SUMMER CSA: WEEK 4

3 yellow zucchini
1 bunch of teeny-tiny radishes
2 leeks
2 onions
6 Yukon Gold potatoes
½ bunch sage
½ bunch basil
1 head lettuce
11 carrots
Italian flat beans (forgot to count them)

Hooray, more Italian flat beans! That’s the most remarkable part of this week’s haul; there’s not even any exotic Californian fruit to liven things up. While I was unpacking the bag of produce last night, A and I agreed that the summer CSA selection has been pretty tame compared to the winter one. That makes it less work to fit the produce into our menu, but it takes a little of the thrill of adventure away, too.

I’ll probably serve the flat beans with shallots and lemon again; they were just perfect that way before. The carrots and radishes will be snacks (I had some this morning, in fact; the carrots are sweet, while the radishes are remarkably spicy, belying their wee, cute appearance). I’m not sure about everything else. The lettuce is just begging me to make BLTs again, and the potatoes and basil make me think of pesto-potato pizza...although penne with potatoes and arugula would be good, too; are there enough potatoes for both? I'm stumped on the leeks--I wonder if I could sub them for the red onion in the potato-arugula pasta recipe? Otherwise, I'm tempted to just make this seductive leek confit and then figure out what to do with it later, like throw it into eggs or on sandwiches or something. Yellow squash salad would be a natural use for a couple of the yellow zucchini. The one item that looks likely to defeat me is the sage; I think of it as more of a fall/winter herb and don’t think I have any recipes that call for it that don’t also involve butternut squash. Maybe I can freeze it.

Here’s what happened to the last box:

• Leek: Used in pasta with bacon, leeks, and mushrooms
• Carrots: Eaten as snacks
• Rosemary: Thrown away, sadly, after I failed to use or freeze it
• Potatoes: Used in a pretty tasty pesto-potato salad with green beans, which I failed to post here because I felt like maybe my execution was a little flawed; I overcooked the potatoes, which made me feel like I was eating cold mashed potatoes, and I don't think I had enough pesto, and although I really liked having the pine nuts whole in the salad rather than blended into the pesto, it was odd to have shredded Parmesan in there--it might have been better off blended in. I'd like to try it with my pesto recipe (minus the pine nuts), because parsley really brightens things up. If I do attempt it again and improve upon my first attempt, I'll post it.
  
• Oranges: Eaten
• Arugula: Used in corn, arugula, and bacon salad
• Spinach: Thrown into the pasta with bacon, leeks, and mushrooms when I realized I didn’t have anything else to do with it. It was a tasty addition that added some nice color; I would actually consider doing it again in the future.
• Celery: Eaten as snacks
• Cucumber Used in fattoush
• Honey: Not used yet, but honey ice cream is in my plan for this weekend.