The kids and I picked up the CSA today from Gorman Farm. It's a fun reading, counting, and measuring lesson, though we try to go earlier, so we don't irritate commuters with ChaseKBH's spelling and lack of understanding about what half a pound feels like. Today we ended up going later than is ideal, but we had a blast picking out our items. Of great interest was three pounds of cucumbers, which are to become pickles. ChaseKBH is adamant that we only make cute pickles, not grossie or ugly pickles. I have no idea why he cares so much about the appearance of the pickles.
There was a bonus table at the CSA today, but we ended up not taking anything, as we are behind having done so much traveling. We did trade our squash for a second head of lettuce, as squash is just not well enough liked in this house for the quantities of a mid-Atlantic harvest. We also got a beautiful bounty of garlic that I'm looking forward to using extensively.
It was way, way too hot to cook for real. I cheated and microwaved some corn on the cob (the almost-four year old doesn't really care), and pan-sauteed some frozen chicken breasts, and made a big salad with random green stuff. It seemed to be a hit, though the husband believed the dressing was too acidic. We're out of olive oil, but the oils used seemed to work well. The salad might have been a bit overdressed, but eh, proportions are easy to fudge a bit. As for the verdict, well, the almost-four-year-old ate a bit of chicken, a bite of leaves with nothing on them, some cucumbers, and a lot of corn. The one year old ate corn, leftover pasta, and some cucumber. The grownups finished a large bowl of salad.
Random Leaves Salad
I suspect that the same thing could be done with pretty much anything that's green and can be eaten raw.
Ingredients:
1 large head red or green leaf lettuce (we used red), washed and torn into bite sized pieces
2 giant handfuls of basil, stemmed, washed and large leaves torn into bite sized pieces
3 giant handfuls of parsley, stemmed and washed
2 teaspoons salt, divided
1/2 cup oil (I used grapeseed, canola, and about a 1/8 of a cup of truffle oil)
2 cloves of garlic
Juice of one large juicy lemon
1 teaspoon pepper
1 cup roughly torn basil
Method:
- Rinse leaves, dry well (spin in a salad spinner), and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon salt. Set aside.
- Add 1/8 cup oil, garlic, lemon, salt, pepper, and basil to a blender. Pulverize.
- Slowly drizzle in remaining oil until desired consistency is achieved.
- Taste.
- Drizzle in oil and/or lemon as needed to balance.
- Toss leaves with the dressing, set rest aside for another day.
- Top with grilled or pan sauteed protein if desired.
