Hey, folks. It's SarahKK, your friendly area food editor, commandeering the blog for a bit. We've been talking on and off about starting a recipe blog, but it hasn't yet come to pass. So for now, we are doing occasional guest posts here with recipes. So, hi!
I'm a newbie to the whole CSA (that's Community-Supported Agriculture) situation and looking for some suggestions. My house is signed up for one with an early-bird program (in which it trades with some farms up and down the East Coast for some out-of-area items and includes some from cold storage), and we picked up our first share last night.
My husband and son came home with: 1 head of garlic, 3 pounds of potatoes, 1 pound of spinach, 2 pounds of the biggest carrots I've ever seen (each carrot is a pound), 4 pounds of apples, 3 red grapefruit, 3 oranges, 1 butternut squash, 1 dozen eggs, 1 loaf of challah, and a bag of mushrooms.
Whoa.
I'm solo parenting this weekend (without my husband, who does most of the cooking), so it's up to me to figure out how to use this stuff.
I poked around for some recipes yesterday. Here are some of my ideas:
- -- Cheesy Butternut Squash and Quinoa Casserole (bonus: contains quinoa and apple sausage, both of which we have on hand)
- -- Whole Wheat Apple Muffins
- -- Spinach Soup with Rosemary Croutons
- -- Curried Carrot Soup
- -- My husband's family recipe for marinated mushrooms
(Yes, I ended up finding a lot of inspiration in this photo gallery of recipes from Eating Well.) But I am definitely open to suggestions. If you have recipes or preservation ideas, I am all ears. I'll report back next week on what I made, what worked, and what didn't.
For the record, we're signed up with Breezy Willow Farm in Howard. This Howard County Times story has details on a bunch of other CSAs in Howard, and we're compiling more information on area farms and programs now, as well. We'll get that posted soon.
(Photo by me)