Week 1: That's a Lot of Broccoli

Thanks to a co-worker and fellow CSA participant, I realized our first pick up was only days away. When Thursday arrived, Rob and I grabbed some grocery totes, bundled up and headed to our pick up location. This week's share consisted of:

• Sweet potatoes
• Red Russian Kale
• Totsoi (an asian green)
• Head of butter lettuce
• 2 pounds of broccoli
• Topped turnips
• A whole chicken!
• French bread baguette
• Dozen eggs

Due to some confusion, we did not receive our soup the first week (which was fine since we ended up making some, as you'll see later). Instead, we got goat cheese, YUM! Here's the picture again of all the goods:

That night we were in a rush, so we simply steamed some broccoli, but it was the greenest broccoli I had ever seen! It was delish!

The week's newsletter contained a recipe for "Winter Greens Soup," which made use of both the Kale and the Totsoi - but not all of it. With the remaining greens, we made a stir-fry on a later night. Another odd-ball item that we hadn't experimented with before was turnips. Thankfully, Google came through and Rob was able to locate a recipe for "Caramelized Turnips" and boy were they yummy!

Those of you with meat-phobia may want to be careful with these next pictures. The first picture features the sweet potato fries that I conjured up one evening. Normally I have trouble chopping raw potatos, but these were small and easy to slice. The other items on this plate (stuffed pork chop and mushroom) were purchased from the grocery.




Looks like we need to work on presentation... On an evening where we had a bit more time (actually, we just stayed up really late), we cooked the whole chicken in the oven - beer can style. It turned out so moist and tender!



I left the carving to Rob. That isn't really my style. Of course there were a few more nights of steamed broccoli (with having received 2 lbs, and all). Throughout the week we used the lettuce in sandwiches, finished off the soup, and had some omelets with the eggs. We were both very pleased with the share, as well as our ability to put the items to use. This did, however, take some planning and willpower to not say "Get the door, it's Domino's." Next week I'm hoping to plan a little better upon receiving the share - i.e. scouting out recipes and hitting the grocery. Overall, we're quite pleased and Thursdays are my new favorite day of the week!