Obscurity in the USA

Two of my meals on a recent day were absolutely cliché. Breakfast: two scrambled eggs with salt and pepper, two slices of toast, buttered with homemade raspberry jam, a pear, and tea with milk. Lunch: peanut butter and honey on whole wheat sandwich, carrot, apple, glass of milk, and two my-version ‘cowboy’ cookies. My plans for dinner were: pasta with tomato, basil and onion sauce, sautéed dandelion greens, and, if I’m lucky, red wine.

See, a CSA box isn’t that weird! Ok, when I looked at the long dandelion greens the other morning and asked the market clerk, “What’s that?” I didn’t have a clear idea about how I was going to integrate the greens into my weekly vegetable consumption, although after she identified them I immediately recognized the leaf, posing a further (internal) question, “Why are you selling me this?” The fact that I got two more green cabbages also fills me with some trepidation. But, I’m looking on the bright side, which is that I’m going to visit my parents later and THEY can figure out just what to make of the cylinder beets, my growing stockpile of bunches of radishes, and those scarlet runner beans I’ve now had for two weeks….

Last night’s dinner was a CSA salad, miso soup with onion and CSA bok choy.

Beyond that it gets fuzzy, but other successful meals last week include:

Obscure CSA greens casserole (kale, chard, herbs, beet greens, radish greens, spinach, arugula, mizuna, frisee, etc. Sautee, then toss with a béchamel , cover in cheese and bran nibs, and bake! Ta-da, delicious.)

Plum and rice stuffed CSA bell peppers

Ground CSA wheat berries flour in a plum cake

CSA lettuce salads with CSA radishes

Snacks of plums, CSA nectarines and CSA pears

So, how creative does one have to be? Pretty creative, really. Especially since broccoli shows up regularly, and how is one to eat that much of it? Once every couple of months is fine, but every other week? It’s draining on my artistic ability in the kitchen. I’m about ready to just make plate decorations with the newest cucumber I got – can you believe they sent another one! My lifetime intake of green cabbage has taken a multiple hundreds of percentage increase. But it’s all ok, because I really, really didn’t know that some obscure greens are so good (in sauce), and I had an ear of corn nearly every day last week!

Also, since I pawn off all the boring cauliflower (and because I figured it was somewhat greedy and therefore made it up by having baked turnips the following night), I’ll just mention quietly that I ate four baby Jerusalem artichokes with a hazelnut vinaigrette for dinner not too long ago and it was heavenly!