Thank you all SO much for all the engagement love yesterday. It’s been a whirlwind! We are feeling very lucky to have such amazing friends and family in our lives. Plus, you guys are just the best blog readers. π
Even though we’ve been off celebrating and enjoying our staycation, we’ve still been keeping busy in the kitchen to make sure we get our money’s worth out of our CSA! Last week’s delivery included strawberries, beets, turnips, red leaf lettuce, butter lettuce, snow peas, baby bok choy, broccoli raab, russian kale, red mustard, kohlrabi, and mint.
One thing I wanted to do right away before tackling last week’s delivery was use up the beet greens from the week before. I hate throwing any food away, including the greens on root vegetables such as radishes and beets. I threw together a beet green pesto to freeze and use later. My lesson learned from making the pesto was that beet greens are naturally peppery. I added way too much pepper on my own, but good thing I have a FIANCE (whoaaaaa) who loves pepper.
One of my favorite meals from last week was this Asian style shrimp stir fry. We used the bok choy and snow peas, and sauteed them with shrimp, mushrooms, and a sesame soy sauce. We enjoyed this over a bed of gluten-free rice noodles for multiple meals, and it was DELICIOUS. I would eat this again and again.
We used the turnips and the red mustard greens in a farro salad with olive oil, red wine vinegar, and a lot of spices. I loved the roasted turnips, but the mustard greens were just a tad too bitter for our liking. I would try this recipe again with a different green next time though. Does anyone have any tips for cooking mustard greens so you can’t taste the bitterness?
Friday night’s meal definitely stole the show. Tim and I stayed in (probably cause he was having massive panic attacks about Saturday haha), and we whipped up these fish “tacos” in lettuce wraps. We used up a lot of the butter lettuce for the wraps, and Tim grilled up some cod. We topped the fish with a mango kohlrabi salsa, which I thought was such a creative way to use up that kohlrabi. We also ate the tacos with shredded pepper jack cheese and homemade guacamole. I just love taco nights.
Also, I may or may not have eaten the leftover mango kohlrabi salsa by the spoonful afterwards. Don’t judge.
As if the fish taco wraps and the salsa weren’t enough, we decided to kick off our staycation with some blackberry mojitos. That’s how we used up the mint from our CSA. Fun, right? I especially liked drinking my mojitos out of the cute mason jar glass I brought home from my friend Cristin’s bridal shower last week.
This brings us up to Saturday. Before Tim and I headed to Rockport/Gloucester for the day, we stopped to stroll through a local farmer’s market. I had to laugh when Heaven’s Harvest, the farm we get our CSA deliveries from, was the first table set up where we walked in.
Tim and I ended up picking up some more strawberries and two huge tomatoes from the Heaven’s Harvest table. We just couldn’t help it! We also left the farmer’s market with some scallops, a tuna steak, a hunk of gouda cheese, and a candle.
The scallops were to die for, and now I want to buy our seafood from the farmer’s market every week. Tim whipped up a red pepper flake and garlic oil glaze, and we enjoyed the scallops with tomatoes over a bed of grilled broccoli raab and grilled lettuce to use up the other CSA greens. We also dressed the greens with a lemon avocado vinaigrette, and we topped it all with some sesame seeds. The only thing I didn’t like about this meal was the broccoli raab. It had too many stems or something. I’m not sure.
Finally, last night it was way too hot to actually turn the stove on, so we used up the big tomatoes from the farmer’s market by stuffing them with chickpeas, the kale from last week’s share, and the cucumber from this week’s share. We topped this with a feta dill sauce, which was nice and cool for such a humid night.
The only ingredients that didn’t get used were the beets and the rest of the butter lettuce from the fish taco wraps. We are planning to use those up this week along with the rest of the week 4 delivery that we picked up from work today before we went kayaking. This week’s share has strawberries, multiple types of squash, collard greens, green leaf lettuce, purslane (new to us!), more broccoli raab (help), spring onions, green chard, more beets, lemon balm (PYSCHED), and cucumbers! Since we’ll be down the Cape for the 4th, we definitely need to do some research on the best ways to store some of it.
–Let’s chat–
How have you cooked with mustard greens or broccoli raab before? What food pictured in this post looks the best to you? How are you meal planning during the holiday week? What’s your go to dinner choice on hot summer nights?
For more on my summer CSA experience:
Your food looks amazing!!! I also participate in a CSA and I also hate wasting food… so a couple of nights ago, I steamed about a pound of bok choy and ate it just like that… I should probably start following your blog more closely π
Hi Jason, thank you! I’m trying to recap my CSA experience weekly or bi-weekly, so hopefully you can find some creative inspiration here. Definitely try the bok choy stir fry instead of eating a pound steamed next time! Much more exciting. π
You guys are so creative in the kitchen, I love it!! I feel like we tend to cook the same things over and over again, maybe a CSA would force us to use some new things! I also want to try to use the greens from root veggies too but don’t know how — love the idea of the beet greens pesto!
Thank you! I always have to give Tim credit for execution, the ideas come to me but he’s the one that can really bring the dish together. The CSA is definitely helping us try new things – we’d never typically buy that many greens at once from the grocery store!
I love that you can refer to Tim as your fiance now π
haha we keep laughing that we hate the word fiance!
Yum! I love seeing your CSA basket menu. We have been getting a CSA as well, so it’s great to get some ideas for those greens I don’t always cook with!
Also – what farmers market did you go to, it looks amazing!
Thanks, Kaylin! It’s challenging sometimes to come up with ideas for the “weird” greens, but it’s fun to switch things up from our usual stuff. The farmer’s market is the Waltham Farmer’s Market – it was great! Open every Saturday from 9:30-2 if you are ever back in the area. π
fiancΓ©! love it! I’m a sucker for fish tacos… literally have to order them if I see them on a menu, so I would love those!! Roberto made mustard greens and I couldn’t eat them because they were so bitter π Also, I’m not a huge fan of broccoli raab- I prefer regular broccoli! Lastly, I want to go to a farmers market to get fish- such a good idea!
Check out the Waltham farmer’s market on Saturdays! Ashley suggested it to me, and it did not disappoint.