Vegetable Soup

While I'm on the subject of CSA vegetables, I would be saddened not to share with you the delicious soup I made this weekend. Whenever my CSA gives me celery, the first thing I think to make is soup. This week my soup included:

Celery
Chard
Carrots
Green Beans
Butter Beans
Red Onion
Dill
Fire Roasted Tomatoes (Muir Glen, these are the best!)

This soup was so easy it is kind of ridiculous. Chop veggies (or use food processor). Heat onion, celery and carrots in a little oil until flavorful and/or a little soft. Add the green beans, tomatoes and water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer until carrots and green beans are almost done. Add in precooked beans, chopped chard and chopped dill and cook until the greens are just wilted. I added a little salt at this point. Some days I ate it and it didn't taste like enough salt, but today when I was starving it tasted just fine!

Soooo good! And so good for you! This pot ended up huge and my boyfriend doesn't like soup. I shared a bit with my mom and froze one portion, but I have been working my way through this for days now.

And I'm not even close to sick of it!

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!

Mmmm

I don't recall at this point which recipe I used to make the brownie (I believe I have it written somewhere in my kitchen) but these were some of the best brownies I have ever made and that includes the beet brownies which were darn good.  I topped this one with some vanilla coconut milk ice cream and some cocoa powder mixed with agave and water.  I may or may not have had this for dinner 2 nights in a row.

I don't feel so bad about that because I also had this delicious salad somewhere in there.

 Again, can't remember the specifics, but avocado, kalamata olives, spinach, tortilla strips and a dressing probably made of tahini and lemon juice.  Yum.  Now I wish I had eaten that for dinner.

I also made this delicious refrigerator soup using up the last of my veggies.  Red cabbage, chard, fresh corn, carrots, onion, a couple of potatoes and some fresh dill.  Man was it delicious.  I ate it with avocado and some rye toast with earth balance.  All in all I recreated this meal 3 times in 3 days.  Once with guacamole instead of plain avocado.  Yum.