Fresh

This week was the first for deliveries from Lancaster Farm Fresh, the CSA I signed up for this year. I am about to embark on a whole new life come this Thursday and I needed a kick in the pants to inspire my food choices. Often, when I go to the grocery store, I feel overwhelmed. There is so much variety and choice and my brain shuts down. What do I buy? What do I make? Can't I just eat ice cream forever? I tend to end up overbuying and overspending with much of what I purchased going to waste.

I've been contemplating joining a CSA for several years now as my neighbor is a site host (pick-up/drop off point for the food) and you can't get more convenient that walking up the street. A CSA share is expensive but I felt it couldn't be any more damaging to my wallet than Whole Foods. So I gathered up my nerve and signed up for a share of fruit and eggs and a half share of veggies. The total cost ran me about $700 for 25 deliveries of vegetables, 22 deliveries of fruit, and 12 deliveries of eggs. Everything is local (from about 25 family farms in Lancaster County, PA) and organic and will supplement what I am growing myself in my own modest garden.

Look at all that green! It's hard to tell from this photograph, but you're looking at white Easter Egg radishes, Red French Breakfast radishes, Red scallions, spinach, green leaf lettuce, and bok choy. When I first peeked into the box, I felt a bit overwhelmed - "What am I going to do with all of this!?" Then I remembered that I had quite a few resources hiding in my bookshelf. Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Vegetables and Deborah Madison's Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers' Markets among them. I admit to being a cookbook collector. I buy them because they are pretty or because I adore Jamie Oliver or because I want to be the kind of person that eats quinoa 5 days a week. I rarely take the time to crack them open and learn what they have to offer.

I bought Chez Panisse Vegetables because I wanted a sort of bible about preparing a wide variety of produce. I mean, what exactly are radishes good for besides a salad garnish. I love Alice Waters' simple style - her well-written and timeless recipes feature food that is clean and delicious. There are no fancy herbs and spices to hunt for because she relies on the flavors inherent in each ingredient. She also does a wonderful job of teaching you the basics. Trust me, you're not going to figure out how to prepare that artichoke on your own. The illustrations in her books are also lovely. Local Flavors was an impulse purchase via Amazon after reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle as many of Deborah Madison's recipes were Kingsolver favorites. Madison tells beautiful stories about our nation's farmers' markets, what we stand to gain from them, and what we risk if we lose them. It's the perfect companion for the timid farmers' market shopper as she gives great tips on how to navigate the stalls and purchase just what you need. She advocates for grabbing radishes by the bunch, adding a pinch of salt, and taking a big bite. And so I did. I stood at my counter, chopped off the green tops, ran them under some cool water, spilled some salt into my hand, dipped and bit. Marvelous! Crunchy, sweet and spicy all at once. I devoured three more before adding them to the salad I was preparing with the scallions, spinach, and lettuce.

Tonight, per Madison's advice, I wilted two heads of spinach in a frying pan with nothing but the water that clung to the leaves after washing and a bit of coarse grey sea salt. They wilted into a soft, dark green puddle that I garnished with lemon and served under a turkey burger for dinner. See? It really is that easy to prepare fresh, tasty food quickly. Now I'm down to two heads of spinach, the Easter Egg radishes and bok choy. I'm thinking the bok choy will go into homemade miso soup tomorrow with carrots and tofu.

As of this Thursday, I will be having surgery to place a laparascopic gastric band (a form of bariatric surgery that does not involve rerouting the intestines). It is a decision that was difficult and two-years in the making. At 27, I just can't stand to attempt Weight Watchers again or take another diet pill or obssess about the latest fad diet. I've been overweight all of my life and this procedure offers me the best tool for success. So does learning a new way of cooking and eating. Giving up processed foods can be scary as it means giving up convenience. Joining a CSA is a challenge - a challenge to try new things, to incorporate more fresh and nutritious foods into my life every day (not just a few times per week), to become more familiar with what I put into my body. Being a more self-aware person is just another step in becoming more conscious of the world I live in and how my own choices affect other individuals and communities. When I support a CSA, I support myself and my own committment to wellness and entire web of people I am now connected to.

The Main Course

 :: Grilled Pizza with Chicken, Roasted Peppers, Onions, and Mozzarella::

I love homemade pizza!

This summer, thanks to a neighbor, I was introduced to how wonderful grilled pizza tastes. Pizza is a great way to express creativity in the kitchen because you can use virtually any ingredients you wish. It is quick and virtually effortless given the array of prepared foods available to us. I particularly like to give my leftovers a makeover by turning them into pizza toppings.

For this particular meal, I used grilled chicken, peppers, and onions that I had from the previous nights kabobs. I added some tomato sauce and sliced and shredded mozzarella. Because we had one on had, I used a Boboli shell for the crust, but I generally prefer Trader Joe's pizza dough which comes in plain, wheat, or garlic herb and is a mere 99 cents a bag! I always try to have a couple of these in the freezer for nights when the "what's for dinner" question isn't easily answered by something else.

I assemble my pizza in the kitchen and then pop it directly onto the grill (a cookie sheet or tin foil would also work). My grill has a temperature gauge and I like it to read between 350 and 400 degrees F. Since my chicken and other ingredients were already cooked, I only needed to wait for the cheese to melt. I wouldn't advise putting raw meat on your pizza as the dough may cook through before the meat, this would be especially true if using a pre-made shell like Boboli. I think it's always easier to have your toppings prepared the way you like them before they get embedding in gooey cheese.

After I sliced off a couple of pieces, I sat down with a Victory Summer Ale to enjoy the view from my deck.

In the Kitchen: Preserving the Harvest

The torrential rains we've had on the East coast this August ruined my garden. My tomato plants were toppled and the fruits lay rotting on the sodden soil before I could rescue them from eager insects. Squash Vine Borers feasted on my zucchini and yellow crook neck squash. My cucumber seedlings were drowned in the deluge. Few things seem so disappointing as the end of the summer growing season and rain that has come too much too late.

Canning is something I learned on a whim from a woman I knew via a Scrabble group through my local food co-op. I am a terrible Scrabble player, but this woman was more than happy to teach me to make and can jam. She sent me home with an extra, old granite ware pot she had and a canning rack and I pretty much taught myself from there. In addition to the canning bible, The Ball Blue Book of Preserving, I consult the website for the National Center for Home Food Preservation, Putting Food By, and So Easy to Preserve for tried and true tips and recipes.

I gathered up my dozen or so green tomatoes that hadn't yet fallen prey to rot and made green tomato pickle - something I've been wanting to try for a while. I followed the recipe in Putting Up: A Year-Round Guide to Canning in the Southern Tradition by Stephen Palmer Dowdney. The recipe was relatively easy to follow but I would have appreciated more specific direction on how much headspace to leave in the jars and how long to process them in the water bath after filling. I think this book focuses way too much on testing the pH of your recipes. Yes, it IS important to avoid spoilage and botulism, but it's terribly tedious to keep having to break out the litmus paper. Not to mention that my litmus paper starts at 4.5 and the author often wants a pH of 4.2 for acidic foods. Several of the other recipes in the book state that they can be halved or doubled. This one didn't have any such note and I was left wondering if that meant that I should attempt neither halving nor doubling for this recipe. I also had to make two extra batches of the vinegar solution to fill all of the jars. I'm not sure how the author expected 2 cups of vinegar to fill 6 pints. Needles to say, I felt more than a little anxiety about how my tomatoes would turn out. All but one of the jars sealed and now I'm just hoping for the best.

After I got over my disappointment with the green tomato pickle recipe, I ordered Canning For A New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavors For the Modern Pantry by Liana Krissoff. I LOVE this book. The recipes are well-written and address every step of the canning process. She also dispenses with all the fussing over pH and encourages you to rely more on your own intuition. Obviously, our ancestors weren't testing their recipes with litmus paper! Nor could many a housewife afford to throw out an entire batch of canned food if the pH of a recipe seemed a hair off! I love that the author weaves her own story into her book and gives the reader an appreciation for the flavors captured beneath those metal rings.

I found myself with 2 pounds of green beans thanks to the soaking rains and, with a hurricane due to arrive tomorrow, needed to do something with them before we inevitably lose power and a fridge full of food. Dilly Beans were the first thing that popped into my mind as I love all this pickle-y. These beans are a popular, Southern tradition and can be eaten straight from the jar as a snack or heaped upon beans, rice, salad, etc for a bit of tang and crunch. Krissoff's recipe was clear, easy, and took me no more than an hour in the kitchen! All of my jars sealed and I'm confident that they will taste delicious once opened.

Canning, something I might have learned from my grandmothers had they not passed before I could know them, is a way for me to feel connected to the generations of women before me - those women who nourished their families through slavery, Jim Crow, the Great Depression, and seasons of bounty from their kitchen gardens. I've found it so pleasing to be able to have a taste of summer on those dark days in February knowing that my harvest has lasted me long past August. It's also the best way to enjoy those out-of-season foods while not contributing to the less-than-wholesome practices of agri-business.

With this hurricane a-comin', I'll be toting some peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches to the hospital with me as I wait out the storm caring for patients.