What's in the box, 10/23/14 edition

Wow, where did that last week go? From one box post to another, with nothing in between. I did cook many things with last week's box, but haven't found time to post anything yet. I'll try to catch up with posts soon. Coming soon: stuffed acorn squash, butternut squash enchilada casserole, and braised cabbage.

In this week's box: red oak leaf lettuce, parsley, cauliflower, watermelon radishes, carrots, green beans, arrowhead cabbage, rainbow chard, garlic, and a butternut squash.

I'm starting to fall behind with cabbage again....

What's in the box, 10/16/14 edition

There's still so much green in the box for a week in the fall. That said, the weather definitely hasn't been feeling like fall lately....

This week, the box contained a huge head of green oak leaf lettuce, cilantro, Easter egg radishes, two honeynut squash, leeks, beets, hakurei turnips, broccoli rabe, broccoli, escarole, and bok choy.

Links: moving into fall

All of the links below really demonstrate the move from summer vegetables to fall and winter ones.

Food 52's collection of galettes and savory pies. I'm particularly intrigued by the combination of mushrooms and fennel, something that I wouldn't have thought to try.

Herbed butternut squash chips. For a while, I was making everything into vegetable chips, but never tried it with butternut squash. Crispy butternut squash chips as a topping for butternut squash soup might be interesting (or might be too much butternut squash).

Food52's post on how to transform a head of cauliflower into dinner. All of the recipes in this post sound good. However, since the husband is not a huge cauliflower fan, we're unlikely to try many of them.

Charred broccoli and lentil salad. I roasted last week's head of broccoli in the oven, but then ate it on its own. If more broccoli comes, perhaps it'll make its way into a salad.

Joy the Baker's recipe for maple spiced almond milk with a hint of pumpkin. Not sure about the flavoring, but it was good to see the photos of the steps as I've been wanting to try to make my own almond milk (see one of my prior link posts).

This recipe for quick pickled apples looks interesting. Once we go apple picking, I'll be looking for things to do with a fridge full of apples. I'm planning to try pickling a couple now.

Sriracha roasted chickpeas and cauliflower with pickled mustard seeds. More pickling. I have a huge container of mustard seeds, so would like to try pickling them.

Fried green tomatoes and crockpot grits

I first made fried green tomatoes last year, using this recipe from Southern Living. We received a couple of green tomatoes in a recent box, so I made them again this year. You'll see from the photo below that one of the green tomatoes started to turn yellow before I made them.

For the breading station, you'll need

• 1/4 cup flour in one bowl, 
• 1 egg and 1/2 cup milk (the recipe called for buttermilk, but milk worked fine) blended together in another, and 
• 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 cup cornmeal, 1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp pepper in a third.

Dredge each tomato slice in the flour, then the egg and milk mixture, then the cornmeal mixture.

Fry in batches in vegetable oil. The recipe says to cook them for two minutes on each side.

After both sides have been fried, drain them on paper towels. I flipped them to the other side after a minute or two to drain both sides.

Season with salt and serve. The sliced that had started to ripen were a bit mushy, but still good. The green slices were definitely better though.

Given that fried green tomatoes from the south, I served them with grits. I had some stoneground grits in the freezer, but I didn't want to spend an hour stirring them constantly. A web search turned up this recipe for grits cooked in a crockpot. Another recipe included cream as well. I didn't have cooking spray, so I put a light coating of olive oil on the crockpot. I finished off the grits with a tablespoon of butter and a bit of cream.

The grits turned out pretty well, especially given that they did not require over an hour of hands on time. The crockpot did need to be soaked overnight and into the next day for clean up though.

Freezing herbs for the winter

When there are large bunches of herbs in a week's box, it can be hard to use all of the herbs before they start to get slimy. Instead of letting them go to waste, I freeze the extra for the winter.

In this case, I had a large bunch of cilantro.

I washed it and put it into the salad spinner, then removed the leaves to put into the food processor.

Here's the pile of stems. I didn't use them, but liked the photo.

Pour a little water into the food processor and grind up the herbs. Spoon them into a small ice cube tray. Then pour water over the herbs, which will allow them to be frozen into ice cubes. (There's very little water in the end; it won't be noticeable when you use the cubes in recipes.)

Cover the tray with plastic wrap and freeze, at least overnight. 

After freezing, remove the plastic wrap (I ended up with a light layer of ice on the plastic wrap, which makes the photo below look a bit odd).

Pop out the ice cubes. I was a bit disappointed, as it wasn't as easy to pop these out as I had expected with my new ice cube tray. That said, the tray did clean up much more easily than my old mini ice cube tray (which was cracked earlier this summer).

Put the cubes into a bag for the freezer. Label the cubes. If you don't, you'll never be able to tell the difference between frozen cilantro and other herbs like dill. Trust me on this one. (My labels fell off last year.)

I'll be doing the same over the weekend with the bunch of dill from this week's box.

What's in the box, 10/9/14 edition

It's been warm this fall, so there are still lots of leafy greens in the box.

This week, the box contains dill, kale, red oak leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, cabbage, carrots, broccoli, watermelon radishes, onions, and three types of beans.

The kale will likely end up as kale pesto again (yes, I'm in a bit of a rut with my kale usage). I might reserve a leaf or two to make the Oregon salad, as I have part of a head of red cabbage in my fridge from a prior week.

Some of the beans will be eaten raw as snacks. Some will be put on salads, raw and chopped. I will have to do something with some of them beyond that as well, as there was a full gallon bag of beans in the box. I have been thinking about making some Momofuku vinegar pickles with a few hakurei turnips I have left from last week's box and some carrots; I could add some beans to the mix as well.

I'd like to try roasting the broccoli in the oven, in the same manner that I roasted the head of cauliflower.

As for the dill, I'm thinking about making some egg salad with lots of dill. I'll have plenty left over, which will allow me to freeze some for use in the winter. I made cilantro cubes earlier this week; haven't had time to put up a post about that yet, but will soon. I used the ice cube tray that I posted about over the summer.

Refrigerator pickles

This post is coming a bit too late for the summer season, but I did just make some pickles last week with a large bag of cucumbers from my mom's garden.

You'll need cucumbers (they can be overgrown, as the pickling liquid will take away any bitterness), seasoned rice vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, and dill (I prefer fresh, but dried also works).

Wash and slice the cucumbers.

Layer them in a container, adding salt, pepper and dill between the layers.

Here's the container full of sliced cucumbers.

Make your pickling liquid. (This step can also be done before you slice the cucumbers.) Mix equal parts of rice vinegar and sugar in a saucepan. Depending upon the number of cucumbers I have, I usually use 1/2-1 cup of each.

Boil until the sugar dissolves, then turn off the heat.

Pour the liquid over the cucumbers and refrigerate. Don't worry if they're not completely covered, as the cucumbers will give off water and shrink down.

I usually shake the container after a few hours, when there's more liquid, to make sure that everything is covered.

The pickles are ready in 12 hours, but better after a full 24.