Local Box, 07.30.2008

If my Greenling Local Box ever arrives *without* watermelon and okra, I think I’ll feel really nostalgic.

For dinner tonight, my husband is planning to toss a bunch of veggies with some pasta and cheese, per Suzan’s suggestion on the staples page.  Yellow squash, zucchini, pattypan squash, basil, and pepper will work great that way.

Confession time? I never got around to pickling okra OR making watermelon chutney last week, so those have moved up to this week’s agenda.  Last week’s okra seems to be hanging on to its freshness, but I’ll need to act quick!

I also didn’t use my acorn squash or red potatoes from last week, but I’m glad to be stockpiling those for a bigger dish this week that will yield leftovers.

What do you have planned for your Local Box this week?

Currying Flavor

It was so good we forgot to take a picture.  On Saturday, my husband and I improvised a curry using chopped eggplant, yellow squash, zucchini, and onion from our Greenling Local Box.  We sautéed those veggies with garlic in a bit of canola oil, then added a handful of almonds and a heated blend of coconut milk and Thai-style red-curry paste. Meanwhile, we cooked some basmati rice and chopped some cilantro for garnish.  It’s a definite make-again for our repertoire – and an approach that would work for all kinds of seasonal vegetables.

While we cooked, we munched on cucumber slices drizzled with a mixture of soy sauce and sesame oil, then sprinkled with sesame seed — a spin on a side dish served at P.F. Chang’s, I’ve heard.

What did you eat out of your Local Box this weekend?

Report from Fearless Forager, week of 07.28.2008

The forecast for this week’s local box:

• peaches
• figs
• slicing tomatoes
• head lettuce
• yellow squash
• zucchini
• variety squash – pattypan & zephyr
• okra
• herbs
• cantaloupe
• purple hull or black-eyed peas
• eggplant – purple or white
• onions – 1015, yellow granix, or red burgundy
• peppers – bell, serrano, jalapeño
• New Mexico chiles
• sweet potato
• red potatoes
• cucumber
• butternut or acorn squash

Okra, Ongoing

We fried last week’s okra a couple of nights ago in accordance with the instructions arteesvida and Dave Wells posted in the comments to Okra Overdose?.  It turned out great!

This week’s okra?  When I talked to my grandmother over the weekend, she was very clear that I MUST pickle it.  Now, I’ve seen a lot of pickled okra recipes and I’ve been skeptical.  But I always do what my grandmother tells me.  I’ll share her recipe if it turns out well… stay tuned!

Local Box 07.22.2008

I’m going to have to use a bigger table if this trend keeps up.

As I type, the sky is turning dark as Dolly arrives, so I’m in the mood for some foul-weather comfort food.  I’m thinking of trying a pot pie, perhaps this one, filled with summer squash, zucchini, onions, potato, and perhaps some eggplant.

I’m also keen to try pickling okra this week, as well as a squash gratin.

That watermelon might just be my biggest (ahem, pun intended) challenge of all.  It’s the biggest one yet!  And, truth be told, half of last week’s is still in my fridge.  Over lunch today, a friend suggested a watermelon chutney.  She loved one served with pork at Hudson’s on the Bend recently, and it sounds like something I might be able to freeze or can for later.  Does anyone have a recipe to share for that?

Squash Mystery, Solved!

It turns out that the little flying-saucer-shaped squash in my Local Box last week were pattypans – I’d just never seen them white before.  (Fearless Forager reports that some folks got pattypans, while others got zephyrs.  Both are summer squash, so you can use them mostly interchangeably.)  My husband roasted ours with the butternut squash, the sweet potato, and a red potato we’d also received in our local box.  I associate sweet potato and winter squashes like butternut with fall and winter cooking, but this recipe, in which we substitued our various veggies for the acorn squash and an Anaheim pepper for the red chile, gives them a real summery zing!

In other weekend adventures, we fried slices of purple and white eggplant from the Local Box.  I just sliced, dredged in flour, then egg, then cornmeal and fried in canola oil.  A great weekend treat!

What did you eat out of your Local Box this weekend?

Report from Fearless Forager, week of 07.21.2008

Here’s what she’s got in store for this week’s Local Box:

• watermelon
• peaches
• slicing tomatoes
• head lettuce
• blueberries
• yellow squash
• zucchini
• variety squash – pattypan & zephyr
• okra
• herbs
• cantaloupe or canary melons
• eggplant – purple or white
• onions – 1015, yellow granix, or red burgundy
• peppers – bell, serrano, jalapeño
• red potatoes

Local Box 07.16.2008

As I write this now, a fellow on the radio is talking about how expensive food is.  But this week’s Greenling Local Box was quite a deal!  Here’s what I plan to do with the fruits of my $34.99 this week:

• We LOVED the watermelonade we made last week, so we’ll do it again this week.  A good-sized batch will only use half of this gi-normous watermelon, though, so we’re thinking of turning the other half to sorbet that we can enjoy later in the summer.
• For dinner tonight, we’re planning to create an eggplant pasta dish, probably this one I found at epicurious.com by searching for the terms eggplant, basil, bell pepper, and pasta — since I still have basil leftover from last week and I’ve got a hankerin’ for pasta.
• As soon as I empty my salad spinner of the basil it’s kept so well all week, I’ll use it to rinse, spin, and store the lettuce in this week’s box for salads later in the week.
• As always, we’ll eat the peaches and blueberries straight-up or over yogurt in the mornings.
• I’m planning to slice the zucchini and summer squash into ribbons, then cook them like pasta and sprinkle with olive oil, salt, and pepper — it’s an idea I got during a conversation with Todd Duplechan, the chef de cuisine at Trio (the restaurant in the Four Seasons Austin) last weekend.
• I can’t wait to fry the okra per the comment to last week’s post about okra!
• I’m undecided on the mint.  I’ve been longing for mint tea, but there’s also nothing like homemade mint-chocolate-chip ice cream…
• And then there are the three mystery items in my box this week — some small onions, a pair of small white squash, and two bright-green peppers!  I’ll query Fearless Forager about these and let you know what she says.

In the meantime, what are you planning to cook out of your Local Box this week?

Report from Fearless Forager, week of 07.14.2008

Here’s what she’s got lined up for the Local Box this week:

• watermelon
• purple-hull or black-eyed peas
• peaches
• slicing tomatoes
• head lettuce
• blueberries
• yellow squash
• zucchini
• okra
• mint
• heirloom cantaloupe
• eggplant
• yellow granix or red burgundy onion

That’s a lot to look forward to!  Let us know what you’ve got planned…

Okra Update and a Watermelon Wonder

To follow-up on my search for new ways with okra, I tried a new recipe this weekend from the June issue of Gourmet.  (To be accurate, it was my husband who did the actual cooking!)  Our Okra Cornmeal Fritters turned out great.  We substituted Boggy Creek Farm’s smoke-dried tomatoes for the bacon the recipe calls for.  They turned out great, and the chef reports that he’d do it again, but next time he’ll soak the tomatoes in the oil overnight to better infuse it.

And to go with the fritters, waffles, and sliced heirloom tomatoes, we reached again into our Local Box to make the Watermelonade on the same page in the magazine.  We cut out the sugar since the watermelon Greenling sent was so very sweet, so essentially we just seeded the watermelon and whizzed it in the blender with a little lemon juice, salt, and ice in batches.  Then we poured the mixture through a sieve to get the pulp out.  The result was very refreshing — and much like agua fresca.  (Is this how you make agua fresca, too?)