CSA and Cooking Beets and Zucchini Bread

This will be my last CSA recipe installment. I saved my favorites for last. I hope you enjoyed them!


On one fine zucchini-acquiring Saturday, I thought I'd treat myself and try this recipe for chocolate zucchini bread from the Prairie Homestead. And, my friends, it was one of the tastiest things I put in my mouth all month.  If you love chocolate, if you love bread, if you ever have a zucchini, YOU MUST TRY THIS! Go to the link. Then make this bread. Just do it.

Picture from Prairie Homestead

Beets are one of the vegetables that the CSA has taught me to love. During my first CSA, the uber-drought year, beets were one of the few crops that defied the drought and flourished. So despite having never touched a beet before, I had beets every week, for many weeks in a row. I tried very hard to like them alone; I simply don't. But, like tomatoes, while I don't eat them individually, I love to cook with them! They lend everything I put them into a natural sweetness and a pretty red color.

What follows is my favorite beet recipe. It is delicious, easy to cook, and filling. I love this one so much, I would say that 90% of my beets go into this. I have gleefully stored packs of chopped beets in the freezer, just so that I can whip out this spicy-cozy recipe on an icy winter day. It even made my hubby's list of favorite dishes.

Red Flannel Hash - One of our favorites!

Red Flannel Hash – adapted from Vegetarian Meatand Potatoes Cookbook

4 small red beets (or more to taste - I sometimes do 5 or 6)

3 medium size potatoes

1 large red onion

1 lb ground beef

1 tablespoon soy sauce

½ teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon cayenne (or more to taste)

Cook the beets in boiling salted water until tender, about 30 minutes. Drain and cool. Skin, peel and chop. Set aside.

Peel and dice the potatoes. Steam over boiling water about 20 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Brown the beef and drain.

Add onion, cover and cook, strirring a few times until softened, about 5 minutes. Add potatoes and beets. Increase heat to medium high and cook, stirring frequently, until potatoes are lightly browned. Add soy sauce, salt, and cayenne and cook until flavors are blended, about 5 mintues.

CSA and Cooking Cucumbers

Cucumbers are another of those that are best raw... especially Berry Creek cucumbers, and especially the delicious variety they had that was called a lemon cucumber. Whenever we made dishes like these we used the Armenian cucumbers they gave us. I started cooking them for two reasons. First, cooking them used up more cucumbers than we could eat raw, and made those cucumbers last longer in the fridge. Second, I discovered this year that I am allergic to cucumbers in raw form but not in cooked form. So I have been a devourer of cucumber soup, which is extra good with a thick slice of buttered and toasted bread.

Sad to say I saved these recipes without citing the sources... 

Picnic on the Patio: Cucumber Soup with Buttered Wheat Toast

Cucumber Soup

2 cucumbers (or 1 giant one! Our usual)

2 tablespoons diced onion (optional)

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

4 cups chicken broth

salt to taste

1/8 tablespoon dried tarragon

½ cup sour cream

Peel, seed, and chop 2 cucumbers.

Cook onions in margarine until soft. Add cucumbers and vinegar. Pour in broth. Salt to taste. Let simmer for 20 minutes or until cucumbers are soft.

Put soup in blender and puree.

Pour puree in a bowl, and whisk in sour cream.

I like this eaten cold AND hot, but usually eat it hot... It is especially delicious paired with a thick slice of herbed bread. Says me.

Cucumber Salad

2 cucumbers (or 1 giant one)  peeled and thinly sliced

½ red onion, thinly sliced

1 ½ cup water

½ cup vinegar

2 tsp sugar

¼ tsp season salt

Mix cucumbers and onion in one bowl. In a second bowl mix water, vinegar, sugar and salt. Pour the wet mixture over the cucumbers and onion. Chill for at least an hour before serving.

CSA and Cooking Peaches

Of course the healthiest (and often most delicious) way to eat a peach is raw, but through my CSA I learned about peach varieties. Some varieties really ought to be cooked! Berry Creek has two varieties that I know of... one soft, ultra juicy, and very sweet, the other pale and crunchy. The crunchy one is great for cooking; it keeps its shape and gets sweet without getting *too* sweet. Here are the recipes we used most often for this particular peach.

From AllRecipes.com

Stuffed Peaches – shared by a coworker

Cut the peaches in half and deseed

Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar

Bake up to 30 minutes at 350 degrees

Let cool

Put a dollop of cheesecake filling in each

Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and/or crushed graham crackers

Tipsy Peaches from AllRecipes.Com

Grandma's Peach Cobbler - This recipe is ubiquitous, apparently... but I did try a few recipes for cobbler and this was the only one I was any good at!

CSA and Cooking Eggplant

I learned that, generally speaking, my CSA eggplant would absorb the flavors of whatever I cooked it with, similar to tofu or potatoes. I couldn't see what the fuss was over until I tried to stir-fry it and eat it alone - then I tasted the bitterness and understood. But I also learned that if you plan to eat it without cooking it into a dish, you can slice it thinly, salt it, and set it aside for 15 minutes first. The salt will draw out some of the juices in the eggplant and it will taste less bitter. Another lesson is that the raw eggplant doesn't keep long (a few days), so it has to be one of my first meals of the week.

These are our two favorite eggplant recipes.

Baked Eggplant Pasta – adapted from VegetarianMeat and Potatoes Cookbook

2 tbsp olive oil

1 medium size onion

1 medium size eggplant

4 garlic cloves, minced

one 28-can crushed tomatoes

about a half cup of extra tomatoes of choice: chopped fresh tomatoes, or more canned tomatoes or tomato sauce

½ cup red cooking wine

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

1 tbsp chopped fresh basil or 1 ½ teaspoons dried

salt and pepper

2 cups of rotini

½ cup

2 cups of any type of cheese (or more to taste)

Preheat oven to 375. Heat oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, cover and cook, stirring a few times until softened, about five minutes. Add the eggplant and garlic, cover and cook, stirring a few times, for five minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, wine, parsley, basil and salt and pepper to taste and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, bake pasta in another pot until just al dente, 8-10 minutes. Drain and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine cooked pasta with the sauce and 1 cup of cheese. Spoon into a large baking dish and sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake until hot and lightly browned on top, 30-40 minutes.

Eggplant Pizza with Roasted Garlic and Tomato

For the crust I use Jay's Signature Pizza Crust recipe. I often will substitute or cut the white flour with whole wheat flour. 

For the toppings, I use this recipe from Pioneer Woman.

CSA and Cooking Pumpkin

I LOVE pumpkin! My all-time favorite pumpkin recipes are sweets (pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pasties, and pumpkin butter), but for CSA pumpkins, my favorite recipes are pumpkin puree (which is then used or frozen) and pumpkin curry stew.

Pureed Pumpkin

Bake pumpkins, whole, in the oven at 350 until they are soft when you poke them with a fork.I left the little pumpkin below in the oven for an hour, but it probably would have been fine at around the 45 minute mark.

Remove and let cool.

Them remove skin, scoop out the seeds, and chop into cubes.

Puree in blender.

Here I am baking the pumpkin and sweet potatoes at the same time.

You can see the color change in the pumpkin and the holes where my fork easily pierced the skin, indicating that it is done cooking.

Pumpkin Curry Stew adapted from Martha Stewart

3 tbsp canola oil

1 onion finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsp curry poweder

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ground ginger

1 tsp salt

½ tsp black pepper

2 cups halved cherry or golden tomatoes, or 2 chopped large tomatoes

2/3 cup water

1 small pumpkin, chopped

1/2 cup – 1 cup of pumpkin puree, to taste

1 can of red kidney beans or 1 chopped chicken breast

1 sliced carrot

2 chopped potatoes

1-2 spicy peppers, seeded and chopped

Either follow Martha Stewart's directions for cooking, or put ingredients in a crockpot on high and add enough water to cover. If using the crockpot method, give it a stir every so often to prevent burning, and turn the heat down to medium after a couple of hours.

Cooking Adventures with Community Supported Agriculture

CSA Haul from 1 week in September: Okra, tomatoes, onion, yellow squash, zucchini, cucumber, eggs, watermelon, butternut squash, and orange bell peppers

One more year of our Berry Creek Farm CSA has come to an end. (Learn about their CSA here, or see my previous posts about it here)   This is my second year with the CSA and I’ve learned a lot. I was amazed at the different types of produce we got from the CSA this year than last year! With the kinder weather and whatever the farmer was doing differently, we had a wider variety of produce types throughout the season, and several different types of veggies and fruits in each bag (along with our fantastic eggs).

I have found this experience to be far different from grocery shopping. And I think this CSA, more than anything else (ever), has made me comfortable in the kitchen. Because not only did I have to eat things I’d never tried before, I had to learn to make dishes with them. Even more – if I made, say one eggplant dish I didn’t like, instead of giving up on eggplant, I would have to keep trying different recipes until I FOUND a way to like it! Because like it or not, we would keep getting that same vegetable each week as long as it was in season, so I had to learn how to eat and enjoy them all.

If there was something we already liked (for example, cucumber), I still had to find new ways to prepare it because after a looooong robust cucumber season we were starting to get tired of the usual ways of munching it. Along similar lines, I had to learn what would freeze well and what would not. Some things freeze, but just aren’t as good thawed, or when thawed should only be cooked a certain way (boiled into soup, pureed, diced into a baked dish or sauce) to disguise texture changes.

I also had to learn how to improvise in the kitchen for meals. This is something I could already do to an extent, but doing it with items that I’m less familiar with (like eggplant) took a lot more thinking! (I can tell you that stir frying eggplant was not a good idea, but doing the same with okra, if done with care, can come out ok).

This week I’m going to post some of our favorite CSA produce-using recipes. Some are healthier than others – we are fine lovers of things rich and cheesy, and some of our favorites reflect that. I hope you enjoy it!

CSA Day on the Farm

I mentioned a little while back what a great time we've been having with our CSA, Berry Creek Farm. We've had a huge bag of fruit and veggies and delicious eggs every week since March. We've tasted new things and learned new recipes (the last couple weeks we've been digging on cucumber soup and baked eggplant ziti). We had enough to share with our family, and our freezer is stocked.  Last weekend was the annual picnic at the farm. We invited my parents, who, hearing of our CSA exploits, were considering joining for next year. It was fun to eat outside in the pretty weather, and have a tour of the farm where our food was coming from.

   This is the Berry Creek pest control squad.

This is where my boxes of delicious grapes came from.

These guys made me beautiful eggs all year.

This fellow is ready to make me yummy food next year...

Two tummies that enjoyed Berry Creek food this year, after lunch at the farm...

List of what we got from the CSA this year:

Spinach

Lettuce 

Alfalfa sprouts

potatoes

sweet potatoes

okra

watermelon

honeydew melon

cantaloupe

grapes

beets

radishes

eggplant

turnips

persimmon

Armenian cucumbers

lemon cucumbers

onions

eggs

peaches

cabbage

cauliflauer

broccoli

sweet peppers

The amazing thing to remember is... with drought, record heat, and a late freeze, this was a hard year for farmers!  Just think how great it will be on a good year.

Farmer's Market Recipe

We have been using Berry Creek Farm CSA this year, so every week we get a bag of fruits and veggies from our selected farm. We don't get to pick what's in it, it's just what they've got... so I've gotten better at improvising recipes and using produce this summer. Last week I struck upon a recipe that I thought was pure awesome, so I am sharing it with you. Sorry. No pictures. Mea culpa. But this is one of the few vegetarian meals I've ever made that my husband has been happy with, so that's a major score in my book. (He's a meat and potatoes kinda guy)

Tangy-sweet Midsummer Stir-fry with Rice
 2 small onions or 1 medium onion
1 tomato
1 squash
1 cucumber
Red wine vinegar
Balsamic vinegar
Fresh garden herbs: basil, thyme, oregano, parsley
Sesame Seeds
Rice of choice

Chop up two small, sweet onions and start to cook them in a skillet with a small amount of oil, stirring occassionally. While onions are cooking, you can chop the tomato, squash, and cucumber. I used an average sized squash and tomato, but only a small portion of a huge Armenian cucumber, so I'm not sure what that equates to. I'd play with it. After onions are cooked to taste, add squash and cucumber with a few shakes of red wine vinegar; stir. (This will make up most of the sauce so no need to skimp) When these veggies are softened, throw in the tomato, herbs, and a splash of balsamic vinegar. For chopped herbs, whatever is fresh from your garden or I suppose even dried would do. I used a small handful of fresh herbs - basil, parsley, oregano, and thyme. Stir, and leave in a few minutes. At this point you can taste and see if you like it, and adjust it if you don't. I thought it was fantastic.

Spoon the veggies over rice (or pasta). They should be in a nice light sauce by now. I sprinkled sesame seeds and basil flowers on top (my basil will not quit flowering in this heat, so I decided to use them - you are supposed to pinch off the flowers anyway in order to help the leaves retain their flavor), but this is optional. The seeds added protein and a nice crunch and the flowers made the dish beautiful! Something about having tiny pink flowers all over the top of my dinner is just delightful.

The next day I ate the left-over veggies cold and by themselves, like a salad.


I threw this together after re-reading Tom Bergey's cookbook, Recipes from the Golden Trowel Herb Farm. I've had and loved this book for several years, but never made any of the recipes... seems the ingredients required are never in my pantry when I'm thinking about it. Even then, the book is a good resource and inspiration for learning how to cook with fresh ingredients. Tom Bergey uses his ingredients in delicious and creative ways... if it weren't for him I'd never have been brave enough to try stir-fry cucumbers! I went to a cooking show of his once and had stir fry *cantaloupe,* my friends. Now that is bravery! Delicious bravery.