What's in the Box - February '10

Green Beans

Raspberries

Blueberries

Red Tomatoes - mix of two varieties called, believe it or not, Roma and Juliet

Fall Greens - given the option of kale or collards, I chose kale

Peppers - mixed red & green

Pea Shoots

Yellow & Green Summer Squash

Finished Products - Winter meets Summer

After making the bread pudding, I had about a cup of pureed butternut squash left. I was wondering what to do with it when E. brought over some millet, which reminded me of some millet muffins I'd made last year. A quick google for "pumpkin millet muffins" turned up (surprise!) Pumpkin and Millet Muffins courtesy of Whole Foods. I replaced the sour cream with plain yogurt, and used 1% milk instead of whole. Next time I'm going to halve the cloves, but other than that, the recipe was a success.

Incidentally, the irregular quadrilateral shape of the muffins is the result of my not actually having a muffin tin. So I just stick as many paper liners as I can in a lasagne dish and let them all squish up against each other. It works well enough as long as I have enough batter to make JUST the right number of muffins that fit in the dish.

Then I had half of the package of broccoli left, after putting some curry M. and I had one night. Also in the freezer were some chicken (cooked) and some pesto, made (I think) from the opal basil I got back in August and waiting patiently in frozen form ever since. Combine all that with a half a pound of whole wheat pasta and call it dinner. And then lunch for a few days.


Not pictured is a big mess of bell peppers, onions, black beans, and cubes of butternut squash, sauteed, and rolled up in a tortilla with grated cheddar and the tomatillo salsa that had only been in the freezer since October. And since the black beans were freezer goods also, I felt, on the whole, very accomplished because now there's actually room in there for next week's pick-up!

Weekend Brunch

Mmm... Pumpkin bread pudding...

Yes, there is more to it than just me drooling over the memory of this dish.

One of the things I received in the January delivery was a pouch of pureed butternut squash. I cook with winter squash a lot, but it's usually in chunks, and I actually had to think a bit to decide what I could do with the puree. And then, while I was hungrily browsing some other food blogs last Friday, I suddenly remembered something that was sitting in the freezer along with the squash: a loaf of cinnamon swirl bread from Great Harvest. And suddenly I knew what A., A., M., and I were going to have for brunch on Sunday.

Bread pudding is one of those dishes that is really impossibly easy and also incredibly satisfying. In this case, you just mix in some of the squash puree with the milk & egg, and basically call it a day.


And you might want to add in some spices: cinnamon, ginger, allspice, and cloves. I doubled the spices, per the recommendation from nearly every reader comment on Epicurious, except for the cinnamon, since there was a lot in the bread already. And I cut the sugar in half, which will make sense to anyone who has had the aforementioned cinnamon swirl bread.

Then, because I am sometimes incredibly lazy, I dotted the butter (again, less than called for) over the bread instead of melting it and mixing it in.

Pour over the egg/milk/squash mess:



And bake for a half hour at 350F. Or a bit longer if you think it needs it.

I was so excited to eat this that I forgot to take a picture at first. So this is A.'s half-finished plate.

Normally these days I am not such a fan of sweet breakfasts. But damn, this was good.

What's in the Box - January '10

Blackberries - 6 oz

Butternut Squash (pureed) - 16 oz

Red Tomatoes - 24 oz

Broccoli Florets - 9.5 oz

Yellow Tomatoes - 24 oz

Edamame - 12 oz

Carrots - 2 lbs

I said I was getting prophetic about these deliveries, and sure enough, what did I buy last week, merely days before the list was sent out? A butternut squash and a 2-lb bag of carrots. D'oh.

Well, anyway, most of the squash is gone (in mole poblano) and the rest is frozen in steamed chunks, so now I have my pick of that vs. puree. And carrots basically don't go bad. Ooh, I am very much out of pickled carrots. I think it might be time to make another batch...

Mid-Week Dessert

E. came over for dinner last night, which was a terribly exciting leftover lasagne that I'd made and stuck in the freezer before I flew to Colorado for New Year's. It's actually a really wonderful recipe, from Deborah Madison, made with eggplant and Swiss chard. But since sticking a baking dish in the oven for an hour is not my idea of cooking, I decided that we also needed something sweet to indulge in while watching Battlestar Galactica.

Enter David Lebovitz.

I am proving to be a little prophetic about what we'll be getting each month, but not in a useful way. For example, two days before the December list was sent out, I bought two bags of frozen berries. And then found myself blessed with a pouch of blueberries and a little container of raspberries. So when life gives you berries, you make berry cobbler.

First you toss together some berries with a little sugar, flour, and lemon juice, just like pie filling. Dump it in a baking dish and bake for a half hour.

Meanwhile you make the dough for the drop biscuits, in which I used plain yogurt instead of buttermilk, like I always do.

Bake another 20 minutes and you're done.

Next time it's either going in a wider, flatter baking dish or else it needs to be baked longer, because the biscuit topping wasn't quite cooked through. E. and I didn't have any trouble eating it, though...

Freezer Bounty

A. and C. came over for dinner the week before Christmas, and we raided the stash of veggies in my freezer to concoct a meal for ourselves. Or more specifically, I let A. use whatever she wanted and we filled in the holes at Agata & Valentina, and ended up with a really delicious pasta dish with sausage and veggies in a tomato sauce. Then also a beet salad with goat cheese, pistachios, and parsley, and absinthe ice cream with chopped chocolate truffles.

I seem to be having some issues with blogger, because it doesn't want me to reorder these photos. And since I've already put off posting this for several weeks, I think I'm going to surrender that battle. So in no particular order, here we go.

Here is the finished sauce:

A. had wanted more tomatoes, but I explained to her several times that all that was available in my kitchen was the pouch of what I'd gotten from Winter Sun Farms.

Here is my ice cream maker, hard at work on the base, with the chopped chocolate truffles waiting patiently for their turn to be added:

And the unassembled beet salad:

This is the sauce mid-preparation:

And some action shots of A. at work:

What's in the Box - December '09

Green Beans

Raspberries

Blueberries

Red Roma Tomatoes

Tri-color Peppers

Yellow & Green Summer Squash

Edamame

Pea Shoots

(all frozen except for the pea shoots)