other times that they've had it, it's either already gone by the time we get there or it's only a choice for the family share. This time, I finally got a bunch, though, and was able to make one of my favorite soups, pasta e fagiole (pasta and bean)! I threw in some leftover celery from my carrot top soup and put in slightly more pasta, slightly less bean than I usually do, but it was still really good. Even in ninety degree weather.

Pizza by Bill

Every couple of weeks BD and I make pizza for dinner. When he was in high school, BD worked at Papa Gino's and he still hasn't lost his pizza dough skills, so our pizzas are pretty amazing (in my opinion, anyway). Lately I've been loving mini mozzarella balls, caramelized onions, and basil from our "garden." This week, I decided to substitute arugula from our farm share for the basil. The flavor was kind of "eh," but it looked really nice.

Carrot Cake

No. You don't get pictures (at least not of the finished product). Yes. It tasted fine. If there's one thing that I don't do, ever, it's bake, but with all the bunches of carrots we've been getting from the farm share, it seems as though a carrot cake might be in order. I tried to get the Boos Man to give me the recipe he and his wife use, but after a couple of failed attempts, I just looked up a pretty simple one on the internet. I mixed up the ingredients (with some help from BD who's the resident grater) and set it to bake for 40 minutes. Except when I took it out, it was still pretty jiggly as if under the thin cake veneer on top, it was completely still batter inside. A quick jab with my fork confirmed this to be case, so I let it bake for another 10 minutes. And another 10. And another 10. You get the picture. By the time this thing was solid enough to eat, I was convinced there was something utterly work with it and wouldn't touch it. After BD scarfed down 3 pieces, though, I ventured a taste. And I did not die instantly. It was a tad on the too sweet side (I think from the frosting) and would have been better with nuts (BD's allergic), but all in all, not too failed an attempt.

Carrot Top Soup

Our farm share group sends out an e-mail newsletter each week along with a reminder to pick up your food, dammit! In this week's newsletter there was a recipe for carrot top soup. Since I had been saddened by lack of ability to do anything with the glorious greens from last week's carrots except donate them to the cause of the Boss Man's rabbit, this recipe thrilled me to no end. Since I'm practically a soup addict, there was double cause for excitement. Truth be told, I didn't even wait for my carrots from this week's share, but used some I still had left over from last week. The recipe is really simple: carrots, carrot greens, celery, onion, rice, and vegetable stock. I also added in some basil and some dill since we're currently incapable of cooking something here at 29 Timson without one or both of those. My first spoonful of the soup was unlike anything I've ever had before, but it really grew on me and was quite delicious. In fact, I think I may even make it for Thanksgiving. If our dining room is anywhere close to ready this fall, I really want to host my first Thanksgiving at 29 Timson, so I'm constantly planning out my fantasy menu, and this soup is on it!

I think I'll Call It Farm Share Soup!

At last. It's getting later in the season and we finally got something besides greens in our farm share this week. Sure there were some greens, too, but we also got a bunch of carrots, a bunch of peas, a zucchini, and a summer squash. Last week while I was flipping through some cookbooks for inspiration on how to use all the greens, turnips, and radishes we'd been getting every week, I found a cookbook that featured three different versions of minestrone soup, depending on the season. Inspired by these recipes I decided to make a vegetable/minestrone soup using all my farm share veggies. The final product has the farm share carrots, peas, and squash, and turnip greens in addition to some onion, garlic, beans, and crushed tomatoes. Oh. And some basil from our container garden. Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Good.

Pico de Gallo

Last week, when we went to pick up our CSA share, there was a choice between cilantro and red Russian kale. Now normally, I'd take the kale because BD hates cilantro (truth be told, I'd already taken the kale and put it in my tote before I changed my mind), but then I remembered some salsa recipes I'd just read, so I went with the cilantro, And, boy was it the right choice. I chopped ot up with some tomatoes, a poblano pepper, and onion, added a little salt and olive oil and had myself some amazing pico de gallo. Even BD was a fan,

Ikea Basil

Sounds crazy, I know, but BD and I bought basil the last time we were at Ikea, or rather, more specifically, we bought a basil growing kit or something. For about $3, we bought a 4 oz cup containing a packet of basil seeds and a peat pellet. The directions were all in picture form and basically showed you to add water to the peat pellet, pour in the seeds, wait 10-12 weeks, and then eat what you had grown. I wish I'd saved the packaging so I could post it anywhere. Anywho, I'm not sure what they were thinking when they wrote up directions instructing us to plant a whole packet of sides in a 4 oz cup, or why we followed them, but the end result is more basil than I know what to do with or how to raise properly. I've already divided it twice and now have two window boxes full of it. And this is addition to the basil that BD and I are already growing in our backyard container garden. So, today I finally decided to try some of this Ikea basil and put it in a pasta salad I was making. I also got to make a dent in this week's CSA share by using up some of my scallions.

Stir Fry

Today I made a stir fry for lunch in an attempt to use up some of the napa cabbage and scallions we got in our farm share this week. I tried to do the same thing last weekend in a much less successful attempt to use that week's bok choy. For whatever reason, I decided the bok choy was too good for my standard stir fry recipe with its stir fry sauce from a jar. Nope. The bok choy needed something special: a whole new recipe, sauce made from scratch, even a trip on its behalf to the local Chinese market. Needless to say, the final result turned out to be less than appetizing. It was so salty I could have drank a gallon of water and still not have been quenched, the corn starch in the sauce solidified instantly turning into hard white lumps, and the special mushrooms I bought at the store turned out to be less the delicate mushrooms I imagined and more like giant ears. I gallantly ate my helping, but BD didn't touch his and the majority went straight into the can.

This week I vowed to do things differently: make my standard stir fry (canned and jarred ingredients and all) and just substitute the scallions for onions and the napa cabbage for broccolli. All in all, it was a much tastier result.