menu planning with our csa basket

I blogged about getting our first official CSA basket here, and now I've menu-planned, and we've starting using all those green goodies.

A lot of them are just going to be straight-up snacks. This includes the kiwi, pears, grapefruit, apples, oranges, celery, cucumber, beets (roasted and sliced) and persimmons.

On Friday, the green onions and the basil (yes, all of it!) went into this pasta dish. I tweaked it by adding some canned mushrooms and Chinese five spice powder (star anise, cinnamon, cloves, fennel and pepper). It was SO GOOD.

Tonight we're using the green beans in this yummy red Thai curry. If you serve it over brown rice, you'll get a hefty dose of protein, but if you want a little more, it's great with salted cashews sprinkled on top. (btw, cashews can be bought at a decent price at both Sam's Club and Trader Joe's - if you buy the "bits and pieces" versions.)

The curry recipes is something I've made before, and it's fast becoming a favorite. It also looks like it would be easy to tweak it to include whatever fresh veggies you have on hand. Since I used up all my fresh basil on Friday, I used frozen-in-a-tube basil for the curry. (This ends up being a remarkably good value. It's sold refrigerated, but you can freeze it after the first use and it stays good. Much better than the $10000/oz., four-leaves-to-a-box version it's sold next to in the grocery store.)

The zucchini became chocolate zucchini bread, and I must admit, it's the best (i.e., least zucchini-tasting) zucchini bread I've ever had. I let the kids try it this afternoon, and they started bargaining to have it for breakfast this week. (I said yes. I'd still rather they eat it than me.)

The chard and beet greens I cooked up together and froze to use later in the week in quiche and in bee-bim-bop. (Yes, that children's picture book contains the recipe that we use. And it's really good - both the recipe and the book. Also - and this isn't the biggest reason it's a good book, but it's something I like - the family in the book prays together before they dig into the yummy, yummy meal.) The carrots are destined to go in this dish too.

The might-have-been-kale that I'm now guessing was actually collard greens got much too crispy when I attempted to make crispy kale. But the marinade was good, so I'm going  to try it again sometime and watch it more closely.

Finally, the cabbage is going into this unstuffed cabbage casserole.

And the flowers are still looking pretty on my counter. :)

peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell