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I just started reading “Plenty”, by Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon. I’ve been wanting to read it for awhile now (it’s been out three years), but just didn’t get around to it. Then, last week, out of the blue, I got email from Bookmooch telling me a copy was available, and, wonder of all wonders, I actually got to it before anyone else did. Interspersed between the first and second chapters (“March” and “April”) is a recipe for what I think is a really lovely-sounding appetizer, or amuse-bouche, as they put it, involving disks of steamed beet topped with little potato-blue cheese croquettes and a sauce made of applesauce stirred into melted butter. It was the way the recipe ends, however, that really caught me—”Serve in the center of a very large plate, alone and a little heartbreaking.” Hm. Now, I suppose you have to take into account the fact that at this early point in the narrative, Smith and MacKinnon are starting to despair that they’ll be living on little other than potatoes for an entire year if they want to carry through with their “100-mile diet” experiment. All a matter of perspective, I guess.
I kind of know how they feel. Not that I’m attempting anything like a 100-mile diet—just the CSA. But I swear, if I see another cabbage, or cucumber, or even an ear of corn I might very well start screaming. I wouldn’t mind so much if I had a chest freezer (or anywhere to put one), or even just a basement (see previous), but at this point, I’ve got more than half a freezer full of quart baggies of miscellaneous veggies, plus three quart jars of fridge pickles and a largish container of oven-dried tomatoes. And of course we’ve been eating veggies all the time as well. I felt a little like an ingrate last week when I had to turn down the offer of a second head of iceberg lettuce (ick, iceberg—I didn’t even really want the first one), explaining that I just didn’t have enough room in my fridge. The response sounded tired and exasperated: “Well, it’s feast or famine.” I get it, I really do, and I appreciate these folks’ generosity, but I did only sign up for half a bushel every week, and with good reason—there’s only the two of us to eat all this stuff. Lately, though, I’ve been getting more like a full bushel, and the veggies are kind of taking over my life, like something out of a cheap-ass sci-fi/horror movie. Obviously, I would have made a lousy farm-wife—I can just hear my maternal grandmother tsk-ing at me from the great beyond. I never met her, but I hear tell she never failed to stock her cellar to bursting with all manner of pickled and canned fruits and veggies.
I am trying, though—taking baby steps. Who knows, maybe I’ll get up the nerve (and somehow find the time) to try the real deal—real pickling. Lord knows I’ve got enough cukes.
I know this is nothing new to any of you out there who’ve done CSAs before, and I had certainly heard enough about the vagaries of CSA shares that I should have known this would come. As of Friday evening, I’d hit a crisis point—way too much cabbage. Two massive (as in bowling ball-sized) heads, in fact, were taking up space in the fridge, and procrastination was no longer an option.
Cole slaw, of course, would be the obvious thing to make with this bounty, but I’d already made that a few weeks ago (albeit a non-standard version), and much as I like cole slaw, I just couldn’t feature eating several gallons of the stuff. Stuffed cabbage was out, too—I remember my Grandma’s sisters and nieces making it for family reunions, and I remember my Mom trying to replicate the recipe, not quite so successfully. It’s sort of like making tamales—which I love, but have never summoned up the ambition to make. So there was no way I was going to make stuffed cabbage, which I feel rather meh about.
What to do? Other than cole slaw, and other, similar salad-like recipes, I could find very little in the way of summer-y cabbage recipes on Epicurious, foodandwine.com or anywhere else on the web (I did find this recipe for a very interesting-sounding Indian take on cabbage, but decided to try it another time). So I finally gave in, and decided to do St. Patty’s Day in July. (Why should Christmas be the only holiday to double-dip?)
The main event: baked cabbage with bacon…
and since we needed something to round out the meal: Irish soda bread with raisins and caraway…
Both were unqualified successes. The hubby described the baked cabbage as being like “a bowlful of bacon”, in a good way—the bacon and cabbage melded together nicely, both in taste and texture, with a healthy dose of toasted bread crumbs providing a little contrast. And the bread—the best soda bread I’ve ever had, hands down. I was initially a little worried about the combo of raisins and caraway (which usually puts me in mind of rye bread), but it was a good, if unusual, pairing.
Now if I could just figure out what to do with all the summer squash and cukes…
I’m only two weeks into my CSA, and I’m already dangerously close to being in the weeds, so to speak. Come Friday, when I went to pick up this week’s half bushel, I still had a bunch of radishes and a cabbage left over from last week’s bounty (plus a heel of zucchini bread and a few slices of thick-cut bacon, but those are much less of a problem). So, today I kicked it into overdrive in the kitchen:
The kernels got sliced off of the two ears of corn (yeah, I know–corn, in Michigan, in June? Something seems fishy with this CSA, but I’ll get back to you on that one) and baked into corn muffins (my favorite recipe is this one).
The cabbage, several radishes (last week’s bunch–there were more this week!), and this week’s bunch of green onions, plus half of a Granny Smith apple, chopped up fine, together with a bottle of blue cheese dressing, several splashes of apple cider vinegar, some celery seed, salt and pepper, went into this unconventional cole slaw–
Put those together with a slow-cooked pork shoulder, and we’ve got dinner, plus lots of leftovers for lunches (no last-minute peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches this week–sorry, hubby).
As if that weren’t enough, I also blanched and froze the couple of handfuls of okra we got in the box, because there was no way I was using that this week (I didn’t bother taking a photo of those slimy little buggers–which I’m sure will be perfectly yummy in a gumbo sometime soon, so no offense, okra-lovers). Most of what’s left now is greens (collard, kale and spinach), which are just going to have to wait til later this week (maybe a greens gratin?), because my dogs are definitely barking.
Candied bacon is so last year…
Well, seal is organic…
Okay, I know this has been a pretty sad excuse for a blog lately (and yes, I can just hear some of you saying “lately?”–don’t think that I can’t 
). But really, I have a good excuse–actually a couple of them. (more…)
… the recipe I made for last night’s MLFB cookie exchange: (more…)
Okay, I feel a little silly posting about this, but my husband assures me that this will be of vital interest to the rest of human civilization, so here goes: (more…)
The recent MLFB Oktoberfest/Soup Exchange (which, sadly, I was just too busy to attend) reminded me of a truly weird German soup I once had. (more…)
Yes, it’s taken me a ridiculously long time to get these up here (blame it on overtime at work), but finally, here’s the photos from the Michigan Lady Food Blogger get-together at Hollerfest: (more…)
Friday evening David and I decided to go out to eat, as we had a bunch of gift certificates from restaurant.com* burning a hole in our pocket, including one for a place in downtown Plymouth. Somehow, despite the fact that we’ve been living just a short drive away for something like 10 years now, we’d never managed to do more than just drive through Plymouth, but now we know what we’ve been missing out on, we’re definitely going to be going back. (more…)