CSA Week #5
It's week 5 of my Wellspring Farm CSA and none too soon… my refrigerator was, surprisingly, looking a little bare!
This week:
Spicy mixed salad greens Cucumbers Yellow squash Zucchini Beets Carrot Purple Potatoes Basil Purple Scallions
Most things are vacuum sealed for freshness. The salad mix is vacuum sealed in canning jars so it doesn't get crushed.
I tried a new experiment with my cucumbers. Cucumbers definitely last longer in vacuum sealed bags but get really wet, especially if they've been cut. I thought I'd try sticking a paper towel in the vacuum bag and seeing what happens. Update: I decided that I no longer like this technique. After two weeks the cucumber looks and feels normal on the outside, but gets a bizarre texture on the inside!
I'm rethinking my vacuum sealing of zucchini. It looks good at first; even after weeks they seemed firm and not dried out. It wasn't until I sliced them I noticed fairly severe subcutaneous damage - soft spots right under the skin that aren't really visible until you cut them open.
Basil just gets its roots wrapped in a wet paper towel and placed in a ziplock bag. Scallions are just put in a ziplock bag as well, though this time I tried cutting them in half rather than bending them in half, un-cut, since they're too big for my bags.
Potatoes don't get vacuum sealed but do get washed and put into a bag and stored at 55°F , not refrigerator temperature (40°F). Later on I bought some paper lunch bags and transferred my potatoes to paper bags, which are better than the plastic bags pictured above.
I made:
A salad from the salad mix, cucumber, and carrots and served it with my carrot ginger soup .
A quick stir-fry of zucchini and a little bacon.
There are scallions in the Jamaican jerk-style chicken .
There were carrots and cucumber in my tuna sushi plate .
The purple potatoes went into Potatoes with butter, garlic, and parsley .
There were scallions in Beef with broccoli and scallions stir-fry .
There are beets in grated raw beet salad .
There were scallions in Thai refrigerator (random sort of Thai stir-fry whose contents were based on what I had in my refrigerator).
Also: Week 4