It's nearing the end of the CSA season and that makes me a bit sad. Our CSA will be offering some late season boxes this year and I think we will take advantage of them. I really could tell the end of summer was here with this box. The tomatoes are quite as pretty as before and there are a lot more roots in here.

This week's box:
-cucumbers
-zuchinni
-potatoes
-green cabbage
-winter squash
-cilantro
-Beauty Heart radishes
-tomatillos
-tomatoes (of three varieties: heirloom, stuffers and sungold cherries)
-carrots
-garlic
-sweet pepper
-onion
-jalepenos (which had turned red)

I'm sure M. will miss his BLT sandwiches when the CSA season is over and we have to see what tomatoes actually cost at the store. But until then, he's in tomato heaven.

For the second year, M. and I are part of a CSA. We chose to join up with Driftless Organics mostly because we love great produce, but also because one of the founders/farmers/owners is a college friend of his. Josh Engel and his brother Noah have been growing colorful organic potatoes since they were young kids. It turned into a full fledged organic farm and last year they started a CSA program.

Every other Friday, I pick up a large box of farm fresh produce. We look forward to finding out what is in the next box like little kids anticipating Christmas presents. I should have been documenting each and every spread as I unpacked the boxes, but so far I have only remembered twice. Also included in our box is a newsletter which lets us in on what's going on at the farm, what's in the box, some ideas on how to use some of the more unusual items we might receive and a recipe or two.


In this box, we received 4 ears of sweet corn, lacinato kale, yellow summer squash, zucchini, carrots, potatoes, pickling cucumbers, some peppers which were brown and very tasty, white onions, mini mixed peppers, sungold cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, mixed heirloom tomatoes, and garlic.

This was our most recent box. In it was, two delicata squashes, carrots, zucchini, red potatoes, red onion, garlic, mixed mini peppers, that spicy brown pepper, very sweet red pepper, eggplant, collard greens, edamame, roma tomatoes, mixed heirloom tomatoes, cilantro, sage, and a giant head of red cabbage.

I am going to try to document what few boxes we have left. We are also hoping to purchase some post-season veggies from Josh. Last winter, we ate our weight in delicata squash and made loads of purple kraut with his amazing red cabbage. I'm hoping we can make enough kraut to last us the winter. Last year, we ran out in January or February and it was rather sad. (I'll be sure to document the kraut production when it happens).

We received a nice slender violet eggplant in our most recent CSA box. I didn't really know what to do with eggplant and the only thing that came to mind was eggplant parmigiana. I also had a bumper crop of giant basil leaves in our rooftop garden which was just waiting to be made into some of the freshest pesto in town. So I got creative.

First the eggplant. I have no idea how to cook with such an ingredient, so I just made it up. Thickly sliced and salted each piece. Mixed up an egg, with some flour and some water to a pancake like consistency. After dipping the eggplant I fried it up in some saved bacon grease until each was a crispy golden brown.

Meanwhile I had cleaned and trimmed the basil and some flat leaf parsley (both from our roof-top garden). Toasted some pine nuts and crushed a couple cloves of garlic (from our CSA). Put everything in the food processor with some olive oil and some Parmesan cheese. Blended it up until it was a nice pasty green. Also had some angel hair pasta cooking in my big dutch oven next to the frying eggplant.

When the pasta was done, I stirred the raw pesto (I don't usually cook mine cause I like flavors to be extremely bold) into the noodles. We topped the pasta with a couple pieces of eggplant (which was like candy, so smooth and sweet inside with a crunchy fried coating) and some more parm. cheese.

For a side salad, we chopped some red leaf lettuce, an heirloom tomato (we get so many tomatoes from the CSA this time of year we try to incorporate therm everywhere we can so they don't go bad before we can finish them), some small cucumbers (the first from our garden), some finely chopped onion and dressed it up with some Tarragon Dijon dressing.

Ingredients in this meal which came from our CSA share:
-eggplant
-heirloom tomato
-garlic
-onion

Ingredients in this meal which came from our roof-top garden:
-giant leaves of basil
-flat leaf parsley
-cucumbers

M. and I had one portion of shredded roast pork left from our wedding in the freezer and when I suggested tacos last night, he suggested using the pork. Add some onions, jalapenos, one spicy pepper which we don't know the name(a brown we one thought was sweet, but was obviously not), water and some spicy taco seasoning and let it simmer for an hour or so and we had a luscious pork feast which tasted a little like "carnitas" from Chipotle.

We put the meat in a crunchy taco shell with freshly shredded romaine lettuce, a chopped heirloom tomato, cheddar cheese, and a dollop of sour cream. I also made some spicy rice. Just regular rice with a good glop of salsa, some habenero sauce and Mexican blend corn (corn with peppers) all mixed up. Topped the whole shebang off with a glass of Sangria. Delicious.

Sometimes I wish we either followed a recipe or wrote down more detailed measurements of what we put into our cooking so we could replicate it at another time. This is one of those moments. This was so good I'd eat it every week if we could.

Ingredients in this meal which came from our CSA share:
-jalapeno pepper
-spicy brown pepper of unknown lineage
-red onion
-heirloom tomato

Ingredients in this meal which came from our roof-top garden:
-jalapeno pepper