Jun 7, 2020

Menu: Week of 06/06/20

Hmmmmm.

This week L. is, as always, craving duck and I am, rather unexpectedly, craving steak, so we compromised and are having both. Multiple days of caveman protein mean an uptick in vegetables and less carbs on the menu to make up for these indulgences. This week’s CSA box is very heavily weighted in the “assorted greens” category – so much so that I even got a little whimpery on the inside when I unpacked it (what with the self-imposed pressure to use it all contains without wastage) -- so we should be able to balance out our nutritional requirements to a certain degree.

This leads me to the discussion of keeping greens fresh when one buys them weekly rather than throughout the week. Through trial and error, I have found a system that works for me and keeps even delicate salads fresh for a week to ten days, depending on the green. While I know it is wasteful to the planet to use paper towels, I have unfortunately yet to find anything that preserves greens better than they do.

I keep my hydrator lined with a dishtowel which I change out once a week on Saturday when I clean the fridge for the next day’s grocery arrival. Every Sunday, post CSA box unveiling, I wrap each individual bunch of unwashed greens, salad, or herb loosely in paper towels before putting them away. Carrot and radish greens and the like are separated from their associated vegetables and wrapped separately. On Wednesday, I check on any greens remaining, remove any slightly wilted leaves that I might find, change out any paper towel coverings that are wet, wipe down the sides and roof of the hydrator to remove any extra humidity, and am good to go. This takes a couple of minutes at most and I have little to no vegetable wastage, nor ever the surprise of coming across greens that have somehow turned to slime overnight.

Just sharing a tip from what L. refers to as my “control freak collection”.

Anyway...

This Week's CSA box contained:

Herbs: huge bouquet of coriander

Greens: 4 little gem romaine lettuces, a huge bunch each of red chard, green mizuna, green kale, dandelion greens and broccoli rabe, and a huge head of escarole

Alliums: 5 stalks of green garlic

Vegetables: 3 turnips, a huge bag of radishes, a bunch of orange carrots and their greens, 2 enormous slicing cucumbers, and 2 russet potatoes

Fruit: 2 punnets of blackberries

Remainders: 2 Covington sweet potatoes, 2 heads of baby bok choy

So, with the addition of the above remainders and 2 avocadoes because L. is craving them as well as duck, the contents of this week's box (minus whatever we use for lunches and the two cucumbers which are going the pickle route) will be transformed into: