CSA Spectacular: August Highlights

Achievement: #26. Join a CSA

Well, obviously we got a bit behind on our CSA reporting, so I’ll just do some month-long highlight posts to feature some of our favorite dishes.

One of our favorite recipes (which we made quite a few times in the end of the summer) was from our dear friend Linda’s blog, Dinner Plan-It. Linda is an awesome cook and recipe designer, but she’s also an expert home-mixologist. And when we saw her recipe for the A-maize-ing Margarita, we couldn’t resist trying it.

CSA - August Dishes
We were getting a lot of corn in the late summer, but not all of it was prime corn-on-the-cob quality. However, it worked just perfectly as corn milk syrup for this margarita. I should note: after talking it over with Linda, we ended up using a LOT less sugar than the original recipe for the corn milk syrup, but it all depends on your personal preference for sweetness. My mum preferred it with more sugar, but for me (a not-sweet-drink person), the corn itself was really sweet enough, and I only needed like another tablespoon at most.

CSA - August Highlights
Around the same time that we were getting a lot of corn, we also came into possession of some green tomatoes, and I thought: this is the perfect excuse to whip up one of my favorite side dishes (which I’d only ever had at restaurants.)

CSA - August Highlights
I whipped up this Cooking Light recipe for fried green tomatoes, with oven-fried catfish with rémoulade sauce from Gourmet.

Loved the rémoulade, and the catfish turned out pretty decent, but I think that if I go back and make fried green tomatoes again, I’ll pop them into the deep fryer instead of pan-frying. The cornmeal just didn’t settle onto the tomatoes well enough in the pan, and I think immersing them in oil would likely fix that problem. But paired with the a-maize-ing margaritas, this was a pretty decent southern dinner! (You can read about Lucy’s experience of the fried green tomatoes here.)

CSA - August Dishes
Also in August, we got some great potatoes (and another batch of corn), and I made this delicious chipotle-corn mashed potatoes recipe. These are some of the best, most-unique mashed potatoes I’ve ever had; just the tiniest bit spicy, but also garlicky (I threw in 2 tablespoons of garlic scapes and 3 green onions for good measure – you can never use too many in this house!). On the side there is a quick veggie recipe, green bean & red bell pepper toss both the greens and beans of which came from our farm share.

CSA - August Dishes
One of the new foods that we received in our farm share was rainbow chard, which is a type of (multi-colored) green.

CSA - August Dishes
I used the rainbow chard in a modified version of this recipe for pasta with beet greens. You can pretty freely sub different types of greens (beet greens, chard, etc.) much of the time, so we used the rainbow chard and some lemon noodles from Trader Joe’s, which wound up being a tasty (and pretty light!) meal.

CSA - August Dishes
With some of our leftover potatoes, my dad made some of his famous homemade french fries! Say what you want about the Potato Patch, but even they can’t touch the amazingness that is my dad’s fries!

CSA - August Dishes
That same night, I had a giant spaghetti squash with no plans…

CSA - August Dishes
So I whipped up this delicious spaghetti squash cake with orange cream cheese icing. So good and moist and creamy – and since it’s a cake made out of vegetables, it can’t possibly be bad for you! 🙂

CSA - August Dishes
Finally, toward the end of summer, we started getting quite a bit of different types of onions. Red onions are our favorite, and we got a couple of gigantic ones!

CSA - August Dishes
It’s a simple meal, but it’s satisfying as hell: lox, cream cheese, fresh-baked bagels and a large pile of chopped red onions for lunch. You don’t always have to go all out to make use of your CSA.

Check back later this week for our September & October CSA wrap-ups as we journey through a month of blogging!

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Filed under #26, #26-13, booze, buy fresh buy local, cocktails, cooking, cooking light, CSA, farm, side dishes, summer

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