Mini-food blog

[figment]

I keep on promising that, inspired by jgs42, I will food blog... but I keep on not having time. Well, maybe the way to do it is in very short bursts with cell phone photos. We'll see. My cell phone doesn't exactly have a great camera, but it does have the bonus of just emailing the photo to me, instead of me having to find a cable. Feh.


We've signed up for another season of the CSA here, so we get a lot of veggies every week. tomscud is sharing with us, but we still have all we can eat. Mostly, we are getting a lot of salad greens, so far. Last week we got:

• a head of Simpson lettuce
• a bag of braising mix (tatsoi and other Asian greens, and mustard greens - somewhat spicy)
• a kohlrabi (I posted a picture of one of these here last year, when I was mystified)
• green onions
• garlic scapes
• curly kale

We get our veggies on Tuesdays. Last Tuesday, I promptly made soup out of the kale, some green onions, and some of the garlic scapes, supplemented with some carrot and veggie stock. It was good. No, no pictures. Sorry. It's just green leafy soup, anyway - tasty but not too photogenic.

I made a stir fry out of a bunch more garlic scapes, more green onions, and a bunch of other stuff - shiitake mushrooms, red bell peppers, tofu, sesame seeds, almonds, soy sauce - and we had that on Sunday night. Again, no pictures, although it was really pretty. I think we were too hungry so we just ate it right away.

Today I'm having use-up-the-lettuce salad. CSA ingredients: lettuce, braising mix, kohlrabi. Other ingredients: almonds, tomatoes, BBQ-baked tofu. I made a little dressing of lime juice, walnut oil, red wine vinegar, and salt and pepper. It's a good lunch for me at work - it'll hold me through Arabic class tonight but not feel leaden. Sorry, I didn't think to take the picture until I'd wolfed down half the salad.


Today we are promised (farmer's comments in parentheses):

• Lettuce (oakleaf and maybe Blackseeded Simpson)
• Spring Onions
• Mesclun (which you can eat raw or saute or ...)
• Scapes (you've got to make the pesto, if you haven't. It is AWESOME!!)
• Kale, Chard or Collards
• Turnips and Turnip Greens

I promptly Googled the recipe for garlic scape pesto. It does sound good.
(from the Washington Post)
Garlic Scape Pesto

Ingredients:
1 cup garlic scapes (about 8 or 9 scapes), top flowery part removed, cut into ¼-inch slices
1/3 cup walnuts
¾ cup olive oil
¼-1/2 cup grated parmigiano
½ teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste

Method:
Place scapes and walnuts in the bowl of a food processor and whiz until well combined and somewhat smooth. Slowly drizzle in oil and process until integrated. With a rubber spatula, scoop pesto out of bowl and into a mixing bowl. Add parmigiano to taste; add salt and pepper. Makes about 6 ounces of pesto. Keeps for up to one week in an air-tight container in the refrigerator.

For ½ pound short pasta such as penne, add about 2 tablespoons of pesto to cooked pasta and stir until pasta is well coated.

Comments

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

I'd happily donate some of my portion of the scapes to a wednesday-night pesto.

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

Sounds good!

[jgs42.livejournal.com]

Wow, garlic scape pesto! It sounds ... intense. You'll have to tell me how it comes out. - R

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

It was very intense, but very yummy. It's definitely a dish to eat with EVERYONE or else the non-eaters would be blown away by the garlic breath. And unlike normal basil pesto, I was not tempted to load on more and more of the garlic scape pesto... the few tablespoons was plenty.
1 recipe of the above is a fair amount, by the way.
It's good stuff! Try it!