CSA Week #6
Week 6 of my Wellspring Farm CSA included:
Potatoes Salad Mix Broccoli Tomato Cucumbers Yellow Squash Zucchini Garlic
And everything cleaned, prepped, and ready for storage:
Salad mix is vacuum sealed in pint canning jars; it will keep for 4 to 6 days this way. (Heartier lettuce like romaine will last for two weeks, even if cut.)
Broccoli is washed and slightly cut up as I had to remove some bad spots. Broccoli should never be vacuum sealed unless blanched first. Cauliflower as well.
Potatoes are washed and placed in loose bags in my cool storage (55°F), not refrigerated. (Later on I bought some paper lunch bags and transferred my potatoes to paper bags, which are better than the plastic bags pictured above.)
Squash and zucchini are vacuum sealed and refrigerated. I'm rethinking my vacuum sealing, however. It looks good at first; even after weeks zucchini 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.
Cucumber is vacuum sealed with a paper towel and placed in the refrigerator; this seems to work quite well, even if the cucumber is cut. 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!
Garlic is put in my garlic jar in my 55°F cool storage.
Tomatoes are left out on the counter, never refrigerated as they lose their flavor. Cut tomatoes are refrigerated, however. But it's best to avoid that.
I made:
Delmonico steak with broccoli and potatoes with garlic, butter, and parsley with the broccoli. The potatoes were from Week #5, but are the same purple potatoes in as Week #6.
Beef with broccoli and scallions stir-fry.
Rosemary garlic lamb pita with tzatziki with one of the cucumbers.
There was garlic in Thai refrigerator (random sort of Thai stir-fry whose contents were based on what I had in my refrigerator).
I made Zucchini stir fry with bacon with the zucchini.
Half a cucumber went into Local cheeseburger, corn, and tomato and cucumber salad .
I used the last of the potatoes to make Steak Fries .
Also: