CSA Box: Squash, Turnips, Okra, Tomatoes, Corn, and more!

Produce picked fresh the day you pick it up from the farm. Who could imagine something better that delicious goodies you can see being grown and prepare that evening in your home! Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has been growing in popularity around the country. A CSA is when a local farm offers up limited "shares" of the harvest for sale to community members. I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to purchase a half-share at Full Circle Farms in Sunnyvale, Calif. After picking up my first week of produce, I posed a question to Twitter to see if anyone would be interested in how I am using my CSA box each week. You asked, and I delivered. This was my box for the week of October 11th.

This delivery included:

• Silver Queen Corn
• Red Russian Kale
• Oils of Paicines Organic Olive Oil Sample
• Yellow Borettana Onions
• Sage
• Mixed Peppers: Poblano, Hot Wax, Dried Cayenne
• Slicer Tomato
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Hakurei Turnips
• Sweet Dumpling Squash
• Okra

I knew I would be traveling for part of the week at a debate tournament. Which meant that I both wanted to ensure I used the produce before traveling but also wanted to bring some of these goodies with me on the plane.

Corn: I did a quick partial steam on the corn to set the milk. Once it cooled, I used the OXO Good Grips Corn Peeler I scored from IFBC, to shuck the kernels. I then dehydrated them and bagged them for use later this winter. Snuck a couple bites for a snack and it was sweet and country. Can't wait to throw them into a dish or just munch on them one afternoon!

Kale: This one was easy. Kale chips!

Olive Oil & Sage: I washed and left the sage leaves to dry between paper towels. I then sliced the sage leaves into ribbons and added it to the oil to infused. I should have sage oil soon!

Onions: Sliced thin, I added these to a homemade miso soup.

Mixed Peppers: Sliced and dried to spice up future recipes!

Slicer Tomato: Sliced and ate fresh by itself. Fresh local tomatoes are amazing!

Cherry Tomatoes: These were cut in half and tossed into the dehydrator. After drying, I had snacks for the plane.

Turnips: These were sliced super thin, tossed in a drizzle of organic canola oil and some sea salt and chili powder. Dried to make turnip chips for traveling.

Squash: Sliced and drizzled with coconut oil. Roasted. Yum.

Okra: Spicy Okra Fries to enjoy on my trip to the airport.

Hopefully this gave you some ideas! I look forward to sharing the bounty and how it is used each week. However, I would love your ideas. How would you have used the goodies in this week's CSA box?

Creamy Green Garlic and Fennel Soup

Ever since I received my Hamilton Beach 2-speed Hand Blender from CSN Stores, I have been dying to make soup. But with the weather in California heating up, I knew whatever I decided on would have to be on the lighter side. So when my latest produce delivery included green garlic and fennel bulbs, I KNEW what I wanted to try.

Green garlic season is now, so if you want to try this recipe, take advantage of the season before it is gone! Green garlic is harvested before the garlic cloves have begun to develop. The resulting plant looks almost like a scallion. It is milder in garlic flavor and when it is cooked, it sweetens and gets a unique complex flavor which needs minimal seasoning. Which is why it was perfect for this soup!

I have previously written about fennel when creating a simple salad last year. I used two fennel bulbs that are smaller in size but you can probably get away with one larger bulb. I only used the white of the bulb, and a bit of the fern for garnish.

The soup stays light, but creamy, through the use of unsweetened vanilla almond milk (I use Blue Diamond Almond Breeze) and the blending of the vegetables to create the thicker soup. I used my new Hamilton 2-speed hand blender which allowed me to blend the soup in the stockpot. It was quick and easy to use and clean which was a nice change from having to pour soups into my blender in batches. Letting the soup sit allows a natural thickening to occur and it reheated well for later meals.

Green Garlic and Fennel Soup
Serves 4

4 Green Garlic stalks, diced (include light green as well as white part of the stalk)
2 small fennel bulbs, slices
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups unsweetened vanilla almond milk
1 cup water
sea salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in a stock pot and add garlic and fennel. Toss garlic and fennel in oil for about a minute before reducing the heat. Sprinkle salt and pepper and cover, letting the garlic and fennel sweat in the covered pot. When the garlic and fennel have begun to caramelize, add almond milk and water. Stir and cover. Let simmer for twenty minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and using an immersion or hand blender, blend the ingredients together. The soup should be slightly chunky unless you want a smoother soup. Let sit for five minutes before serving, or store and reheat later.

Nutritional Information (per serving): 63 calories, 5 grams of fat, 1.75 grams of fiber, 1 gram of protein

Green Garlic

Simple Fennel Salad

Fennel was a vegetable I was alway afraid of. I mean, look at it! It has this big white bulb on the bottom and these light and fluffy tufts of green on top. How would one prepare such a unique vegetable?

As someone who loves black licorice, I was excited to try this vegetable because I heard it was also known as "Sweet Anise." But as I learned from Howard Yoon at NPR, "Anise is a pungent pint-sized herb, while 'sweet anise' — or fennel — is a hearty vegetable with a thick, bulbous base and celery-like stems that grow upward to 5 feet tall. It has a sweeter, more delicate flavor than anise."

However, if you love that thick Anise flavor, save the fronds/ferns that grow at the top of the plant. Yoon explains, "Though all parts of the Florence fennel are edible, the stalks tend to be fibrous, like celery, while the fronds can have an anise intensity that might turn off some people. The thick white leaves of the base offer the most versatile use. When cooked, the leaves become supple, the same way onions lose their firmness, and retain only a faint hint of anise."

I began first with roasting as this is how I try a number of vegetables for the first time because of the ease of preparation and the carmelization of the sugars in the vegetable. However, I had another teacher share with me her love of raw fennel and I had to try it. Now every chance I have to score some fennel, I make this salad.


Simple Fennel Salad.

1 Fennel bulb with ferns still attached
Unfiltered olive oil (or your favorite olive oil)
Fresh ground black pepper

Wash the bulb thouroughly and remove the stalks with the ferns. Set aside for use later. Slice the bulb into rings and place on your plate. Drizzle oil and sprinkle black pepper to taste. Add fern tufts for color and added flavor profile. This last part is optional depending on how much you love Anise. Yum!

One cup of sliced fennel has only 27 calories, 2.7 grams of fiber and 1 gram of protein.

Cleaning out the fridge: Slow Cooker Slop!

There will be no pictures, the creation was in no way photogenic. But trust me when I say it is delicious. And if you are like me and have produce left at the end of the week, you should try this out.

I love fresh produce. I love it so much that in addition to my CSA, I get additional produce during the week.

I also sometimes veer off course of my planned menu. Which means I sometimes have produce that would go to waste if I didn't create something else.

My favorite use for produce near the end of it's life is to toss it all in the slow cooker (aka crock pot) with some broth and seasonings, and let it simmer on low all day.

You can blend up the resulting soup to get a creamier soup, or just enjoy it chunky.

It's easy to make and filling to eat!

My latest Slow Cooker Slop included onions, carrots, broccoli, garlic, and cauliflower. I used low sodium organic chicken broth and Mrs. Dash garlic and herb seasoning. For those of you counting points, a cup of this would be zero. A giant bowl might be one.

Quick, Inexpensive, Delicious Dinner

My mother made a lot of instant ramen when I was growing up. I realize now that is was because the noodles were cheap and quick to cook. But she would always make sure to add fresh vegetables and protein to the soup in order to bulk it out and stretch it to feed the whole family.

With summer months signaling lots of fresh produce, and also being so hot that you may not want to spend much time in the kitchen, I bring you my version of Mom's soup.

To lighten up the soup a bit, I used udon noodles which are not fried like ramen noodles. Depending on the store, these can be found in the cooler or on the shelf. The package I bought was less than 250 calories for the whole package, and I managed three entree bowls with the finished product.


I started by heating up a teaspoon of canola oil in the bottom of the pan and sauteing some garlic, onions, miniature turnips and carrots. I then added water (you could add broth to up the flavor, but I didn't have any) and cooked the noodles into the soup. I added an egg for inexpensive and quick protein and whisked the soup to break up the egg as it cooked. I added the flavor packet and tossed in some greens that needed to be used.

Simple. Inexpensive. Delicious.

Beet Chips

Two beets, mandolined into chips
Cooking spray
Seasoning Salt

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Spray cookie sheet with cooking spray. (I use unfiltered olive oil in a misto bottle). Lay bet slives out and sprinkle with seasoning salt. Bake for 40 minutes or until desired texture, flipping every 15 minutes or so.

You can do this with most root vegetables. Tonight I also made rutabaga and turnip chips. Mine vary between being leathery and burnt crisp based on temperature and cook time. You can speed up cook time by upping the temperature but you want to check more frequently so they don't burn!

Make sure to count the points for the respective serving size if you munch on a higher calorie root veggie or each a number of beets :-)