Salsa? Gazpacho? Smoothie?

Love all the purples!

The most impressive colors arrived this week - lavender peppers, purple scallions, red and yellow tomatoes and look at those plums! All that fruit begs to be made into pie or jam. But they're too juicy and flavorful to ruin by adding sugar or crust. I threw two or three in my backpack every morning and by the time I got home they were gone - eaten at the park, the office, a cafe table on Broadway, the theater, the subway and just about anyplace else I happened to be. By the end of the week our basket was empty and we were ready for a refill.

The beautiful yellow (summer) squash got sauteed with mushrooms and an onion (Brenda's recipe- I just modified by leaving out the cheese, which I have to admit makes it a tastier concoction) for easy to pack box lunches. The zucchini turned into bread and everything else ... well, that's the title of this post.

Okay, I had my first vegetable disaster this week. For months I've had visions of making my own salsa and presented with all the ingredients I took a turn with the new Blendtec. Add onions, pepper, tomatoes (which I brought from Arkansas), crushed red pepper (my first mistake), cucumber (my second mistake), herbs, salt and spin (my biggest mistake!). 

Everything looked supple and lovely thrown in together. I selected "whole food", then "pulse" on the blender (perhaps I should have consulted the instructions but this seemed logical to me) and pressed "start". Before I could press STOP it was smashed beyond salsa and frothed an ugly brownish-pink. "Gazpacho!", I thought, not wanting to admit immediate defeat. So I added cherry tomatoes and cucumber and pressed "soup". Wrong again! It stared gyrating in a 4-minute cycle and I quickly aborted, gave up on further blending and poured. It had some resemblance to gazpacho but not a very good one. I tried to pawn some off on Benedicta but she couldn't take the crushed red pepper. So for three days running I drank salsa smoothie for lunch. It wasn't terrible, and with every swig I reminded myself how healthy it surely was, but I've never been so happy to empty a bowl. 

I'm not cured of my desire to make homemade salsa. But next time I'm going to use an old-fashioned chopping knife!

Started off right with onions, peppers, tomatoes and herbs.

Instantly it turned frothy.

So I added to the problem with more cucumber.

Way past gazpacho texture.

Not even recognizable as a salsa.

Fruit and Rat Tail Radishes

The fruit has arrived! One week prior to when we expected. Sweet cherries, blueberries and red currants. We polished off the cherries before last night's pasta reached al dente. The currants made their debut atop the shredded wheat this morning. And the blueberries graced our pomegranate paradise smoothie. That was easy, now what to do with all those vegetables?

Once again, we strategically calculated our cache. Since I'm leaving town tomorrow, the escarole and chinese cabbage were out. These require my expert cooking skill. Benedicta has become quite the expert at scoring treasures from the swap box and made it home with two extra bunches of beets and one extra of Rat Tail radishes in place of the escarole and cabbage.

Have you ever seen a Rat Tail radish? It looks like a stalk of green beans but tastes like a radish. Delectable! I'm told it's good slivered and tossed in a vinaigrette. Ours may not make it that far. I'm taking them to a family gathering in Arkansas along with squash and beets. I have a feeling the radishes will be a surprise to unsuspecting tasters who think they're chomping down on a fresh green bean - though they look like a pathetic, undernourished green bean. Perhaps I'll post a warning sign.  

And here's what I cooked last night. Spaghetti Sauce. So easy in the blendtec I can't imagine buying it in a jar. Just add a can of chopped tomatoes, a can of tomato paste, garlic scapes, dried italian herbs and for the special ingredients of the day: fresh scallions and oregano from our weekly haul. Blend, heat and eat!

Red Sorrel Salad with Escarole and White Beans and Zucchini and Sugar Snap Peas

Did you read that title? Yes, that was all at one meal!! The Friday before the 4th of July weekend the office closed at 2:00. That gave me four hours before I had to leave for the theater. What to do? Cook all those vegetables.

Start it off with Salad: Red Sorrel, Green Solix (lettuce), avacado, oranges and almond slivers topped with oil, rice vinegar and little sqeeze of fresh orange. Freshest, zestiest salad I've ever made. I hope there's more Red Sorrel growing up at Stoneledge Farm.

For the main course: Sauteed garlic scapes, escarole, white beans, salt and thyme. Tada! 

And now the side dish: Zucchini, a tad summer squash, sugar snap peas, red sorrel, tarragon, almond slivers and toasted sesame seeds. Crunchy goodness.

Looking so fresh just as it's about to be devoured.

The good news: We have more garlic scapes!!! These are definitely my new favorite cooking item. This was the last week for garlic scapes but fortunately they last a long time and Benedicta was manning the distribution table. Results: We scored 3 bundles, or 24 garlic scapes. 3 down, 21 to go.

Oh and I steamed spinach for freezing. Nothing left but the garlic scapes. And leftovers!!

Chinese Cabbage Stir Fry

Boc Choi, Chinese Cabbage, Garlic Scape. It's all good! Such surprises are being added to my repertoire, thanks to the mystery vegetables arriving at the CSA every week. My biggest discovery is peanut oil. Sauteeing a few vegetables in it requires no added spices for a scrumptious stir fry. Other discoveries include:

• Garlic scapes are the elusive wonder vegetable! I have never seen one at any store or farmer's market. I do not know where they can be found if one doesn't grow one's own garlic. But someone must be selling them somewhere. Perhaps the high-end restaurants all get them first. What I do know is they are simply delightful with a subtle garlic-fresh taste. I added them to stir-fry, spaghetti sauce, basically anything that likes a little garlic.
• Cook the leaves! I had no idea you could just throw the leaves of the boc choi or chinese cabbage right in the stir-fry. It melts down to nothing and adds a chewy, nutrient-rich element.
• Add funky mushrooms! Last week I threw some interesting chinese mushrooms in. The cashier at whole foods couldn't find them on his chart so he charged me for trumpet mushrooms - $5/lb less than my more exotic mushrooms. And this week I repeated the pictured stir-fry but used wood ear mushrooms. They are dark brown with a rubbery texture and a rich flavor. I would definitely try these again.

Follow the photos below to watch the leaves disappear. Just enough left for juicy, flavorful bites.

And here it is with Wood Ear Mushrooms.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

I'm not a berry pie eater. Basically, I'm a pumpkin pie eater. If there were no other kind of pie than pumpkin, and no other time of year than fall, I'd be perfectly pleased. But there is one berry pie I will eat with a relish. Strawberry-Rhubarb. Maybe I like it because it's half vegetable. And tart.

When I saw rhubarb on our share this week I knew the only way to have it was in a pie. Benedicta went to retrieve our share with the objective of trading in one head of lettuce for one bunch of rhubarb and thankfully succeeded. Otherwise, this pie would have been light on rhubarb and I would have left the whole thing for her.

This ended up being the easiest pie I have every made in my life. Usually I make my own crust. But I knew it was going to be a stretch just to have time to cut up the rhubarb stalks so I picked up the whole foods vegan crust. What a find! I may never make crust again. Why bother, when this is better?

And why make any other dessert when this is absolutely the simplest thing imaginable. Wash the stems and berries. Chop. Add quick cook tapioca and sucanet. Stir. Fill pie shell. Then the one tricky part - place empty extra shell upside down on top and pinch the crusts together. Oh, I did slice it a few times first to let the juice bubble out the top. Voila. Dessert! Or rather, breakfast if your name is Benedicta.

Will there be Rhubarb Pie?

Rhubarb this week! And more radishes!!!  Benedicta was volunteering at the distribution today so we calculated our desires before she went over. The bounty this week included four heads of lettuce - all different varieties, three with red leaves - chinese cabbage,  garlic scapes, sage and the radishes and rhubarb. Since I'm making a pie, we decided to trade a lettuce for rhubarb and we contemplated exchanging the sage for anything else.

Since Benedicta was there monitoring the boxes, she kept a special eye out on the exchange box. Evidently radishes have not caught on in popularity since last week. Countless bunches were discarded awaiting more discerning palates. So now we have two radish bunches and one less lettuce head.

Next the rhubarb. Our quota only included a few stalks. What to do? Trade in one more head of lettuce! Rhubarb was a hotter commodity than the radishes. So with a watchful eye, Benedicta strategically snatched up the one that had been put in at the very beginning as a teaser. Voila! She could then carry on her volunteering without stalking the exchange box.

And what about that sage? Well, we're stuck with it. The distribution master made a decree: there will be no trading in your sage. You must all eat sage. Fortunately, the more experienced members have recipes for sage. We'll be sauteeing it with vegan butter and tossing it over some angel hair pasta. That sounds easy. Maybe Benedicta will even make it herself.

Boc Choi for Beginners

Okay, I know it's sometimes spelled Bok Choy. But on our list of vegetables from the farmer it's spelled Boc Choi. So I'm going with her spelling. 

I was suspect about coming up with something enjoyably edible with this one. I've had bok choy in chinese restaurant dishes. They're the whitish green stem-like pieces I push to the side of the plate. When I've bitten into a piece that's hidden under a mushroom or camouflaged in a vegetable dish, I greet it with bitter deference. I'll chew you this time but don't make a habit of stowing away on my fork.

Enter boc choi in my crisper. Armed with a recipe from Veganomicon I chopped away. I didn't have all the ingredients so improvised: peanut oil, fresh ginger, braggs, chopped boc choi stems and lots of green leafs - arugula, mizuna and all the boc choi leafs - and a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds. 

Time for a taste. Surprise! It's actually very good. The greens melted down to nothing and were a delightful accent to the gingery boc choi. I would eat this again tomorrow if there was any left!

Awaiting next week's veggie list. Maybe there'll be a little more boc choi!