Posts Tagged ‘Swiss Chard’

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CSA2 Week #1

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 by virginia

I’m happy to announce that it’s CSA time again!! Josh and I have been eagerly looking forward to the start of the CSA season, and we can’t wait to dive into all of our fresh veggies. For those of you who would like to learn more about CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture), please read here. Basically we have purchased a share in a farm for the summer,  which means that we will start getting weekly vegetable deliveries for the next 22 or so weeks.

After much debate, we decided not to get the fruit share this year. While we loved all the fresh fruit and juices last year, we simply couldn’t keep up with the amount that we received. Sadly, lot of fruit ended up going to waste, and we really didn’t want to see that happen again this year. We thought about getting a bi-weekly fruit share instead, but even then I doubt we would have been able to consume it all.

There was a bit of a snafu with our usual CSA pickup location, but fortunately the organizers were able to find an alternate location that was extremely convenient. I picked up our share before heading to the gym, as Josh is away on a business trip. The earlier weeks of the share are usually smaller harvests, but I was happy with both the amount of the quality of the items we got. For our first share of this season, we received:

Lettuce – 1 head
Greens – 1 lb
Radishes (mixed colors) – 5 each
Garlic – 2 each
Garlic scapes – 8 each
Spring onions – 4 each
Beets – 3 each

Swiss chard, beets, lettuce, radishes, garlic, onions, garlic scapes in the middle

For the greens, we had a choice of kale or swiss chard. I know Josh was looking forward to making kale chips, one of our favorite CSA recipes, but the ruby stalks on the chard just looked too inviting for me to pass up. Plus I figured that we got a lot of kale last year, and only a few weeks of chard, so I wanted to take advantage of the shorter swiss chard season. For the lettuce, we had a choice between green leaf and red leaf, and I opted for the larger green variety.

The beets are a bit small but came with the leafy tops intact, so we’ll be sure to use both parts. The radishes came in an assortment of colors so I tried to get a different variety. They also had nice leafy tops that we either saute briefly or chop up and mix in with our salads.

Both the onions and the garlic came with green stalks, which I’m sure we’ll find use for. I was happy to see that we got so many garlic scapes, as I’m still experimenting with scape pesto. We also made a delicious garlic scape dip last year with white beans that I never posted about, so I’ll have to be sure to rectify that this year.

All in all it looks our CSA is off to a great start this season. We are excited to see what the harvest will bring over the next few months!

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CSA Week #12

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 by virginia

After a hectic day at work, I was excited to come home to our CSA share. We got a long message from the farm today that made me feel bad about what the farmers are dealing with this summer, in addition to the extreme heat. Also, we learned that heirloom tomatoes should be picked ripe, which means they’ll often be soft and split. That’s a hard thing for me to reconcile because it makes me feel like I’ll have to eat them right away, but now I understand why so many of the tomatoes are in that particular state.

This week our share contents included:

Mini Bell Peppers – 5 each
Watermelon – 2 small or 1 large
Tomatoes – 4 lbs
Cabbage – 1/2 head
Squash – 2 1/3 lbs
Mixed Greens – 3/4 lb

Ruby chard, heirloom tomatoes, watermelon, cabbage, squash, mini bell peppers in front

The mini bell peppers are super cute, and I think we might just eat these whole since they’re basically bite sized. The watermelons were pretty small so Josh picked out one of the larger ones, which is just enough for 2 people to share. We have lots of heirloom tomatoes now, some of which are really soft and some which are slightly firmer. I foresee lots of caprese salads in our future, which is just fine by me. For the mixed greens, Josh got swiss chard with huge leaves and thick ruby red stems. Gorgeous!

Our fruit share is starting to overwhelm us but James just sent us a delicious-looking peach pie recipe that will help me get through our rapidly ripening peach bounty. This week our fruit share contents included:

Italian Plums – 2 lbs
Peaches – 3 lbs
Nectarines – 2 2/5 lbs

Peaches, Italian plums, nectarines

I have absolutely no complaints about the fruit this week. The peaches are large, ripe, and picture perfect. It took lots of willpower not to dig in before I snapped my photos!

In addition, today is Market Day for our CSA. That means in addition to our regular shares, we had the opportunity to order some extra goodies, such as cheese, yogurt, eggs, organic meats, spices, and more. When Josh and I first decided to purchase a CSA share, we debated whether to get an additional egg or dairy share but decided that we wouldn’t use up those items fast enough. Market Day gives us the opportunity to try out some of these item on a one-off basis (you pay per item you choose). We put in our order a few weeks ago and today we received our goods.

This is what we decided to order from Market Day:

Organic Eggs – 1 dozen
Yogurt – 5 containers (6 oz each)
Cheese – 2 packages (8 oz each)
Honey – 16 oz organic wildflower

Organic eggs, assorted yogurt, horseradish cheddar, wildflower honey, garlic and dill cheddar

For the yogurt, there were four different flavors available, so Josh picked out one of each – blackberry, orange, strawberry, and he doubled up on raspberry. For the cheese, he picked horseradish and garlic/dill flavored cheddars (other options included mild cheddar and smoked cheddar). We’re excited to see if organic eggs taste different from regular supermarket eggs, since we debated for a while whether to get a half dozen weekly egg share. If we like these eggs enough, maybe next year we’ll go for the weekly option. Yes, we love our CSA enough that we’re already thinking about next year!

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CSA Week #11

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 by virginia

We got a note from the farm this week apologizing for some of the spoiled produce we’ve been seeing, and explaining that the cause is the weather. I understand the difficulties that they’re dealing with, it just pains me to have to throw food away but I’m sure it pains the farmers even more.

We had another week of heavy produce, and this time it was Josh who had to carry it all home by himself. This week our vegetable share contents included:

Tomatoes – 3 lbs
Melon – 1 each
Napa Cabbage – 1 each
Greens – 1/2 lb
Squash – 2 lbs
Carrots – 1/3 lb
Cucumbers – 2 lbs
Corn – 2 ears
Beets – 1 lb

Heirloom tomatoes, beets, greens, napa cabbage, squash, carrots, corn, cucumbers, melon on top

The tomatoes were much better this week, and Josh found three huge heirlooms that look juicy and ripe. For the greens, he picked up some swiss chard with yellow stems this time instead of the red stems. He also picked up a different kind of squash that is big and round, with bright yellow skin and green trim on the edges.

The fruit this week also looked MUCH better, and I was really happy with what we got. The fruit share contents included:

Nectarines – 3 1/2 lbs
Peaches – 3 1/2 lbs

Nectarines and peaches

These also look sweet and juicy, and only one peach was spoiled out of the whole bunch. We’ll have to eat these quickly though as they’re super ripe. I’ll have to look into some peach dessert recipes. Cobbler perhaps?

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Shrimp Scampi with Swiss Chard and Spaghetti

Monday, August 2nd, 2010 by virginia

Ruby swiss chard

Fresh onions and garlic

Josh and I weren’t quite sure what to do with the gorgeous ruby swiss chard that we got from our CSA so we decided to improvise a bit by adding it to a shrimp scampi pasta dish. We thought that the copious amounts of garlic we put in our pasta would go well with the chard, and that the chard would provide a nice veggie component to an otherwise carb-heavy dish.

First I chopped the swiss chard into one inch pieces, including the ruby red stalks because I loved the color. I knew they wouldn’t wilt down as much as the leaves and figured they could add some crunch to the dish. Then I washed the leaves thoroughly and spun them dry.

Chopped and washed chard

Meanwhile, Josh chopped up the fresh onions and garlic that we also got from the CSA, including the green stalks of each. He set those aside in small prep bowls. We also started a pot of water to boil for the pasta.

Chopped onion and garlic (including the green tops of both)

After washing and drying the shrimp (cleaning out the veins but keeping the shells on), he seared them in a hot pan with some olive oil.

Searing the shrimp

Once the shrimp were cooked on both sides and had turned pink, he removed them and set them aside. Then he added more olive oil to the same pan and sauteed the garlic and onion until they started to brown slightly. We also started to cook the pasta in the boiling water at this point.

Sauteeing the garlic and onions in olive oil

Next we added the swiss chard to the pan, cooking it with the garlic and onion. The chard absorbed most of the oil and took on a nice, garlicky flavor. We seasoned the chard with lots of salt and pepper.

Wilting the swiss chard in the garlic, onion, and olive oil

After the chard was wilted, we removed it from the pan and deglazed with vermouth and lemon juice. We let that reduce for a bit, then tossed it with the cooked spaghetti (we had to use a larger pot for that). We added back the chard and the shrimp and mixed everything together. It was a bit dry so we added some more olive oil and lemon juice, plus a little bit of pasta water to loosen everything up.

There’s really no set amount of ingredients for this recipe. Just use as much garlic and onion as you’d like, and as much olive oil/lemon juice/vermouth. The key is to season everything, and to make sure you taste everything, so that you adjust it all in the end. We plated up the pasta, arranged some shrimp on top, and garnished with some chopped parsley.

Shrimp scampi with swiss chard and spaghetti

It’s not exactly a traditional scampi recipe, but the flavors were there and this was really easy to make. The hardest part was cleaning the shrimp, but once that was taken care of it was just a matter of cooking everything in batches, and then combining it all together in the end. The pasta ended up tasting light and lemony, with just a hint of garlic and vermouth in the background. My only adjustment to this dish would be to use even more garlic!

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