apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I got some bent neck yellow squash from my delivery on Wednesday and made some enchiladas with them last night! I'm looking forward to my guacamole too, but most of my delivery this week was fruits and lettuce/spinach.

Grr, my local CSA doesn't even start until May. It's 71 with a chance of show tomorrow and the lady at the nursery last weekend showed me where the tomato plants were and followed up by saying "you know you can't plant those yet, right?"

My box has been giving me a huge amount of salad mix, lettuces, spinach, and arugula. I can only eat so much salad so I'm not sure what to do with it all. The asparagus (third week of it already) and snap peas (first of the season this week!) are no problem. Oh, also--I am up to my ears in oranges and kiwis.

Yesterday we got Lemon Balm. That was a surprise, I never even heard of it before. I made a marinade for grilled asparagus (also from the box) with the lemon balm that was great. It also made amazing iced tea that tastes like lemonaide without the sugar! Any other ideas? I still have some left.

omg -- my NYC csa doesn't even start until the middle of JUNE!

Grrr.... I just tried to sign up for one and got put on a wait list. They're over capacity in my area.

I feel so rejected.

All that salad mix and arugula - it's also great wilted in with a little pasta and meat or beans - which also uses up a lot of greens at once!

I made arugula, white beans and sausage the other night and it was fab. The arugula reduces down to tiny bits so you can use a lot.

It was Mystery Box Thursday last night and my tiny fridge is packed. Highlights include: meyer lemons (five!), lamb's quarters, garlic chives, a big ol' bunch of celery and something new and wonderful called agretti. And on the counter, getting riper by the second, a big bowl of red strawberries.
Does anyone have ideas/recipes for the agretti and lamb's quarters??

Ours (near Boston) won't start until May, and then we will get mostly leafy greens for a month or more. What I do with the greens is treat them all as if they were spinach and make a curry(spinach and potato or whatever) one night and a stir fry another night (the bitter ones are especially nice with tofu) and pasta with greens or a pizza another night. And I mix whatever is left with lettuce and serve it as salad. I love having all the different exotic greens I'd never heard of before.

Wow, brocciflower. Haven't seen that in years =)

I received 4 beets in my box this week - not quite sure what to do with them...

Got our first box Monday June 2. (We're in Queens.) Our half share contained red-leaf lettuce, arugula, kale, radishes, and turnips.

I would say it's already making us more creative in our cooking, which is what I was hoping.

I consulted with Epicurious, then devised a dinner of steak, turnips with parsley and breadcrumbs, kale with vinegar and shallots, and a salad of lettuce and radishes.

The turnips were the "green" kind, young and the size of half a ping pong ball. There were only six of them, which is kind of funny. I boiled them for a few minutes, then sauteed them in butter with a few whole wheat sourdough breadcrumbs, parsley, and some chopped preserved lemon. (Recipe called for lemon zest.) It was a surprisingly delicate dish.

The kale, also tiny, was good too. All in all, the vegetables were much tastier than grocery vegetables, but I don't know if it's the vegetables themselves or the recipes. Probably the vegetables.

Now we've got a lot of lettuce, arugula, and radishes to use.