Fall Greens (CSA vegetables weeks 43 and 44, 2011)

I’ve got a lot of vegetables left over in my fridge, so it’s time for some serious menu planning!

Amelishof CSA vegetables week 43

Last week’s veggies:

• red Batavian lettuce
• cilantro
• pointed paprika
• (Batavian) endive
• leek
• celery

Amelishof CSA vegetables week 44

This week’s greens:

• pumpkin
• lollo bionda lettuce
• Elstar apples
• parsley
• kohlrabi
• green beans

Menu plan Wednesday November 2nd – Tuesday 8th

You’ll even find vegetables on the menu from my CSA loot further back!

• Wednesday: eating out with birthday boy @variomatic in Hotel de Goudfazant (Amsterdam)
• Thursday (Mr Gnoe’s piano night): leek-fennel soup (veganized version of Vega Gerechten p.134) & veggie dog with greens
• Friday: spicy sweet potato soup, chili con ‘carne’ tacos and fennel-orange salad with black olives (Vega Gerechten p.150 & 179)
• Saturday: Indonesian dinner! Osèng-osèng kohlrabi, sambal goreng tofu & green beans with white rice (Vegetarisch Indonesisch Kookboek p.50 & 94)
• Sunday (Dexter-5 Night with Elsje): garlic-Jerusalem artichoke soup, garlic or rosemary bread from Vlaams Broodhuys, 2 types of hummus (red beet & pumpkin), cooking pears and red beet salad with walnuts and balsamico (Vega Gerechten p.81, 61 & 188)
• Monday: Ethiopian lentil dish (cutting from Leven, lente 2011) with ‘faux sour creme‘ (La Dolce Vegan!), pita bread and kohlrabi salad (Groentegerechten p.32) OR Indonesian leftovers with nasi goreng
• Tuesday: eating @ mother-in-law’s

Another Batch of Veggies (week 21, 2011)

A quick post about this week’s organic vegetables from Amelis’Hof. If you think you missed some veggies lately — you’re right! I’m two weeks behind but will post about them a.s.a.p.

• Spring onions
• Bok choi
• Leek
• Lettuce
• Parsley
• Red bell pepper

Looking forward to next week when we’ll be getting STRAWBERRIES!

Menu plan for the week (#21)

Easy Carrot-Orange Soup

• Carrot-orange soup, Puy lentil salad (from The Vegan Table Cookbook p.190 via Food for Thought podcast) and panini. [Wednesday]
• Noodles & sesame-ginger stir-fry with tofu, shiitake mushrooms, pakchoi, leek, paprika and carrot (inspired by Eileen’s stir-fry in La Dolce Vegan! p.148). [Thursday]
• Veggie hotdog, lentil leftovers & green salad.
• Noodle salad & leek soup (Mc Donald’s Kitchen p.59).
• Sweet potato with spicy cumin mayo (VEGA-gerechten p.364), veggie burger and baked leek with oyster mushrooms (Eethuis Iris’ Groentegetechten p.40).
• Lentil loaf (from The Vegan Table Cookbook p.248 via Food for Thought podcast)

On Tuesday I’ll be dining out with friends so I’m guessing Mr Gnoe will be eating pizza, omelet or something else with cheese and/or egg. ;)

Do you have any plans for the week?

Salad of Puy lentils

The Second Veggie Loot of the Season (week 19, 2011)

Most weeks there’s one vegetable in our CSA batch that was grown indoors: tomatoes (last week) alternated with paprika, eggplant, et cetera. Or it’s interchanged with fruit, that doesn’t necessarily come from the glass house.

• Endive
• Leek
• Red lettuce
• Rocket
• Chard
• Pointed pepper

On the menu this week were mashed potatoes with raw endive and an Indian chard dish (in lieu of spinach) to eat with the leftover takeaway of cauliflower bhajee and dal tarka (lentils). And basmati rice of course — it’s the best smelling rice I know!!!

Unfortunately naan bread is often made with animal products like yoghurt. So I always make sure to have some bake-off organic naan that is 100% vegan in the pantry. Can’t have Indian food without it, can you? ;)

The first! (Of the Season)

Hooray, CSA season has started again!

Yesterday Mr Gnoe went to pick up our vegetable bag for the first time in 2011. It’s the 4th year we’ll be getting a bag of local organic veggies from Amelis’hof garden (formerly known as De Aardvlo) every week till Christmas. And the 3rd year I’m consistently logging them with a picture on Graasland.

For those of you wondering what CSA means — have you noticed the Glossary of terms on Graasland?

• Herb flowers
• Leek
• Tomatoes
• Rapini (or turnip tops)
• Spinach
• Lettuce

I already used some spinach and tomato in a pasta salad I had for lunch today. Those beautiful white flowers accompanied last night’s vegan pasta with white asparagus. So now I need to think about what to make of the rest… I guess it’s back to menu planning for Gnoe!

Some of you may have seen my FourSquare tweet last Friday in which I talked about picking up some CSA veggies… #confusing There’s another organic farm nearby from which we get additional vegetables: Groenekans. It’s different in that we aren’t ‘shareholders’ but we do pay a certain amount in advance which enables the farmer to invest in seedlings etc. It also varies from our regular, real CSA in that we get to pick our groceries from a list of availabilities, instead of receiving a surprise packet. And that’s exactly why it is such a good addition to our weekly mystery bag of Amelishof goodies. :)

Any tips on what to cook this week?

Invasion of the Endive Heads

This week’s organic vegetable packet did not bring us one, not two, but THREE heads of endive!

Wow. I guess it’s obvious what we’ll be eating this week… ;)

• lollo rossa lettuce
• pumpkins
• endive
• topinamburs
• fennel
• Elstar apples

I considered changing plans and serve yesterday’s guests potato mash with endive for dinner instead of the planned hutspot but decided against it: the idea of cooking the dish I hated so much as a child was way more exciting! Up until this week I have never, ever made it myself. So it felt like a real challenge to try this new recipe.

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer: I liked it! We caramelized some onions and toasted some pecan nuts for topping, and had vegetarian ‘meatballs’ and fennel-tomato salad as side dishes. (*) There’s just one BUT.. If I’m completely honest I wouldn’t really call this dish hotchpotch: the carrot and potatoes aren’t mashed together — it’s just a mix of cut up parsnip, potatoes and carrot, like my oven-roasted root vegetable dish with honey. I even used honey instead of the required maple syrup since my cupboard lacked the latter. So I’ll need to re-challenge myself another time ;)

Do you have a dish you hated when you were young and still won’t eat today?

(*) Side note for Dutch readers wanting to make the hutspot recipe: it took the vegetables 45 minutes at 200 °C (gas oven: 5) instead of 30 to get done.

Whatever happened to my weekly vegetables?

Has anyone been wondering what happened to my weekly (b)logging of CSA vegetables? I omitted 2 and missed 1 because we #failed to pick up our veggie bag when we were on a short holiday in week 26. Time to catch up!

Veggie loot week 27, 2010

• rocket
• radishes (French breakfast & icicle)
• romaine lettuce
• cucumber
• sweethearts cabbages
• kapucijner peas

Cukes are always met with a big ‘hooray’ because they taste so good — recalling cucumbers from past times. Strangely enough their organic siblings from the supermarket do not bring the same sensation. That probably has to do with the time and effort invested in the product.

Fresh kapucijners are great too; I only came to know of them last year thanks to our CSA veggies! (Weeks 30 and 31) They’re completely different from their tinned congeners; tasting a bit like fava beans — not ‘mealy’ like brown beans.

The radishes are the last of the season and the white ones have gotten a bit thickskinned, but nothing a potato peeler can’t take care of ;) They’re obviously related to daikon. We could have used them like that but mostly ate them as a snack or salad anyway.

Other dishes with the greens: pointed cabbage patties (YUM!) and spicy cabbage with foe yong hai (egg foo young) and nasi goreng (fried rice).

The kapucijner peas were stir-fried & stewed shortly with garlic, sundried tomatoes and served with fresh basil & ground pepper. Really nice as a side dish to ricotta cheese filled omelet with tomato and herbs!

This week's vegetables (week 28, 2010)

• lettuce
• radicchio
• fava beans
• Chinese cabbage
• tomatoes
• basil
• rosemary

Menu planner for the week

• Broad beans with cheese sauce, served with oven-baked potato, veggie bratwurst and radicchio salad with bell pepper, cranberries & red dressing (mayo, mustard & ketchup). [Friday]
• Spicy stir-fried Chinese cabbage with cashews & cilantro, rice, emping and salad. [Saturday]
• Salad of Chinese cabbage with homegrown radish cress, spring onion and orange dressing, served with tomato rice and hazelnut ragout. [Sunday]
• Ratatouille with couscous and Parmesan cheese, salad. [Tuesday]

On Monday we’ll be eating out :) And on Wednesday… well, the next batch of veggies will arrive!

Do you plan your weekly menu as well?

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Join Beth Fish’s weekend cooking with a food-related post!

About Stalks and Stems (veggies week 24, 2010)

I’m pressed for time so I’ll just briefly log this week’s local organic vegetables, including a call for help: do you know what the greens below the rhubarb are called in English? In Dutch it’s raapsteeltjes, which would literally translate into… turnip stalks? :\

Clockwise:

• swiss chard
• snow peas
• rhubarb
• raapsteeltjes > turnip-tops
• red Batavia lettuce
• plum tomatoes

The Telepathic CSA Supervisor

I sometimes believe there’s a telepathic csa supervisor somewhere, tuning in to (very) special requests. This afternoon I scouted several stores in search of celery but couldn’t find any. I desperately wish to turn some leftover corn into perkedèl djagoeng (corn fritters) for my next bento you see, and it won’t work without that specific herb! :(

When I went to get our weekly vegetable bag it briefly crossed my mind… but nah, that would be really improbable and too much to hope for. Well. YIPPEE!

Just like that time when I was craving eggplant!

I was also pretty happy to see some more of those scarlet globes, french breakfast and icicle radishes among the veggies for this week.
(Thanks for teaching me their names Judy!) Haven’t they grown since last week? :-o

• celery
• bunch of 3 radish varieties
• eggplant
• endive (frisée)
• red chili pepper
• leek
• lettuce

ETA: The celery was used for corn fritters (dôh), bami goreng (twice), Russian salad and several other dishes. Half of the curled endive went into a potato stew with gorgonzola and almonds (which should have been cashews but we were out of those), the rest became toemis andijvie with bami. The leek was also used for perkedèl djagoeng and bami; the chili pepper dito and stir-fried with last week‘s bok choi.

Veggies! Veggies! Veggies!

Het groentenpakket van deze week (37):

• venkel
• bloemkool
• maïskolf
• ijsbergsla (wel 2 kroppen!)
• boterbonen (wasbonen)
• platte peterselie

Ik maakte nog nooit eerder boterbonen… Wat zeg ik, ik heb ze zelfs nog nooit gegeten! Wie wel?

De snoepzak van de week

Ook in week 34 kregen we weer een fijne tas van De Aardvlo!

Maïs behoort tot mijn favoriete groenten — ik zou wel iedere dag een maïskolf lusten maar dat is niet zo goed voor me ;) En ook courgette staat hoog in de top 10; wisten jullie dat ik die groente pas heeeeeeel laat heb ontdekt, in 1990 of zo?!

Biologische prei smaakt geweldig, veel beter dan die van de Appie (oooooh daar komt weer een preek van mijn broer ;) en die fris en fruitige zomerappeltjes komen ook als geroepen!

Tel daarbij de spekbonen en romainesla op en je weet: dit is een superweek! :))