You know how when you were taught to check strawberries for bugs (which, FTR, was not a thing that I heard of until I was at least bat mitzvah), you were told that if you cut off the top and there's a hole down the middle, you have to cut the berry in half? It makes your chocolate-covered ones rather less attractive. Well, with local-grown in-season berries, that won't be a a problem:
you hardly ever see that hole because the berries are actually ripe and fully grown. I snarfed the entire quart within a day.
This week's haul:
- Romaine lettuce (x2)
- Red leaf lettuce
- Spinach
- Arugula
- Golden beets
- Asparagus
- Tomatoes (3 big fat ones from the greenhouse)
- A parsley plant
- Strawberries!!!
*Note to CSA-ers: farm fresh berries are a bit more delicate (and a lot more tasty) than the shipped from California type. Handle with care, preferably as soon as they arrive.*
There's some debate over hiding vegetables in other foods: advocates say its the best way to get reluctant eaters to consume healthy stuff: opponents say they need to learn to eat things straight out. Me, I'm a shvil hazahav kind of gal, and say do it all. Don't give up the carrot sticks entirely, that'll just set a bad precedent. But if you find a way to cause your kid (or a reluctant adult for that matter) to ingest vegetation, then by all means, cause them to ingest it.
Which brings me to the beets. I'm not a beet eater. I HATE chrain, I can't stand those pickled things people put in their shwarma, it's all bad. But one of the best lessons I learned last summer was that there's a way to get people to consume just about anything. It just takes a little creativity. Thanks to Anni Daulter's Organic Family Cookbook, I discovered the joy of homemade beet chips - and then discovered that QE will eat ANYTHING if you call it a chip.
But the problem with the beet chips is that I tend to burn them. I blame it on the internet. So for the times that I get beets and don't have the wherewithal to chip-ify them, I discovered a dirty little secret: chocolate beet cupcakes. You puree 'em and mix them into the batter and end up with super-moist magenta chocolate cake. It's like red velvet without the 3 bottles of food coloring. I've made both vegan and non-vegan recipes and confess that it's better with eggs, but still. You'll be surprised. QE came home from playgroup today and was happy to snarf one of the cupcakes I made. Then she came running back into the kitchen after an episode of Curious George and snatched another one off the cooling rack. I was so happy that she liked them that I almost let her have the second one.
CSA Tip # 4: Feel free to sneak fruit or veg into anything you feel like sneaking them into. Honestly, the sneakier the better. Cackle quietly to yourself as you do it.
I know people eat beet greens but cooked dark green leafies of any kind are really not my thing - except, of course, in chip form. So I attempted the green chip thing on this week's beet greens, to decent effect. I got smart this time and lowered the oven temp to 300, and I put the pieces on parchment instead of foil. It worked pretty well, and they taste good, with a bit more of a kick than kale or collards. And hey, QE still ate 'em, which is really all that I care about.
No comments:
Post a Comment