What did you do with your CSA share this week

By the way, here's what your lettuce looked like before it came out of the ground -- the shadow is mine, and just above it, you can see one of my slug beer traps which, as you probably have realized by now, did not work nearly as well as one would have hoped.

This week, June 8th delivery, you got: spinach, loose lettuce, a head of lettuce, green onions, mizuna mustard, baby turnips, and sugar snap peas. Some of you also got Cornish game hens, quail, eggs, and John's bread.

I got most of the same things, and I mostly plan to eat salads (having consumed my share of sugar snap peas while picking -- and I still argue they are best raw, maybe with a little dip of some kind, but since mine never make it in the house, I can't vouch for that last statement). My favorite salad in the world is spinach, green onion, blue cheese, an apple, an avacado and a garlicy vinegrette or Paul Newman's balsamic dressing. When I run out of spinach, I go to the greens and do the same thing. I sure hope some of you have better ideas.

Here's my suggestions for the scary looking turnips and their greens again -- anyone try this?

Peel the turnips best you can and dice into about ½” squares. Chop some bacon and fry it until crisp. Remove the bacon and use the far to fry up the turnip dice. While it is cooking, wash (gotta wash everything from our farm – this will be obvious) the turnip greens and chop the top third or half. Throw these greens in with the turnips and sauté until the greens are tender. Serve warm with the bacon bits mixed back in. This is really good with steak on the barbeque ( a healthy alternative – except the bacon part – to potatoes).


You can also use the turnips and greens as part of a stir fry – replace the bacon with a mix of sesame and vegetable oil. Fry the turnips and greens in the oil as above. Add the mizuna mustard a minute or so after you add the turnip greens. Throw some spinach in if it looks skimpy. Then add whatever cooked meat you want in your stir fry along with a little soy sauce.

And if you got bread and eggs, a great breakfast, one my mom used to make, is called "spit in the eye" (and for those of you who know my mom, this is an odd recipe title for her to have grown fond of -- must have come from my saltier grandmother). Make a one inch or so hole in the middle of a slice of bread (and eat it to tide you over until you are done cooking), melt a slice of butter in a frying pan and heat to egg frying temp. Fry the bread for a bit (personal preference here -- I like the bread soft; Nick likes it crunchier). Break an egg into the hole, fry for a while (again, personal preference -- fry until the yolk is as hard as you like it in a fried egg). Flip the bread over and fry a minute longer.

So what are you doing with your loot? And please, even if you are not a CSA member, feel free to comment on how you used your Green Fence Farm produce, eggs, or meat (I am less interested in what you did with your Safeway purchases from Chile).