Red Beans and Rice (vegan)

This is the vegan red beans recipe that I served on Mardi Gras 2015. It started as a recipe from a website, but then I monkeyed with it. I'll describe exactly what I did, and you can do with that information what you will. I made kind of a half recipe and cooked it in my small slow-cooker. If you use a full-size slow-cooker, you might consider making a double batch.

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 small yellow onion
• 4 stalks celery
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/2 lb. dry "Central American Red Beans" (Goya)
• 3 cups vegetable broth (I used "Better than Bullion")
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme 
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 whole bay leaf
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/4 tsp liquid smoke
• Freshly cracked pepper (8 cranks of a mill)
• Tofurky vegan kielbasa
• 3 cups cooked rice

Instructions

The day before:

1. Peel and mince the garlic. Finely dice the celery and onion. Sauté all three in the olive oil on medium heat until softened - about 5 - 7 minutes.
2. Place the sautéed vegetables in a storage container. Add the vegetable broth, thyme, oregano, paprika, pepper, and liquid smoke. Give it a stir, then seal the container and place it in the refrigerator overnight.
   Note 1: If you want some heat in your beans, you can add some cayenne pepper or hot sauce at this stage. The original recipe called for "a pinch" of cayenne. You can be your own judge.
   Note 2: I cooked the vegetables and mixed the broth the day before mostly because I planned to dump it all in the slow-cooker in the morning and I wanted all the prep-work done ahead of time. You could do this all the day of if you have the time. However, the overnight in the fridge probably blends the flavors together better.
3. Rinse the beans, then place them in a container and cover them with a few inches of water. Seal the container and place it in the refrigerator to soak over night.

The day of:

1. Drain the soaked beans in a strainer and rinse them with fresh, cool water. Place the rinsed beans in the slow-cooker. Next add the herbed broth and vegetable mixture and the bay leaf. Give it all a good stir.
2. Put the lid on the cooker and set it to "High." Let cook for 5 hours. During this time, do not remove the lid if you don't have to, but peek through the glass to make sure there is still enough liquid. I did not have to add any, but slow-cookers vary.
3. After 5 hours, check the beans. If they aren't tender, let them cook a little longer. If they are ready, take a spoon and smash some beans against the inside of the cooker and then stir the mashed beans into the mix. Do this a number of times so that the mashed beans add some thickness to the dish.
4. Cut 2 to 4 of the Tofurky kielbasas into slices. I used 2 sausages, but Amy said she would have preferred more. Slice them thick or thin to suit your tastes, cutting the slices in halves or quarters if you want (or not - whatever you like). Add your sliced kielbasa to the slow-cooker and stir it all up.
5. Put the lid back on and turn the heat down to "Warm". Let the kielbasa warm up for 15 - 30 minutes.
6. Serve over cooked rice and enjoy! (Don't forget to take that bay leaf out first).

Note on bean safety: I went with the "Central American Red Beans" because I wanted small beans. A lot of red beans recipes call for kidney beans, and if that's what you want, go for it. But remember that if you use dry kidney beans, they need to be boiled for at least 10 minutes before soaking them to break down the lectin toxins (phytohaemagglutinin - say that 3 times fast). 

Clear the Fridge! Day 1: Greens & Things with a Side of Taters

What do I do with all these vegetables?!

That is the refrain of the Community Supported Agriculture shareholder. Sometimes it is said tongue-in-cheek. Other times, it is said with all seriousness. What DO I do with all these vegetables? A week or two of not keeping up with the influx of deliveries and suddenly the fridge is full. You have to face the reality: either you do some serious veggie-eating or start throwing things out. It sports terms, that's the difference between the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.  This week, we hit that wall, and we choose victory. We choose to EAT!

The Challenge

Every day this week, we will eat a meal that uses a signifcant quantity (if not all the available quantity) of at least three available CSA ingredients. To facilitate maximum use of vegetables, extra store-bought ingredients will be kept to an absolute minimum.

Day 1: Greens & Things with a Side of Taters

The first day, I chose a grab-and-go strategy. Rather than cooking a specific recipe tailored for the available ingredients, I just grabbed ingredients that I knew I could competently cook and serve together. Then I went to town. It was a lot of "that looks like enough" and "that seems done cooking." So I'm not going to present a recipe. I'm just going to describe the process.

The simple: Boiled potatoes 

I'm not even sure exactly what kind of potatoes they are. We have two or three brown bags in the pantry filled with smallish potatoes of different colors. These had redish skin. Maybe new potatoes? Maybe not. Either way, they cook the same. I washed & chunked them (halved, quartered, or whatever to get large chunks of similar size), put them all in a big pot and covered them with water. Then I brought the whole thing to a boil and continued boiling for 15 minutes. I got this started first, and then turned my attention to prepping the rest of the meal while they cooked. Once finished, I served them with butter and salt. Easy-peasy.

The less simple: Greens & Things

The premise here is simple. Sautee some greens with a few other complementary veggies. The ingredients were rainbow chard (1 "bunch"), golden beets (2 big ones), shallots (2), and garlic (2 cloves). In hindsight another shallot or two might have been good. How did they all get brought together? Glad you asked...

Step 1: Slice & dice! Peel the beets. Cut in half lengthwise, then slice thinly (thin is key). Peel and slice the the shallots (also good & thin). Mince the garlic. We'll get to the chard in a minute.

Step 2: Sweat the shallots. Pour some olive oil in a big skillet (2 - 3 tablespoons). Heat it up. Toss in the shallots, stir things up good, then reduce heat to low. Let the shallots sweat in the skillet while you head back to the chopping board.

Step 3: Prep the greens. Prep the chard by washing (before or after cutting), slicing the fibrous stalks out of the middle of each chard leaf (but don't discard!), and cutting the chard across the leaf into strips about 1" wide. Remove the top part of the stalk that was attached to the leafy parts and discard. Keep the thick, bottom end of the stalks, except for a tiny cut at the bottom to clean them up. Chop the stalks into lengths about 1 - 2" long.

Step 4: Cook the beets and stalks. Remove the shallots from the pan, leaving as much oil in the pan as possible. Keep the shallots - they'll come back later. Add more oil to the pan if necessary. Increase heat to mid-high/high. Add sliced beets and chard stalks to the pan. Saute until everything is tender (beets will probably take the longest), stirring frequently. This might take 5 minutes. Might take 10. I didn't keep track. It depends on how thin the beet slices are. When things are just about as tender as you want them, add the garlic and stir things up for 30 - 60 seconds.

Step 5: All together now! Time to add the greens. Depending on the size of your pan, you'll need to add a handful at a time, stir a bit to reduce the greens a little, then add another handful. Once all the greens are in the pan, add the shallots back in. Now stir, stir, stir! It should only take a couple more minutes to get the chard to where you want it. Bright green, shrunken down a little, but not mushy. 

Step 6: SERVE! I went with a bit of salt and a very light sprinkly of basalmic vinegar (a greens standby of mine). In hidsight, I'm not sure the vinegar really complemented the beets. But it was still tasty. You should just season things however you like it (salt, pepper, hot sauce--pick your poison).

Final verdict: Tasty. Five veggies used. Mission accomplished.

There you have it. It took a little while, but it was all prep work: cleaning, peeling, and chopping. It's hard to escape that when you're using 5 different fresh vegetables. The actual cooking time on this one is short however.

Come back tomorrow to see how Day 2 turns out.

Here come the Eggplants!

Eggplant. I don't think I ever ate it growing up, and rarely ate it as an adult before becoming a vegetarian. However, in the past few years I've discovered just how great they are at adding real substance to a meal. What's even better is that the kids are big fans of the eggplant dishes I've made. That's a huge deal.

So July, it seems, is when the eggplants start rolling in from the CSA. Also about this time come the tomatoes. And not just from the CSA, but also from backyard gardens. Our friend Kenneth gave us an eggplant and some roma tomatoes from his little garden just last week. Looking at those veggies and looking at what came in the CSA shipment today, I decided it was time to make one of our family's favorite recipes: Eggplant Pomodoro!

My wife, Amy, actually gets credit for discovering this recipe. We have both cooked it with great success. The original source recipe was a little more complicated, but we've always made the stripped-down version, and it's been a huge hit with everyone in the family. As such, what I present here is our personal take on the dish. It's fairly simple, although, as with any recipe, there is room for fun experimentation and variation.

Normally I cook what I think of as a "double batch". The recipe below is for a single batch. The single batch will feed four people if no one goes back for seconds. If you want enough for a family-sized meal with seconds or leftovers, however, I recommend a double batch (stay tuned for tips on cooking the double batch later in this post).

Without further ado, here are the secrets of...
Easy Eggplant Pomodoro

INGREDIENTS
1 medium-sized Italian eggplant, cut into 1/2" cubes (the kind you typically find in a grocery store)
4-6 roma tomatoes, cut into quarters, eighths, or just diced (or an equivalent amount of other tomatoes)
2 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp red-wine vinegar
3/4 tsp of salt
1/2 tsp of pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
pasta of choice to serve over (we always use angel hair)
shredded parmesan cheese

COOKING DIRECTIONS
1. Heat water for pasta while chopping eggplant and tomatoes.
3. Heat the olive oil  in a large frying pan or wok (I love my wok!) over medium-high heat. Add eggplant and stir-fry until starting to soften, about 5 minutes.
4. Add 2 cloves of pressed or minced garlic and cook for 1 minute.
5. Add tomatoes, red-wine vinegar, salt, and pepper. Cook at least 5 more minutes, until the tomatoes start to break down. Stir a lot. This is also a good time to put pasta in the boiling water.
6. Serve eggplant and tomato mixture over pasta. Top with parmesan cheese.

So, that's the basics. Now, here are the secrets.

COOKING THE EGGPLANT

It took me a while to figure out how to fry the eggplant properly for this recipe. The thing is, raw eggplant acts like a sponge when you put it in a pan of oil. So much so, that only about half the eggplant seems oily, while the rest seems dry and not cooking as fast. I used to add extra oil and then more extra oil while cooking the eggplant. That felt right at first, but when the eggplant was done cooking, it would be really oily. It turns out that as the eggplant cooks, it shrinks, and that sponged-up oil gets pushed out, allowing it to cook the other pieces of eggplant.

So here's what you do: don't panic when the eggplant soaks up the oil. Just keep stirring it around. After about 2-3 minutes, the oil will have come out of the pieces that first soaked it up, and gotten spread onto the other pieces. Just keep stirring and frying! After five minutes, everything will be fried pretty evenly. If you have an especially big eggplant, an extra tablespoon of oil might be in order, but resist the urge to add oil until you can see it lining the bottom of the pan while cooking the eggplant in the first few minutes. In the end, that will be too much oil.

Double batch tip: If you make a double batch, cook half of the eggplant, add half the garlic, finish cooking it, and then remove it from the pan.  Cook the second half of the eggplant separately, adding the second half of the garlic at the appropriate time. When the second half (plus garlic) is done, put the first half back in the pan, then add all the other ingredients and follow the recipe as normal.

TOMATOES
The original recipe called for quartering the roma tomatoes. If you like big bites of cooked-sweet tomatoes, then go this route. I, however, prefer the dish with the flavors mixed together a little more. As such, I usually cut a typical roma tomato into 6-8 pieces, depending on size. Tonight's dish had a few grape tomatoes thrown in as well, because I had those from the CSA and there weren't quite enough roma's from Kenneth's garden for the double batch.

EXTRA INGREDIENTS
This is a recipe that can accept extra ingredients pretty easily. We commonly add mushrooms: usually baby bellas cut into 1/2" or smaller pieces. I add these in when I add the garlic, so they get stir-fried a little but not too much. I've also done this recipe with onions, although it's not part of the "family staple" version. Onions go in early with the eggplant so they can soften up. As for seasoning, I recently did a batch with fresh basil that I put in with the tomatoes. Good stuff. The original recipe also calls for sprinkling some fresh parsley over the top, but I only do that if I happen to have it on hand. It's definitely not a necessity.

HOW SAUCY DO YOU WANT IT?

The last cooking step of this recipe is really all about personal preference. How much do you want your tomatoes to break down? How much do you want that eggplant stewed and softened? I find that I like it cooked longer than the 5 minutes that the recipe calls for, although part of that may be the nature of cooking the double batch. If you want the tomatoes a little less cooked, feel free to stop after just a couple of minutes of having all the ingredients in the pan. Or, if you really want things cooked down, feel free to keep on cooking it--just be sure to keep an eye on it stir it now and then.

So there you have it! Another great thing about this recipe is that the ingredients are easily available in almost any grocery store and the prep and cooking techniques are pretty basic. Yet despite that, it is extremely tasty. The leftovers also reheat nicely, so if you cook a big batch (which is easy to do), you can zap yourself a plate of leftovers a day or two later and lose very little in terms of flavor and enjoyment.

It also looks pretty good on a plate.

Now go forth and eat eggplant!

A Fistful of Greens

Did I mention that the first several months of CSA deliveries are filled with greens, greens, and more greens? I did? Ok, well did I mentioned that once the summer kicks in, you start getting onions, onions, and more onions? No? Fortunately, onions keep longer than greens, so I'm not always desperately trying to cook them before they go bad. But after a few weeks it's easy to end up with a crisper full of onions that need to be moved on to a better place (like my stomach).

Today, I had such a crisper full of onions. I also had a fridge full of chard and kale from a week ago that did, in fact, desperately need to be cooked. And today was delivery-day, so more veg had just arrived. Time to hit the interwebs and find a recipe to use up all those greens and onions (not to be confused with green onions). The solution: Italian Greens and Spaghetti!

I found this gem in a post on a forum (thanks to the magic of Google knowing everything that is everywhere on the net). The recipe goes something like this [my modifications in italics in brackets]:

INGREDIENTS

2 tablespoons olive oil
3 large onions, thinly sliced [or in my case, two medium onions and three small ones]
2 large bunches swiss chard (trimmed and chopped, stems removed) [I used one big bunch of chard and one big bunch of kale]
4 garlic cloves, minced or pressed [I went with garlic powder out of laziness--prepping greens takes so much time!]
1 box  spaghetti (cook while making sauce)
2 14oz cans diced tomatoes [I used the kind pre-seasoned with garlic, oregano, & basil]
1/4 cup kalamata olives, chopped [plus extra -- loves me some kalamata olives]
handful toasted pine nuts [forgot to buy these -- I bet they would have been good]
salt, pepper, red pepper flakes [or not -- I didn't use any of these]

DIRECTIONS

- heat oil and saute onion until browned (about 20 min)
- add swiss chard leaves and toss until wilted (about 5 min)
- add garlic, salt, pepper and cook 30 seconds
- add tomatoes with juices and simmer about 5 minutes, until swiss chard is very tender and tomatoes start to break down
- toss spaghetti in sauce and transfer to serving bowl [I didn't actually do this. I kept them separate so that each plate could have a personalized noodle-to-veg ratio.]
- olives, nuts, cheese can be put on pasta in large serving bowl or each person can add their own in small bowls

TIPS AND TRICKS
I like to saute my "lots o greens" recipes in a wok. Greens cook down a lot, so you have to start with what seems like a massive amount of fresh greens. It's just easier to keep all the greens in the pan when the pan is a big, giant wok. Even then, I still have to put in a couple of handfuls, stir them around in the oil and get them to shrink a little, then add another couple of handfuls, and repeat until it's all in there.

Also, I like to saute my greens with rubber-tipped tongs. I feel it's important to be able to flip them over and get the oil on all sides. Plus, when adding fresh handfuls, it's easier to get those down underneath the already oily greens from the previous handfuls.

End result:

This turned out really yummy. The basil in the canned tomatoes really gave the whole dish a hearty sweetness. The texture of the greens and the pasta together was also really nice, as Amy pointed out while eating it. This recipe is definitely a keeper.

The Magnificent, Modular Stir-Fry

Each week, about a day before we pick up our CSA veggies, we get an e-mail from the CSA listing what veggies we will be getting. The e-mail also includes tips on how to use some of the vegetables that are coming that week. The e-mail is always aptly titled: "What do I do with all these veggies?" I say, "aptly," because that is the question that, as the primary chef in the house, I always ask myself upon receiving the e-mail. "What AM I going to do with these veggies?"

This year I'm realizing that, at least for the late spring/early summer veggies, "stir-fry" is a good answer for almost any list of veggies that comes in the e-mail.

A stir-fry is a very modular meal. It really boils down to these components:
* 2 - 4 different veggies
* a sauce and seasonings
* a starch - usually sauce or noodles
* a protein (optional) - as vegetarians, tofu is our go-to

In the past, I used to think that stir-fries had a limited range of acceptable vegetable ingredients. Onions and peppers. Broccoli. Snow peas. Water chestnuts. Carrots. Maybe bamboo shoots. But in the past few years I've realized that this is a narrow view. Also potentially narrowing the view is the idea of some "authentic" recipe. That's just a straight-jacket. What matters is: does it taste good? Even with a much wider range of ingredients, the answer seems to be a resounding "yes." Even better, that answer applies to not just my wife and I, but to our kids as well.

What kinds of veggies have I done in stir-fries? Greens work great! The trick is to know your greens. Easy-cooking greens like spinach can go right in with the stir fry. Slower-cooking greens like collards need a quick blanch (5 minutes in boiling water) followed by cooling & draining before going in the stir fry. Cabbage is another great leafy vegetable for stir-fries. Make sure they are cut into thin pieces, and just throw them in with the other veggies. Bok choy is amazing, because it's got a leafy part and a crunch part. Separate the two and add them at different points in the cooking process - crunchy bits first and leafy bits later. Yum!

Something I like to keep in mind when putting together a stir-fry is complementary vegetables. You don't want all greens. I also like one or two veggies that make for smaller but more substantial chunks. Broccoli is great. But a surprisingly good one is turnips. Cut them into slices/chunks that are maybe a 1/2" thick. Try to cook them so that the soften up a little, but not all the way (5 minutes maybe, or less depending on the size of the chunks). They sweeten up as they cook, but if you don't over-do it, they still provide a nice chew/crunch.  Amy says they're like water chestnuts with an actual taste to them. Good late spring/early summer veggies to round things out are onions, scallions, and carrots.

As for tofu - I've discovered a great tip for stir-frying tofu. It takes some extra time, but not as much as you might first imagine. The tip is dry frying. The linked article includes marinating, but that's not necessary. What I like to do is start the tofu dry-frying (it usually takes two pans on the stove), and while that's happening, I prep and chop the veggies. In a one-chef kitchen, that frequently times out nicely, though it does take some multi-tasking. Even without a marinade, the dry-frying improves the texture of the tofu and readies it for taking in a little sauce flavoring.

And that's a good segue into sauces. Another great thing about stir-fries is that there are a million different sauce recipes out there on the internet. Find a few favorites and just alternate them. I like thick sauces with a soy and vinegar base and cornstarch as a thickening agent. Since most of the family doesn't like spicy food, I omit things like chilis and other hot spices. Here is the sauce I've been using lately. It's a "kung pao" sauce from an old "Sunset" wok cookbook I have.

Kung-pao stir-fry sauce (doubled from original)
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
2 tbsp dry sherry
6 tbsp water or broth
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch

Add the sauce in after everything is cooked. Stir everything rapidly as sauce comes to boil and starts to thicken. Then remove everything from the heat and stir a little more. Voila! Sauce-covered goodness.

Although we don't go spicy here, we do go for garlic. The trick with garlic is to mince it and then put it into the wok first. Heat up the oil in the wok. Then throw in the minced garlic and stir-fry it for about 30 seconds. Then start putting in your other veggies. Good news for spring-time CSA work is that garlic scapes are great for this too! The mincing is a bit tougher, but once that's done it goes great in the dish. Same rules apply: stir-fry for 30 seconds then add veggies. Added bonus: the garlic scrapes add some nice green color to otherwise blandly-colored dishes. The stir-frying also softens up the scapes.

Our formerly picky-eater kids have come to accept, if not embrace the stir-fry. I've made two CSA stir-fries this season, each with a different veggie mix, and I've had no complaints. There have even been some trips for seconds. Here's a qualitative ingredient list for these two stir fries:

Stir-fry #1 (pictured above)
Bok choy
Scallions (great big ones!)
Broccoli
Extra firm tofu
Garlic scapes
Served over rice

Stir-fry #2
Cabbage
Sweet onion
Carrots
Baby turnips
Firm silken tofu (dry-fry is a must for silken tofu - makes it hold together nicely for the stir-fry)
Garlic scapes
Chinese stir-fry noodles (boiled, drained & rinsed, stir-fried separately, then mixed in before adding sauce)

Both these dishes used the kung-pao sauce I mentioned above.

So there you have it, a loose guide to making stir-fries from what you have on hand. I may not be the stir-fry king, but I'm a pretty decent stir-fry squire.

Thai Spring Rolls

Did I mention that springtime CSA deliveries are all about greens and salad fixin's? Lettuce, lettuce, and more lettuce. Scallions out the wazoo. Radishes and baby turnips. Great if you like salads. Like salads every day. Fine by me, but maybe less fine by Amy. She's not quite the rabid (rabbit?) salad lover that I am. So what do you do with a bunch of salad fixin's if you don't want to have salad.

Well, obviously, you go to the internet!

And when you get there, you find at least one awesome recommendation: Thai spring rolls.

Have you ever had Thai spring rolls? I kind of think of them as salad rolls. They're fresh ingredients, including lettuce & carrots and other veggie stuff, wrapped in thin, moist rice wrappers. Amy has pointed out that vermicelli (or some similar noodle) is also a critical component, although I never really noticed that myself. And, of course, there's some kind of dipping sauce. That's a critical component as well. Apparently carnivores frequently include shrimp or chicken, but even as a former carnivore that seems not quite right. One of the beauties of Thai spring rolls to me has always been that fresh, raw vegginess.

So, anyway, last night I set about to make us some CSA Thai spring rolls. Here's how I did it.

First I went to the store and got some spring roll wrappers. Turns out even our semi-lame Food Lion store sells them. "Red Rose Spring Roll Skin." Great.

There were a number of recipes on the web, but they kind of boiled down to "you can put whatever veggies you want in your spring rolls." My restaurant experience with them clearly involved lettuce and carrots. Amy's clearly involved noodles. I decided I also wanted to use some of these other salad goodies from the CSA: baby turnips and radishes. So here's the sum total ingredients:

• Chopped leaf lettuce (CSA) - about a cup and a half
• One medium-size radish, shredded (CSA)
• One medium-size baby turnip, shredded (CSA)
• Six or so baby carrots, shredded (store-bought)
• 5 red scallions, chopped (CSA)
• Bean thread noodles (softened in boiling-hot water), about 1/3 package (had them in the pantry)
• About 1/4 cup chopped, fresh cilantro (store-bought)
• 2 tbsp lime juice

All that went into a bowl, and I mixed it up by hand. Voila, instant spring roll innards.

Sauce:

This is the base sauce that I went with: http://vegetarian.about.com/od/saucesdipsspreads/r/DippingSauce.htm

I didn't use fresh garlic, not because I didn't have any, but because all the other chopping took so long that I just didn't want to deal with it. So I used garlic powder instead (1/4 teaspoon). Also, I decided I wanted some peanut taste to it, because that's what I remember from the restaurants. So I added some peanut butter. I just eyeballed this. I added it after I had cooked up everything else according to the instructions, and just whisked it in.

Wrapping the rolls!

This was the exciting part. It turned what was just so much veggie-stuff into cool-looking rolls. It turns out it's not really that hard. I read the step-by-step instructions here: http://vegetarian.about.com/od/cookingtipstools/ss/Howtospringroll.htm

When all was said and done, it looked like this:

So how was it?

Way better than I expected. I had enough veggie mix to make 8 rolls, and still have leftover mix. Those rolls were great. I really did not expect my first shot at this to turn out so much like the restaurant rolls. They weren't perfect, however. First, I didn't roll them tight enough, and when I cut them in half, the ingredients tended to spill out. I corrected this the following day when I made a second batch of five rolls with the leftover mix. Rolled more tightly, this problem pretty much went away. Second, the bean thread noodles were very limp, and didn't provide the same texture as the noodles in the rolls we've had in restaurants. I'll have to experiment with some other noodles in future batches. Lastly, Amy said she prefers a sauce that is more straight "peanut sauce." Again, I'll have to do some internet research and try some different sauce recipes.

But bottom line was that these were a huge success. They tasted great, and they really did provide a way to use CSA spring salad vegetables without making another salad. Anyone who likes or thinks they might like vegetable Thai spring rolls should definitely try making them. They're much easier than you might think. And they're a great way to add some fresh, raw veggies to your diet.

YUM!

Mashies and Spinach

If you haven't done the CSA thing before, there's something you need to know: the first few weeks are all about greens. Lettuces and cooking greens. Multiple kinds of each. First week was two heads of leaf lettuce, a bag of lettuce, a bag of "micro-greens", spinach, kale, and assorted onions and radishes. That was a couple of weeks ago, but the following weeks haven't been much different.

So you end up eating a lot of salad and cooking a lot of greens. Cooking greens can be quick and simple or long and complex depending on the green in question and how you want to cook it. Some greens, like collards take a lot of prep, while others, like spinach, can pretty much go straight into the pan. Maybe everyone already knows this. I certainly didn't before last year. Learning how to prep and cook greens was a big part of last spring for me.

Which brings us to last Friday's meal. I knew I needed to start cooking some of the greens in the fridge, but I really wasn't in the mood (and didn't have the time) to do the whole prep song-and-dance that goes with kale or collards. Fortunately, we had a big bag of loose-leaf CSA spinach. But greens don't fill you up, so I needed something to go with it. We had some store-bought red potatoes in the pantry, so we decided to make some mashed potatoes to round out the meal.

One more thing that needs mentioning at this point: an odd thing that shows up a lot in the spring CSA deliveries is "garlic scapes". These are long, green tendrils that look kind of like the green ends of scallions, but they are stiffer. They are part of the garlic plant, and thus carry a mild garlic flavor, but they can be a bit weird to use because of their texture. This week I had a batch of scapes, so I decided to throw them into the mashed potatoes and see what happened.

So here it is--last Friday's meal: Mashies & Spinach

Potatoes:
I cut the taters into chunks and put them in water to boil--the usual method for prepping mashed potatoes. In addition, however, I threw all my garlic scapes into the pot with the taters. Once the scapes had softened, I took them out and cut them into small pieces while the potatoes finished cooking. Then, when I mashed the potatoes, I threw the scape pieces in as well. Otherwise, the potato prep was pretty traditional: milk, butter, and salt and lots of mashing with my trusty hand-masher.

Spinach:
Before cooking the greens, I chopped up about 5 cloves of garlic. I put some olive oil in a wok and turned on the heat. Then I tossed in about half the garlic. I like using a wok to cook my greens because the start out taking up a lot of volume, though by the end of it, they cook down quite a bit. My usual method of cooking greens is to add a handful, saute them until they start to shrink, then throw in another handful, and repeat until all the greens are in. Then I tossed in the rest of the garlic, and cooked them just long enough for the last handful of spinach to cook down a little bit. I like my greens cooked just enough, not turned into mush. Once cooked, I put them on the plate and then shake a little balsamic vinegar on them. This is my basic, go-to greens recipe.

So how was it?
Not bad. The cooked garlic scape turned out to just add color and texture to the potatoes, but not much flavor. That was ok, however, because it's hard to go wrong with mashed potatoes. Butter and salt them up, and they're all kinds of yummy. The greens turned out as expected. I had to acquire a taste for cooked greens last year, as I never like them growing up and never cooked them myself until last year's CSA experience. They're not my favorite food, but I do like them now. These were the first cooked greens of the year, and they turned out pretty good. All things considered, it was a tasty meal.

CSA notes:
The spinach and garlic scapes were from the CSA. The potatoes and regular garlic were store-bought.