This week we got something I’ve never seen before: husk tomatoes, or as I learned they are also called, ground cherries.  From my internet research, they are either related to, or the same thing as, gooseberries.  They look sort of like tiny tomatillos, little yellow tomatoes inside lantern-like husks, but they taste sweet, a lot [...]

We’ve been getting so may cucumbers from the CSA that we don’t know what to do with them.  I’ve been making a noble effort at eating them in salads, but with two to six a week, it’s a losing battle.  We kept saying we should try making pickles.  Then, last week we got four little [...]

This week we got a couple things I was particularly excited about: green peppers, more tomatoes, sweet corn, and some hilarious tiny cucumbers for pickling.  Once I saw the cilantro, I decided we needed to make some salsa.  I adapted one of Mark Bittman’s recipes to make use of what we had, primarily the addition [...]

When I first joined the CSA, I didn’t really know how little I knew about produce.  Faced with a giant pile of veggies every week, knowing what to make with all of it is only part of the challenge.  Knowing how to store it is a big part of making a CSA work for you, [...]

One of my favorite blogs, Not Eating Out in New York, is a great resource for home cooks.  Cathy, the author, is a member of the Crown Heights CSA, and she recently had a post about CSA Stress.  It’s what happens a few weeks into the season when your crisper drawer starts to fill up [...]

We got another big bunch of kale with this week’s CSA share, and where better to find a way to use is than at a blog called I Heart Kale?  This frittata recipe calls for a parsnip, but we used one of this week’s turnips instead and added scallions, because we had them.  We also [...]

There are a couple things we expect to be making a lot with our CSA veggies.  One is quiche.  Quiche is a great way to use greens that we might not be that interested in eating by themselves.  We’ve used kale and chard instead of spinach in Florentine-style quiche, and it works out great (not [...]

With the strawberries we got from the CSA, I had no choice but to make homemade strawberry shortcake.  There is nothing quite like the tiny local strawberries, bursting with sweetness, on top of a freshly baked shortcake (none of this supermarket angel food cake nonsense) with a dollop of whipped cream.  And it’s easy!
Pat-in-the-Pan Strawberry [...]

This is why I love my slow cooker: last night, I chopped up one potato, one onion, three carrots, two celery stalks, and a 6 oz. package of Canadian Bacon.  I threw them together in a Tupperware, put it in the fridge, and went to bed.

This morning, I sprayed the Crock Pot with Pam, checked [...]

We love beets.  LOVE them.  Neither of us ate them as kids, but thanks to my restaurant and the CSA, we have grown to absolutely adore them.  We’ve become those freaky people who look at a restaurant menu and exclaim to each other, “Look, they have beets!”  They’ve also made their way into many of [...]