2023 Produce CSA Week 5

This week’s box included: beets, celery, spring onions, collards, cauliflower (or broccoli), radishes, spring lettuce mix, purple top turnips, salad cucumber, kirby cucumbers, cabbage, tomatoes

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Conne is out of town this week, and will be sad she missed the first celery of the season! Here are some ideas for approaching Week #5’s beautiful box, as well as some thoughts for using up any extra greens you might have sitting around from previous weeks.

First priority is to wash the lettuce mix or at the very least cut a hole in the bottom of the bag and drain out any moisture. The farm does not wash these greens, but they’re harvested early in the morning and are wet from dew & rain. The spring mix expires more rapidly than head lettuce; if you have a choice, use the spring mix first. To wash, fill the sink or a large bowl with cold water. Let them soak to plump, then drain and spin dry. If you’d like them even drier, spread them out on paper towels to air dry further. I roll mine in the paper towels, then tuck into an unsealed plastic bag or wrap in a cotton towel before storing in the refrigerator.

Turnips will wait around a long time before getting cooked. They’re a good candidate for storing in the back of the produce drawer to wait until enough accumulate for a turnip-focused dish. There are plenty of turnip recipes on our website. Roasted Turnips with Maple & Cardamom sounds lovely, and better yet calls for 3 1/2 lbs of turnips. Conne’s already mentioned Stella Dillard’s Dandelion Foods — I’m a fan as well. The roasted turnips were a star in one of her recent Serious Salads. Think of them as part of the superfood bump that turns a salad into a meal. Add roasted veggies, a grain (quinoa is full of protein and easy to cook), nuts, cheeses or a hardboiled egg to a mix of greens and other veggies and you’ve created a beautiful salad that will nourish your body and your soul.

Or try this Pickled Turnip and Beet recipe contributed by a subscriber from Yotam Ottolenghi’s cookbook Jerusalem. Sounds easy & delicious.

The kirby cucumbers returned this week! They’re the little bumpy cucumbers. Kirbys are the best variety for pickling, such as in this recipe for quick refrigerator pickles. Tip:  keep adding radishes, turnips, squash, onions, Swiss chard stems, and other veggies as you have room in the jar until the brine gets tired.

Finally, let’s talk greens. More came again this week, this time in the form of collards. Of all the greens, collards freeze the best (roughly chop, blanch, spread out on parchment covered cookie sheet, freeze, transfer to bag).  If you’re in a pinch, freeze away and you’ll have collard “chips” to throw into dishes down the road. Fresh collard rolls would also be fun and summery this week. Conne’s contributed this Thai Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce recipe but collards could wrap around any filling once they’re prepped: chicken salad, hummus w falafel, etc. More collard recipes are on this page.

We were out of town over the long weekend, so many of the greens from last week are still waiting to be dealt with. Are you buried in greens too? Here are our best strategies for increasing your greens burn rate. Bonus for those with kids who don’t like the texture of cooked greens — the same vegetable pureed isn’t as offensive.

Juice Them: A handful of greens + celery + pineapple juice + lime = one glass of terrific kale juice. Great over ice. Recipe here, though you’re only limited by your creativity with juicing.

Make Pesto: Pesto freezes well in ice cube or muffin trays. Pesto recipes are forgiving — you don’t need an exact recipe to blow through a lot of greens. Blend whatever greens you have (turnip, kale, radish, carrot tops, etc) w some sweet basil, olive oil, parmesan, garlic, nuts (optional). Salt + pepper, to taste. If the greens are bitter, and add a squeeze of honey. You don’t need much basil to impart that flavor. Frozen pesto can be used in pizza, sandwiches, soups, ev-ery-thing. Need pesto ideas?  Check out this beautiful book Pesto: The Modern Mother Sauce by friend Leslie Lennox of Hope’s Garden Pesto. She provides over 90 recipes that use pesto as a building block — grilled on a NY strip steak, for example.

Herb Sauce It Up: Herb sauces are the same general idea as a pesto. Blend greens, olive oil, a little bit of garlic, lemon, herbs, and you’ve got an herby and hearty green paste that you can use or freeze in muffin tins before transferring to a freezer bag. Spread over fish, chicken, mix with yogurt for dip, make green mac-n-cheese, etc. Conne provided a great recipe last week for Swiss Chard Dip with Garlic, Yogurt and Dill. This week’s beet greens are a cousin of Swiss chard, so substitute away.

Cook Them Down: You know what happens to 2 lbs of spinach when you cook it, right? Same thing happens with cabbage and with lettuce. We have a few recipes for cooked lettuce here. The Spiced Lettuce Cake Bars uses four cups of shredded lettuce. No one will notice that they are eating that leftover lettuce that’s not fresh enough for salads.

Bonus Squash Tip: Grate summer squash on a box grater and mix with any ground meat that you’re sauteeing. The squash magically boosts meaty flavor. One large zucchini melts into nothingness in a pound of ground beef taco meat. Double magic.

Here’s a recipe for Green Sesame Soba Noodles from the Washington Post Eat Voraciously newsletter and CSA subscriber Linda Jones. The receipe uses tahini to boost the protein content of the sauce. So delicious.

Green Sesame Soba Noodles