Fall CSA Week 6
Lately, while nap-trapped or nursing I have been reading newsletters by people who write about food & cooking. Specifically, The Best Bit, Left Burner, & Flour Ranch, but there is an endless stream of musing that I could peruse. Each post is paired with an interesting recipe, that in general, serve as sparks of inspiration for me. I am not a recipe follower, so what these newsletters really offer me are beautiful thoughts about food. I find it so lovely to read a chef use proper terminology like tempering or mirepoix. I like to imagine them typing up a tid-bit about their perfectly glazed chicken, favorite kitchen tools, starchy soup cravings, seasonal fruit delights, baking with lard (which I am KEEN on these days while nursing a dairy & egg intolerant baby). The kitchen is a whole world... of routine, movement, mess, emotion, craving, bubbling & sizzling, music. A world of our own, but also a very special portal to bring others into.
Over the years, cooking multiple meals for my home everyday has become an intuitive, creative ease to me. I feel quite lucky about this. In large part due to farming, I have grown into & enjoy cooking with the seasons. The self-imposed constraints of this (ex. I don’t tend to buy cucumbers in January) offer my brain an ever-changing, clear palette to work with. I keep an ongoing note in my head of which veggies are sitting in the crisper & what summer bounty remains in the freezer or preserved on pantry shelves. From there I integrate at least a protein, potentially a grain as well. This week or so meals have looked like:
Sauteed grated beets & freezer cherry tomatoes, served with brothy, sumac stewed lamb. A warming venison, fennel, carrot stew. Spicy, oil-based napa cabbage & watermelon radish slaw served with sweet potato, sausage hash. Cabbage, bean, chicken soup topped with raw apple. Curry, ginger butternut squash soup. Roasted honeynut squash & stewed apples. Fennel-y chicken thighs cooked in a summer red pepper tomato sauce. Spinach pesto pasta with salty, oily whole roasted carrots & salmon.
These meals fed us, a postpartum mom, and a handful of friends. My kitchen moves through just a small amount of the farm’s bounty, which makes me wonder what all the other hands peeling a butternut or chopping a carrot created recently. Where inspiration was found & who the final result was shared with. All of our small worlds coinciding.
Morning
Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.
Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum.
The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.
The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture.
Then laps the bowl clean.
Then wants to go out into the world
where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn,
then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.
I watch her a little while, thinking:
what more could I do with wild words?
I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her.
I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me.
- Mary Oliver
CSA Week 6…
This is our best guess of what will be in the share. List subject to changes.
~ Salad mix
~ Garlic
~ Onions
~ Winter squash
~ Carrots
~ Leeks
~ Fennel
REMINDER: NO CSA PICKUP NEXT WEEKEND DUE TO THE HOLIDAY
Recipes to pair…
Spicy roasted carrots with mint, almond, & lemon
Apple & fennel stuffing (I would also add leeks to this)
As always, feel free to reach out!
Mik