CSA Box #1

Today I picked up my first CSA box from JR Organics at the Hillcrest Farmers Market.  Every other Sunday I will return one of these:

And get one of these:

Beets
Lettuce
Curly Kale
Purple Carrots
Peas
Blood Oranges
Mineola Tangerines
Pink Lady Apples
Sorrel
Leeks
Broccoli

I already had some kale, carrots and cauliflower from last weekend so I had to get busy.

I decided to make a vegetable soup.

 

I started out by slicing the leeks, some onion, carrots, garlic and a little bit of ginger and sauteing them in some oil.

  

Then I added some red cabbage and pequito beans I already had, the peas shelled, some more carrots, the beet greens, sorrel and the broccoli in large chunks.  I added a little dried parsley, paprika and salt and pepper.  Surprisingly, it turned out incredibly gingery.  It is still good but I didn't think I used that much ginger but it really took over.  Also the broth turned purple from the red cabbage which was totally cool.

Yesterday morning I went garage saling and found an estate sale with many kitchen gadgets.  I was lucky enough to find something I have wanted for a long time.

A citrus press!

With two full bunches of kale I thought it was a perfect opportunity to press some citrus and try out massaging kale.  Unfortunately the press is a little on the small side and so I had to quarter the lemon and lime instead of halve, but it worked incredibly well.

 

No juice left!

See this lime?  Looks innocent enough, right?  Wrong!  This lime has a peel that is tough as can be imagined and when I tried to cut it in half what happened?

The knife slipped and tried to cut off my fingertip!  Luckily, though I was panicking at the fact that I could have cut off my finger, my boyfriend was kind enough to wrap my wound (which thankfully was not that deep) in a Spidey bandaid and I was able to return to conquer that lime.

 

 Here is the kale earlier in the massaging process.  It is now quite a bit smaller and all dark green and tender.  I am still not sure what I am going to do with it all but I am thinking some sort of simple kale salad.  I guess I will figure that out tomorrow.  

Stay tuned for some home made chocolate peanut butter cups and pizza made with my home made vegeroni!