Zucchini Zucchini

So I know I haven't posted any pictures from our vegetable deliveries, I've been a little busy preparing to move, but also our deliveries have been pretty standard.  Regular old cabbage (the kind you would see at Kroger's) tiny potatoes, and zucchini, a couple of greens here and there but all things I've seen before.  BUT I thought I'd stop in and post about what I did with some of the vegetables, after all I got cabbage three weeks in a row (I don't like cooked cabbage THAT much) and at some point we had 4 giant Zucchinis in our fridge. 

With the cabbage I discovered that I can actually make coleslaw.  I thought it was something really difficult and hard to make (I've had a lot of really bad coleslaw) but actually it's pretty simple.  I just used the standard Southern Living cookbook's barbecue slaw (I really love that cookbook).  It's not the best coleslaw in the world but it's much better than any coleslaw I've had in a long time... AND what's even better it only used ingredients that I had in my cupboard and need to get rid of (less than a month left at post!), I even took it to one of those potluck events that the consulate community is so fond of. 

The zucchini was tougher.  I roasted it, grilled it, stir fried it--but still I was getting a lukewarm reception from the discerning duo.  Finally, over everyone's objections I went searching for a zucchini bread recipe (strangely enough none of my cookbooks have that recipe, I thought it was an American staple).  When the Smitten Kitchen turned up in my search results I went no further (her food is AMAZING!) So I made her zucchini bread, and she did not disappoint.  The muffins (because why make a big huge loaf when you can have muffins?) I made using her recipe were great, flavorful moist, delicious. 

Unfortunately, I STILL have zucchini.  I think next will be zucchini pancakes for dinner. 

Two meals of fava beans

So I did get myself together to make a fava bean puree.  It was good, but boy are fava beans a lot of work!  To be able to eat them you have to shell them twice! 

 Luckily Babes proved able to handle this part of the task and we had a lot of *fun* shelling beans and watching a movie!

Then they need to be blanched.

 and peeled again (Babes was adept at this too)

Then they are ready to be simmered with oil, garlic, and herbs

Next comes the smashing (or in my case blending--I love my stick blender!)

FINALLY we can eat!

I served my Fava puree on some oatmeal sourdough that I pulled out of the freezer, some boiled potatoes tossed with butter, stir fried greens (the purple ones) and a little feta cheese.  I actually really liked the puree with the feta and next time I might puree them together. 
The very next day I used the second half of the batch of fava beans (prepared up to the second shelling so I didn't have to go through all that AGAIN) in a pasta stir fry.  I basically sauteed the fava beans with red bell peppers, garlic, a few greens, and cherry tomatoes and tossed it over angel hair pasta.  YUM!   And we did two vegetarian meals in a row, how about that?

2 weeks of veggies

So I forgot to post pictures of our veggies last week, and I already have this weeks veggies.  I was sick last week so we still have more than half of our veggies from last week to eat up.  I foresee a couple of vegetarian meals in our future.  Which is good because that means I don't have to order meat until next week. 

 

Last week we got, yup you guessed it, more greens.

  

These were interesting, mild in flavor, very tiny and pretty good stir fried with the grass.  

  

I had no idea what these were, they look like oversized peas, but when you open them
 

 They are fuzzy inside and look a little like lima beans.  It turns out they are fava beans.  I'm pretty excited to cook them, they are supposed to be great spring beans to eat.  

  

This week there were still greens, but less of them.   Look at that purple green!  

 And some more fava beans and potatoes.  I think maybe tonight I'll try them pureed, I don't think Babes will eat it, but I've been wrong before. 

Greens, Potatoes, and grits

So this week we did not get 5 lbs of greens.  We got 4 lbs of greens and 1 lb of tiny potatoes.  Which is a plus I guess.  Do you remember the grass from last year?  Well we got it again.  It actually stir fries nicely.  Maybe the are some type of chive?  They do have a very very faint onion or garlic taste to them.  The weeds from last week did not stir fry up so nicely, they tasted like weeds.  *sigh*  I also just tossed out some of the really stinky greens.  I don't know what they are, but they smell bad raw and when cooked they smell and taste worse. 

 The stinky greens are the heart shaped ones in the middle.

I know I've been MIA lately, in case you were wondering what I've been up to, I've been trying to use up our food stores in the run up to our pack out (beginning of July?).  We have a plethora of grits so I've been trying to come up with clever ways to use them up.  I have made grits pudding, grits pancakes, and used a ton of grits instead of rice or potatoes, but still.....  I have not taken any pictures though because well grits pudding was REALLY gross looking (although it tasted good-like a grainy bread pudding), and grits pancakes just look like pancakes.  I am going to try making leftover grits muffins but I think I want to make them savory instead of sweet.

5 lbs of greens

Have you ever wondered what 5 pounds of greens looks like?  Well, I didn't either, but I found out yesterday.  Our weekly delivery of organic produce consisted of 5 lbs of leafy things.

Most of them I've seen before, some I like, some I REALLY don't like, but we did have a new addition yesterday.  They looked like weeds. 

I mean I swear I've seen them in the back yard, and they smelled like weeds, when I chopped them it smelled like I was cutting dandelion leaves, or grass or something.  What did they taste like?  Well, exactly like what I thought cooked grass would taste like.  Now the question is, how do I cook up and disguise 5 lbs of greens so that DH and babes stop complaining about cooked weeds?

what is this?

I finally got back in touch with our organic vegetable farmer and we're back to the "What on earth is this?" weekly exercise.  Actually that's not true, for the most part I've been getting a ton of various types of cabbage (I can't say we don't eat enough green leafy vegetables, If I never see another Qin Cai after we leave here it will be too soon) and root vegetables.  The past two weeks have seen a bumper crop of carrots and radishes.  Tell me internets what do you do with a pound of radishes?  Especially since DH and Babes aren't too fond of them.  I might have some pickling in my future....
Anyway, we've also received these things, which kind of look like broccoli, kind of look like cabbage, and kind of look like Brussels sprouts.

Not knowing what to do with them, and since they look too fat to stir fry (I stir fry just about everything I get in that green bag) I roasted them.

Roasting works well for Brussels sprouts, but not for whatever this was... or maybe I roasted them too long.  I'm going to try steaming next, and also the Google image search to see if I can't figure out what they are.

Vegetables!

Summer is here and our weekly vegetable delivery has gotten a lot more exciting!  There has been green beans, beets, cucumbers, some tiny tiny tomatoes, corn and a lot of eggplant.  This week I was on a mission to find something to do with the corn, which despite the freshness was rock hard.  I've been told that only American sweet corn is soft, sweet and delicious, corn every where else is hard and chewy.  That being the case, corn on the cob was out.  I made corn fritters last week, Babes and DH liked them, but I was underwhelmed, the amount of work, and the frying involved didn't seem worth it.  This week I tried out Corn pudding.  I got the recipe out of the all-new ultimate southern living cookbook. I have found that I really like this cookbook.  I have it because of their chocolate cake recipe, which is awesome, 3 layers with a whipped cream like filling, covered with a dark fudgey chocolate frosting, so good!  But I have made a bunch of stuff from it and it has all been very good.
I even liked the corn pudding, I was surprised to find it a little like corn bread.  In my head, I thought it would be more of a savory pudding with a vanilla pudding like texture, but it was not at all.  It was dense and chewy, not as grainy as cornbread, but not creamy like vanilla pudding.  Anyway, I used my yellow and purple corn in it and the kernels almost softened to my liking.... I wonder if I soaked the corn overnight....
Anyway, I also have TONS of eggplant, so I made some feta eggplant rolls to go on the side.  I don't think the meal really went together, but it was a sort of use up the delivery before the next vegetable delivery came.
Here are some pics... I really should figure out how to take food pics, these don't really look all that appetizing. 

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

This week's bounty

From Blogger Pictures

So this is what came in our bag this week. Not as exotic. Lots of potatoes and greens. But it's good that we like cabbage, especially fried up with garlic.


Although, is this grass? The closest thing I can come up with is wheat or barley grass.
And of course the ever mysterious:

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

In other news I've been playing around with Picasa and blogger and trying to work out how to post pictures on the blog without tearing out my hair--the great firewall makes it very hard to post pictures to blogger (blogger being blocked of course) but Picasa is not and so far this seems to be working. We'll see.
I am working on a travel post, so pictures of Xian and Beijing to come!

Purple sweet potatoes!

As previously mentioned we are part of an organic farm co-op and last weeks delivery bag held a bunch of potatoes.... or so I thought. I was all geared up to make mashed potatoes or something when I washed them.... imagine my surprise, then when I started peeling them and discovered this.

From Blogger Pictures

That's right, these bad boys were bright purple inside. I was put out for a minute, but I had actually purchased a few of these from the store and was able to look up the chinese name online. These are called chestnut sweet potatoes. In English they are just referred to as purple sweet potatoes (an english search for chestnut sweet potatoes yields squat). They are apparently popular in Filipino cuisines.

From Blogger Pictures

I looked around for a recipe that would not require too much effort as dinner time was fast approaching. I decided on making a sweet potato Gnocchi with walnut cream sauce. The purple sweet potatoes have a much milder flavor than regular sweet potatoes, even though they are bright purple.

From Blogger Pictures

I think it might be cool to serve this to guests, after all how often do you get purple gnocchi?

food glorious food!

Today I finally got around to cleaning out my refrigerator to see what was in there. It turns out that I still had quite a few vegetables? in there. Our weekly delivery from the local organic farms has been both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand I am able (forced) to try out all sorts of new and unusual vegetables that I wouldn't necessarily have the courage to try. On the other, I usually have no idea what the things are that arrive in our weekly bag. Also, while some of my experiments with winter melon have proved edible, winter melon is by no means something I want to eat all the time, yet we get a LOT of it. Anyway, here is what I found in my fridge. Some of these things are obviously some sort of potato. I think they might even be sweet potatoes not of the orange variety (I even have purple sweet potatoes but more on that later). I have no idea what the big thing in the middle is. I think it might be bamboo.... but I could be completely wrong.

From Blogger Pictures

There were also some really big radishes included, but I can't find the picture, and I want to post this!
We also bought some tiny bananas. I have been told that they are super sweet, but I will of course, never try them since bananas of any type make me gag (I have only just recently been able to contain my revulsion enough to be able to make banana muffins, but it's still horrible!)

From Blogger Pictures

But they are really cute.
Anyway, I am going to stop here so that I can post this tonight. Coming up Buddha's fist and Purple sweet potatoes.