Excellent CSA Produce

In my last post, I promised that I would post the recipes of any successful recipes, or any other useful ideas I had for the CSA food box that we picked up. I didn't think it would be so soon.

I had a plan for the second day, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull it off. The truth is work is crazy right now, and Alison has a bunch of summer time activities planned to get Jackie and her out of the house for a few hours on random days. Today was tumbling class again, and my week has rapidly degenerated from "catch up on delayed work because everyone is on vacation, to get even further behind because...just get used to it" It's been fun, I assure you. I now have at minimum a weekly visit to my favorite waste water treatment plant, as well as all my other project responsibilities. Our conversion of The Rev. Floyd Flake's Allen Christian School to the Eagle Academy for Boys for the NYC School Construction Authority has our team on red alert, and we're headed to the site on Thursday to check out all the newly discovered field conditions that our brave contractors have found by opening the door and scratching the paint. It's going to be a fun summer.

Anyway... I had in my meal plan based on the box we got from the fine folks at Melick's Town Farm yesterday the secret ingredient of "beet greens" I say secret, because they gave us a heads up on Sunday and we didn't think we were getting beets this week. Neither Alison or I like beets... I can't honestly say I've given them a fare shake, it just sounds like something from my childhood that I didn't want to eat, so I always said I didn't like them. Anyway, I want to make pickled beets, because it's a family tradition to eat them at Christmas, even though, no one to my knowledge has consumed them since my Grandma Julia passed away. I was hoping, since I knew I would get several weeks worth of beets in this CSA, that I would make some, and based on my limited success in preserving various things, convince people to try them, hopefully like them, and give cause to this family dare that graces our table each year and ends up in the garbage can....each year.

But what to do with these lovely stems? I must admit, since I am no beet fan, I never cared to see what a full beet looked like! From my addiction to food network, and other culinary tv shows on PBS since I was a young boy (Yan Can Cook, Gourmet Cooking with Chef Earl Peyroux, The Frugal Gourmet pre-scandal, Great Chefs Great Cities... these were all shows Joe and I watched when home from school on random days off, and we watched them all day, they cultivated my love for culinary misadventures). The stems reminded me of Swiss Chard, or any other cooking greens I had seen.

A quick google search revealed this recipe for beet greens, and I was intrigued. NJ Transit made my morning and evening commute interesting today, but I made it home in time to try it out. The recipe was modified as such.

Ingredients

•  beet greens from three medium sized beets.
• 2 strips of extra thick cut bacon
• 1/4 cup chopped onion ( I used the onion from our CSA Box)
• 2 large garlic cloves, minced
• 3/4 cup of water
• 1 Tbsp granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/6 cup of cider vinegar
• 8-12 oz bow tie pasta 
• Parmesan Cheese to taste 

Method

1 Wash the greens in a sink filled with cold water. Drain greens and wash a second time. Drain greens and cut away any heavy stems. Cut leaves into bite-sized pieces. Set aside stems and chop up into pieces 1/2" - 1" inch in length.

2. Start water to boil for pasta. 

3 In a large skillet or 3-qt saucepan, cook bacon until lightly browned on medium heat. Add onions, cook over medium heat 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occassionally, until onions soften and start to brown. Stir in garlic and beet green stems. Add water to the hot pan, stirring to loosen any particles from bottom of pan. Stir in sugar and red pepper. Bring mixture to a boil for 3-5 minutes. Finish Bacon in the oven at 375 degrees for 5 minutes or until really crispy.

4 Add the beet greens, gently toss in the onion mixture so the greens are well coated. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 15 minutes until the greens are tender. Stir in vinegar.

5. While waiting on step number 4 to complete, and keeping a careful eye on it, boil the bow tie pasta.

6. Drain pasta and toss with the greens/onion/garlic mixture... add chopped up bacon from step 3. Serve....(if desired add parmesan cheese... I had planned on it, but it tasted so good I didn't add it)

I broiled a bunch of tilapia fillets seasoned with salt, pepper and lemon and served it with this side dish.

I was expecting disaster based on last nights zucchini experiment, but it was awesome, and I recommend anyone who reads this, head out to your super market, pick up a bundle of beets with the stems attached and give this recipe a go. I have never really tried any type of "greens" before, but this was an awesome dish, and I will be making it again for sure.

Our CSA experiment is already a great success, we were hoping to try new things and experiment with new foods to hopefully get our diet healthier... I don't know if cooking greens in bacon fat counts for healthy, but it sure was tasty. We chose a "conservative" farm for our tastes...lots of fruit, that we knew wouldn't go to waste. We were a bit leery of a lot of strange vegetables. But I think this experiment of using something that would have otherwise ended up in my compost pile, is an indicator that it's going to be a fun summer, and hopefully something we will continue in years to come.

CSA Week #1

I'm hoping to do one of these posts each week after we get our box from the farm stand. Today Alison picked up our first CSA share from Melick's Town Farm in Oldwick NJ. They have a farm stand in Bridgewater so we are able to pick up our share each week without traveling too far which is a nice bonus feature.

Week #1 Loot

An interesting first box for me, this week we got peaches, pickling cucumbers, cucumbers, wild onions, beets, zucchini, sweet corn, plums, and lettuce. I've never really made anything with a bunch of these ingredients so I'm looking forward to experimenting this week and all summer with an abundance of fresh produce.

Tonight to celebrate the first week we had fried zucchini, corn on the cob and some grilled sirloin steak. Jackie loved the corn and the steak. I absolutely loved the first piece of zucchini that I made. I used this batter recipe modified slightly ( I used beer instead of water and added some Parmesan cheese to the mix) it was awesome... unfortunately the batches that I made were greasy, the batter fell off, overcooked, undercooked, etc. There were still some salvageable pieces but if I make them again I will use a skillet, not the deep fryer. The first batch all clumped together and it was all down hill from there.

I found a good recipe to use the beet greens and onions, and I'm probably going to make some pickled beets, dill pickles, and figure out a nice peach dessert to bring to Grandma T's Fourth of July party. We still have some zucchini left, so I'd like to try my hand at zucchini bread.

So far so good, if I actually do any of this other stuff I will post the recipes. If not, well I'll make another post next week with the contents of that box.

Stay cool everyone. 

Corpus Christi

A few weeks ago I received a seemingly random email from our parish office asking for me to volunteer to carry a statue in a Corpus Christi procession. For those who don't know, we attend Christ the King Catholic Church in Manville, a mission parish run by Redemptorists from the Warsaw Province (Warsaw as in Poland). We have a sister parish a bit further down the road Sacred Heart.

After consulting the weekly bulletin I learned it was to be a procession down Main Street after Mass from one Church to the other. I talked with Alison and I decided it sounded like something interesting to do. So not knowing exactly what I was getting myself into, I said I would participate and we headed to the early Mass at Sacred Heart on June 10th to participate in the procession.

Jackie was being her usual Jackie at Church self, and after several loud outbursts, I headed to the narthex to hang out with the other loud kids, and late attendees. This Mass had a lot of interesting things; we had the Knights of Columbus in their full regalia with swords and frilly admiral type hats, (Chapeaux?). I have seen this several times in our Parish, but never anywhere in the Archdiocese of Newark, ( I guess they are afraid of swords up in civilized North Jersey), we had the Holy Name Society with their banners, the First Communion Kids in their suits and dresses, Confirmation students in robes, and a whole slew of little kids in traditional Polish folk costumes (Alison's research shows these outfits originate near Krakow), parts of mass were in Polish. Sacred Heart has Mass in Polish, we don't at Christ the King.

I met up with the Statue carrying group outside of the Church. I guess they asked for a bunch of volunteers, and didn't get many, I was the only one that showed up in a suit so I was asked to join in. I was the only one that didn't speak Polish, so I just followed along. Alison and Jackie also joined in the procession.

 

The procession starts at Sacred Heart

The First Alter: The Eucharist is Sacrifice

Second Altar: The Eucharist is Food For Our Souls

Third Altar: The Eucharist is The Pledge of Eternal Life

Fourth Altar: The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Unity

The procession concludes at Christ the King Church

For our tiny little Parishes it was a pretty neat little event. We shut down traffic through Manville for a little while, and I was surprised to see so many participants. Both of the Churches were packed.

We are currently going through a "Renewing the Faith in Manville" process directed by the Bishop to determine the future of the two Parishes. With an older congregation and a number of catastrophic insurance claims from storm damage in recent years the status of both parishes is in question.

I'd say the faith is pretty strong in our community, I still fear that Christ the King may end up merging into Sacred Heart at the end of the process, but it's a pretty strong little community, and we are happy to be a little part of it.

New Vows Same as the Old Vows

Alison and I spent a nice morning/afternoon back at the end of April out at the old Alma Mater , The US Merchant Marine Academy. It was the 50th anniversary jubilee ceremony for the Mariners Chapel. I finally tracked down a few photos that the Alumni foundation recently posted up on Facebook. 

Mariners Chapel

Sword Arch

I know we haven't been married that long, but it was a nice way to celebrate our marriage commitment. I feel like its good to do these sorts of things frequently.

CSA Begins

Our CSA share at Melick's Town Farm starts on Monday. It should be a tasty summer full of fruits and vegetables, I can't wait to see what we get.

New Cousins

We would like to extend a warm welcome to planet earth to Victoria and Benjamin. The babies made their arrival on Tuesday morning, and are by all accounts happy and healthy as is new mom Elizabeth.

If I have can give them any helpful advice, it's about the wonder of being a twin. You were born with your best friend. I hope that as you both grow up from infants, to toddlers, to big kids, to teenagers, to adults, that you both stay as close as can be to each other. Since one of you is a boy, and the other a girl, it will certainly be different than my experience with your Uncle Joe, but I hope it's similar enough that you always have your confidant, defender, and best friend as close as can be, (no more than a phone call away at least). You'll take different paths in life, but the bond you share will be something that most people won't ever understand. I hope that as you grow aware of the world around you, that you'll innately realize this, and over time come to appreciate it. And, by all means have some fun at others expense when they ask you if you know what the other one is thinking, or can feel your pain. I just hope you don't have to go through the mix-ups that Joe and I had... which was particularly annoying when they knew us as just brothers, and then started mixing up the names only when they found out we were twins. I can only imagine how interesting it would be when they mix up a boy and a girl, I hope it never happens.

You'll get on each others nerves sometimes, but don't worry about it. Lean on each other when you need help, you'll never be stronger than when your twin has your back, and you'll probably never need anyone else to help when you have each other. You'll be amazed at what you can accomplish together, and even more amazed at what you can do with nothing but each others encouragement.

We hope to meet you soon, and introduce you to your little cousin Jackie. She loves babies and will be so happy to see you.

Homebody

Sometimes, my couch might as well be permanently attached to me, or is it I should be permanently attached to the couch? Anyway, anyone who knows me surely would say that I'm a bit of a homebody. I think having a family has sort of exacerbated this problem a bit, I just don't want to go anywhere anymore, at least not without the family. I just like sitting around watching Jackie do stuff, learn new things, explore, and have whatever types of adventures an almost two year old thinks they are having as they wander around the house touching and looking at things. I like watching whatever type of strange communications she has with the dog, they seem to understand exactly what the other one is doing, or wants. I like the sense of wonder.

I have to travel for work again today, I won't get to see Jackie until probably Thursday night. While we were away she was back in New Jersey having fun and we missed her, and I'll miss her again this week.

I used to love my monthly sometimes weekly trips to Denver, but since the wedding, and Jackie's arrival, I like them less and less. Luckily, the trips have been a lot less frequent which has been a blessing. I'm not saying I don't ever want to travel ever again for work (I'm sure that when we have teenagers, I won't be able to travel enough), but some times it can be a real bummer.