What’s in the Box? Summer 2012 CSA Week Two

Oh my – it’s already been two weeks since we received our first CSA share! This share is a little less bountiful than the previous one, but I’m not complaining – we’re moving tomorrow/Friday (!), and I’d rather not have to transport loads of produce to our new place. This week, everything fits in my basket:

So green!

So… what’s in the box?

• Arugula
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Cucumbers
• Head lettuce
• Kohlrabi
• Parsley
• Pearl onions
• Snow peas
• Zucchini

I’m very excited about that cabbage – you can’t really see it in the picture, but it’s huge! I’m very fond of this humble vegetable, and I’m looking forward to using it in a big batch of Mexican Cabbage from the Happy Herbivore Cookbook. And last week S used our first kohlrabi in this surprisingly tasty kale and kohlrabi dish, so we might have to recreate it with this week’s kohlrabi.

What would you make with this haul?

Curious about what other folks are getting in their CSA boxes this time of year? Check out the What’s in the Box? link party for this week!

Quick Hit: Sweet Treats at the Green Owl

Yikes, y’all. I’m sorry for the silence – I started off strong this month, but then packing and planning and a month’s worth of deadlines at work got in the way. I’ve got a couple big posts up my sleeves, but in the meantime, allow me to rave about some delicious treats from the Green Owl.

I don’t talk about the Green Owl often enough – it’s Madison’s only vegetarian restaurant, and it’s extremely vegan friendly. It’s my go-to eatery when veg-curious friends and family visit, both for its tasty entrees and its consistently delicious desserts. The Green Owl always has droolworthy vegan sweets available, and although they’re a little pricy, they’re rich, decadent, and well worth the occasional indulgence.

This past Friday S and I enjoyed post-dinner snacks (kale crisps for me, a cup of chili for S) and dessert after a busy week. My mango cheesecake was perfect – creamy but not too sweet and topped with a mango puree that made my mango-lovin’ self go nuts. Even the crust was special, a ginger-coconut blend that hit all the right tropical notes.

A thin sliver, but oh-so-filling!

S enjoyed the coconut cream pie, a Green Owl staple that doesn’t skimp on the coconut and is, quite frankly, almost too rich for me. But I definitely swiped a few bites from his piece.

Coconutty!

Do you have a go-to veg-friendly eatery, or is your town rife with vegan options?

What’s in the Box? Summer 2012 CSA Week One

CSA season has officially begun! Last night, S and I picked up the first of our boxes – we’ll get one every other week from now through mid October. We get our shares from Crossroads Community Farm; my ex-roommate and I bought the same option from them two summers ago, and it was fantastic. And the price is right. It’s $350 for an “everyother” share, but S and I both got a $100 refund from our health insurance company to put towards that purchase. So that brings it down to $150. Split between the two of us, that’s only $75 each for an entire summer’s worth of fresh, local, certified organic produce. Hellz to the yeah!

We were thrilled with the contents of our first box – check it out:

So much green!

Yum yum yum. Let’s look a little closer at those gorgeous peas, shall we?

That garlic scape tendril is getting cheeky…!

We didn’t get solely vegetables, though…

FRUIT!

…we also received a whole lotta STRAWBERRIES! They’re small, sweet, and absolutely gorgeous. Two years ago when I did the CSA, it was a bad season for strawberries, so we only received one tiny bag of some sad berries throughout the whole summer. But this magnificent harvest bodes well for my fruit-loving self!

That’s a lot of produce! Here’s a list of everything the share contained:

• Bok choy (This wasn’t included in the list on the farm’s website, but we definitely got some!)
• Cilantro
• Garlic scapes
• Head lettuce
• Kohlrabi
• Radish
• Russian kale
• Salad mix
• Salad turnips
• Scallions
• Spinach
• Strawberries
• Sugar snap peas (The farm’s website listed them as “snow peas,” but I don’t think they are!)

So, what did we do with our score? S and I lightly pan-friend some marinated tofu along with the sugar snap peas, bok choy, and garlic scapes. We cooked up a bundle of thick rice noodles, tossed them with the veggies, smothered the whole mess in a modified version of the Cheater Pad Thai sauce from The Happy Herbivore Cookbook, and topped it with some scallions. Delicious! I snapped a quick pic, but it’s not really blog-worthy so y’all can use your imaginations.

I also prepared some giant chopped salads for our lunches today. They feature salad mix, head lettuce, salad turnips, radishes, and a couple other things from the fridges. And of course we brought strawberries for dessert today.

Have you participated in a CSA? What would you make with this week’s share?

Curious about what other folks are getting in their CSA boxes this time of year? Check out the What’s in the Box? link party for this week!

Moving Update and a Delicious Dessert

Hallelujah!

It appears that whining on one’s blog about moving can coerce The Universe into solving one’s moving problem. Or something like that.

S and I just discovered that the folks who lived in our new apartment before us actually moved out at the end of May, not the end of June like we assumed. So… we can move in early and avoid homelessness and a super short, super stressful moving period!

Can I get a HALLELUJAH?!

Our new apartment complex will kindly let us move in whenever we want and pro-rate our rent for those extra days. It costs less than $35 per day, and that’s a no-brainer to me – $33.50 is a pittance compared to the cost of my sanity. S and I are going to do our heavy liftin’ on Friday night and finish up on Saturday morning, giving us a whole day and a half to settle in and get things organized. Hallelujah.

I was so excited about this change in plans that I celebrated with this delicious morsel:

Peanutty!

Okay, that’s a lie. I actually devoured this guy last Sunday. It’s a rich, decadent Peanut Butter Puck from the Chicago Diner; S brought it back for me after he spent the weekend in Chi-town with his mama. He also gave me a lovely necklace that I’m looking for an excuse to wear. Ain’t he the greatest?

What good news have you gotten this week?

Pantry Decimation Challenge 2012: Espresso-White Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’ve had the dregs of a bag of vegan white chocolate chips languishing in my pantry since Christmas, when I made S a big ol’ batch of chocolate peppermint bark. The thing is, I’m not really a fan of white chocolate. First of all, it’s terribly named – white chocolate contains no cocoa, therefore it is not chocolate. Second, it doesn’t taste like anything except generic sweetness. Do not want.

However, I will admit that white chocolate chips have their place…  and that place is in cookies where they can play second fiddle to their more legitimately named cousin – actual chocolate.

They also offer a nice color contrast!

Okay, okay – I might be showing my bias by saying that they play second fiddle, because the white chocolate chips in these cookies are really a perfect complement to the other flavors going on here – namely, espresso and actual chocolate. The chips are a creamy, sweet – dare I say perfectly fitting? – addition to a complexly flavored cookie. I suppose that in this orchestra of ingredients, they can share the first fiddle seat with the cocoa powder in this recipe. Hmph.

Perhaps you, too, share my general distaste for white chocolate and find yourself with leftover white chocolate chips waiting for their chance to shine. If so, might I suggest making a batch of these cookies? They’re really tasty, despite the white chocolate. Okay, okay – because of the white chocolate. Hmph.

Espresso-White Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes nine good-sized cookies

Ingredients

1 C spelt flour (all-purpose would work fine)
1/3 C high-quality cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp sea salt

1/3 C brown sugar
2 T vegan sugar
1/4 C vegetable oil
3 T nondairy milk
1 T instant espresso powder
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp blackstrap or regular molasses (optional)
1/3 C white chocolate chips

Method

Preheat oven to 350˚ and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, sift together the dry ingredients (spelt flour through sea salt) and stir them a couple of times. In a separate, medium-sized bowl, add the sugars, molasses, and oil and mix until the sugars are moistened. Add the remaining ingredients except for the white chocolate chips and mix well. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and incorporate. The dough will be a bit sandy and might seem resistant to coming together, but work at it for a bit until you get a large ball. Fold in the white chocolate chips.

Form dough into balls of about two tablespoons and flatten them slightly when your hands. Keep them an inch or so apart on the baking sheet. Bake for 12 – 15 minutes, until they just yield to the touch. Remove from oven, let them cool for a minute or two, and then transfer to baking rack (or just slide the parchment paper onto the counter if you’re lazy like me!). Enjoy!

Helllooooo, cookies.

And with that photo, I’ll take my leave.

PANTRY DECIMATION TALLY:

• Spelt flour: The majority of a bag (just a few tablespoons left!)
• Cocoa: Finished a container (though I still have separate from the co-op…)
• White chocolate chips: Finished the bag!
• Frozen broccoli: Finished the bag (not in this recipe!)
• Long-grain brown rice: Decimated my stash (same comment!)
• Short-grain brown rice: Decimated my stash (same comment!)

Do you enjoy white chocolate? What’s your favorite cookie combination?

Pantry Decimation Challenge 2012: Commence!

In my opinion, moving is one of the most stressful situations we mature adults have to deal with (y’know, aside from things like illness and losing your job and, um, important stuff). First you need to shove everything you own into countless boxes, then you have to load all of those boxes into a truck or your car or lots of people’s cars, and then you have to remove all of those boxes that you JUST LOADED and put them in your new place. There’s lots of heavy lifting and strained arms and realizations of your sad state of strength. And when your finally get all those boxes into your new place, you’re exhausted and sweaty and sore and irritated and all you want to do is kick your feet up, mix yourself up a big-girl drink, and watch a stupid, mindless movie. BUT YOU CAN’T, because everything you own is IN THE DAMN BOXES, and you have to unpack them all first! It’s the worst. I hate it. It stresses me out.

…in case you’re abnormally slow to infer things, I’m moving.

I briefly mentioned my moving plans a few weeks ago, but now it’s a month away and I’m entering into moving!panic mode. See, I’ve moved before, but this is the first time I’m moving when I own real furniture, like a couch and a bed and crap like that. I’m only moving one town over, but it might as well be a state over – the amount of work involved is pretty much the same.

…at least I’ve got ample boxes for packing! Clearly I’ve been putting my storage space to good use. :-\

It doesn’t help that I will essentially be homeless for 24 hours during the move. I need to be out of my current place by noon on a Saturday, but I can’t move into my new place until noon Sunday. Our new place, I should say – S and I are becoming grown-ups and moving in together. Hooray! Not hooray that he’s in the exact same situation and will also be homeless for a day. Alas. At least we will be homeless together.

Yes, I have already started packing. Winter clothes and books are ready to go!

I think we’ve got our homeless plans mostly figured out (yay for friends), but I don’t have a good solution for storing our perishable foodstuffs during that homeless period, which means that I must use up all my frozen and refrigerated goods before we move. And that is why I am designating June as my official Pantry Decimation Month! I will attempt to use up as much food as possible, to reduce having to cart around boxes of 8,474 types of rice and also to avoid wasting refrigerated goods that I’d have to get rid of.

This weekend I kicked off my challenge by burning through some frozen veggies with Happy Herbivore’s Biscuit Pot Pie. I used frozen broccoli, frozen peas, and – most notably – some frozen green beans that are probably two years old. I am very wary of freezer burn (I have very finely tuned senses when it comes to that particular smell/taste), but by rinsing the beans in water to remove their thin coat of ice crystals, I somehow managed to avoid it. The pot pie was not as good as the last time I made it (when we used a bag of mixed frozen veggies), but it was still yummy. It was not, however, very pretty, so you don’t get a picture. Instead, how about a tally of my pantry decimation thus far?

PANTRY DECIMATION TALLY:

• Frozen peas: Used half a bag.
• Frozen green beans: Used half a bag.
• Frozen broccoli: Used half a bag.
• Frozen blueberries: Used a quarter of a bag (not in the pot pie, duh).
• Frozen raspberries: Finished a bag (same comment)!

What’re your pantry-busting tips? How do you feel about moving?