Every two weeks I pick up a
CSA box from a local farm. Well, the farm drops it at a coffee shop near my house and I pick it up form there.
CSA is Community Supported Agriculture, which involves paying a fee at the beginning of the year and receiving a weekly (or, in our case, every-other-weekly) box of fresh, organically grown, local vegetables. The "growers and consumers share the risks and benefits of food production" and having a box of surprise vegetables is very exciting! And I like knowing that my veggies are from a local farm that we're helping to support instead of coming all this way on a boat from a far off land. It has been ridiculously rainy this year so the veggies have been kind of slow to start and we've been getting mostly salad and radishes until this week when we got a variety of beautiful and strange looking food.
Which leads me to the newest feature! It's called... Vegewhatable?!
Today we got two of these...
At first I thought I'd just google it, but then I realised that a search containing keywords such as "firm", "smooth", and "protuberances" was unlikey to lead to appropriate results. So I thought I'd ask you all instead... I need to know what this is, and what to do with it!
Round two of Vegewhatable!? features this...
Googling is just as risky with this one... "mottled... slightly knobbly..." so I need some ideas of this too. I assume it's some kind of banana, but who knows ;-)
So, please help!
As promised in the last post, I'm going to tell you all about crouton and guacamole. We've been eating lots of salad, and Ben's favourite part of a salad is either jalapeños or crouton. And it turns out it's actually super easy to make your own crouton! I just slice some bread into squares. Small, large, whatever. It works best if you have bread that's a little more rustic than regular sliced loaf, but that'll work too. Then toss the squares around in a bowl with some olive oil and salt and pepper, then bake them. I usually do around 400F but it doesn't really matter what temp. After about 5-7 minutes pull them out, flip them around and stir them about a bit, then bake them some more, usually about 7 more minutes. Sometimes longer. Just bake them until they're pretty much brown all over. Voila! Crouton!
Recipe 2 is guacamole. Mmmmmm guacamole. I love guacamole. Sadly, often the stuff you buy turns out to be nasty, so I started to make it myself. Here's what you do... start with ripe avocados. These will be a little bit squishy when you press on them. It's important to know this. Don't use non-ripe ones. Trust me. Then mash up the flesh. Add some finely chopped red onion. More if you're an onion fan, less if you're not. Add some salt. And some lemon juice. If you're using the stuff in a bottle, I use about a dessert spoonful. Add some jalapeño if you're brave. I'm not. Mix it all up. Add more of anything that seems to need more. Usually salt. Eat. Mmmm good.
Well, I hope you enjoyed today's production. After I figure out what to do with my vegewhatables I'll let you all know...
