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Our farmer mentioned that there were extra English peas to pick if anyone one was interested so I went last night to see how many I could get.

I picked for around an hour and a half and got about a half a grocery bags worth:

And after an hour and a half of shelling by two people (while watching Shrek) we came up with this:

So… around 4.5 man hours of work and we have two quarts of peas to freeze for later. Man, it sucks to be a farmer. I can’t imagine picking enough peas for the other 70 ish people in our CSA or even trying to grow and freeze enough to last through the winter.

They have a very strong belief in a well structured cocktail hour

1 head of arrowhead cabbage quartered with core removed and shredded

3 carrots, grated

4 radishes, depending on size either grated or very thinly sliced

~1/2 cup of sour cream

3 heaping teaspoons cider vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

We’ve got a few weeks saved up here:

Week 2:

• Mizuna
• Green Onions
• Potatoes
• Cucumbers
• Asparagus
• Spinach
• Herbs
• Red Baby Bok Choy

Week 3:

• Two kinds of kale (Red Russian & Tuscan aka Dinosaur)
• Asparagus
• cucumbers
• herbs
• potatoes
• huge head of bok choy

Week 4:

• Strawberries!
• snap peas
• herbs
• mini potatoes (the last of the hot house potatoes, next comes field potatoes)
• kale
• lettuce

Week 5:

No Picture! We’re a the shore this week so my sister-in-law picked it up and we forgot to take a picture of it when she arrived. But here is what we got:

• Baby Bok Choy
• Radishes that my sister-in-law promptly ate most of
• Strawberries that got destroyed as soon a possible
• Tomatoes (oh they were so yummy!)
• English Peas –This was the first time my wife actually shelled a pea! She loved it!
• Scallions
• Arrowhead Cabbage
• Basil

We used the last few radishes and all of the cabbage and some carrots from the grocery store (blah!) to make a simple what we called “Shore Slaw”. We added some cider vinegar and light sour cream as well as some salt and pepper to finish off the mix.  The strawberries lasted for literally 5 minutes after they were washed and cut and combined with some local Jersey blueberries. YUM! The tomatoes have gone in salads, in and on omlettes. The peas have been shelled and are awaiting their fate in a salad. The basil has gone on eggs and omlettes all week. This week’s share has gone very quickly! Good thing it is almost Saturday again (ok so it’s only Wednesday)!

Andy made a wonderful supper Tuesday. Sauteed Bok Choy with Chicken and 7 grain Kashi Pilaf. It was wonderful! The Bok Choy recipe was provided by our CSA farmer we just expanded upon the idea. When we were shopping at Wegmans on Monday we saw Kashi’s 7 whole grain pilaf and had to pair it with this dish. This is after Andy had already eaten half of his dinner.

Here is the recipe as given to us by Myerov CSA

Sauteed Baby Bok Choy

Baby bok choy, trimmed

1 Tbsp. olive oil

1 garlic clove, thinly sliced

2 shallots, thinly sliced

1/2 teasp. Kosher salt

1/4 cup Chicken stock

Soak the bok choy in a large bowl of clod water for a few minutes to rid it of any dirt that may be trapped between the leaves. Lift out and drain well. Heat the oil in a large skillet or flat-bottomed wok over high heat. Add the garlic and shallots and cook until soft, about 1 minute. Add the bok choy, sprinkle with the salt, and stir-fry 1 minute. Add the stock, cover and turn the heat to low. Cook for 3 minutes, or until the bok choy is crisp tender but still bright green. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the bok choy to a bowl and serve.

We served ours over chili seasoned Kashi Pilaf. We didn’t have Chicken stock but did have vegetable stock so we used that. We also added some pan seared chicken for protein and we meant to added very thinly sliced red bell pepper but we forgot about it and left it in the fridge. We also added some additional garlic (we LOVE garlic) and some toasted sesame seeds.

We loved this dish so much we are hoping that there is some more baby bok choy in our CSA box this week! We will find out Saturday!

I also wanted to add the recipe for the red new potatoes we had the other day:

Parchment Paper Potatoes

Large piece of parchment paper 15×25

4 medium red potatoes (we sliced them with a mandolin)

4 sprigs thyme

1 sprig rosemary

olive oil

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 400 F. Thinly slice each potato into rounds. Fold parchment in half. Layer the potato slices in the inside of the fold, overlapping them in a few rows. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Top with remaining potato slices and more salt and pepper rosemary leaves, thyme leaves and more olive oil. Fold parchment over potatoes, crimping edges tightly to seal and enclose completely. Place on a baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes.

Tomorrow for dinner we are having Quick Dill Cucumbers

2 cucumbers, washed and sliced thin (I peeled ours as well, they were slightly prickly)

2 sprigs fresh dill, finely chopped

2 scallions, green and white section thinly sliced

salt and pepper

rice wine vinegar

Combine all the ingredients except the vinegar in a medium bowl and toss until well mixed. Add enough vinegar to coat the cucumbers. Adjust seasoning. Cover and chill till ready to serve.

I might add some sour cream to the recipe since that is my great grandmother’s recipe with the exception of the dill and scallions and she used just regular vinegar which I might substitute or maybe I’ll use a white wine vinegar.

We hope you enjoy these recipes!

Christie and I decided to join the Myerov Family Farm CSA. Here’s the contents of our first box:

• 3 baby bok choy
• large bag of spinach
• large bag of mizuna
• 5 green onions (scallions)
• 4 pickling size cucumbers
• 2 lbs red new potatoes
• herb sampler - basil, mint, rosemary, dill and thyme

Here’s what we’ve made with it so far:

• We used some of the dill, mizuna, cucumbers and green onions in a big salad
• We used rosemary in a vinaigrette
• We made parchment potatoes with half of the new red potatoes, rosemary and thyme

Parchment Potatoes in the works:

After:

The potatoes are really red inside, our farmer said we should be getting some purple ones later in the season.

Here’s the whole dinner from tonight, Salmon with Caramelized Leeks, CSA salad and Parchment Potatoes:

Here’s a great Google Tech Talk by Merlin Mann. The best bit of advice he gives is to “First, stop sucking”. You have to stop whatever bad habits you’re doing (like ignoring the 500 emails in your inbox) before you can get better at it. The whole talk is below, it’s definitely worth a look.