Winter CSA Share 3

This weekend snow kept at bay for the new York City area. Which was good because everyone has been acting like the last snow was the Apocalypse. During the storm of December 26th, the Sanitation Department launched an undercover strike to protest recent layoffs (allegedly...), the mayor was gone on vacation and alternate side of the street parking was suspended for 5 business days! Yipes! So now any mention of a couple of inches of snow and the whole city has been going into a panic. Snow in the forecast has made commuter traffic light and bread disappear from the grocery store shelves. In short we have been acting like a bunch of Southerners. No disrespect intended. But come on people. Put on your waterproof boots and let's get to work already!

The forecast almost kept our farmer from being able to drive into the city Saturday morning to deliver out loot for our January delivery. But the snow petered out and went much further north than intended. At least I think. I don't follow the weather report so closely. The light snow prompted many rounds of the HILARIOUS joke (note the sarcasm) of DH who told Thing One maybe ten times "WOW!! It's really coming down out there!" When in actuality, only one or two flakes were twirling around in the streetlamp light that is visible from our East facing windows. But our CSA shares arrived!

And in the box was a netted bag of potatoes, a shopping bag with beets (Anyone want? really, I am not kidding. Email me if you want these beets. I work in Chelsea-I'll deliver! I might even consider shipping.), one delicata squash, a brown paper bag with four ears of popcorn-still on the cob, a couple pounds of carrots sporting little yellow sprouty tops, two medium onions, a hefty bag of nice apples, a plastic bag filled with greens like red lettuce and tat soi, and one baby red cabbage that has already been sliced for sauer-ing. DH ate all my sauerkraut, which I love!

Some highlights from our weekend in food?

* I was sick over the weekend, very sick. I was running a fever and went to bed at 8pm both Friday and Saturday night. I made another pot of that Potato and Collard Green Soup and it was the perfect amount of both nutrition and carbs. All I wanted to eat was really bad for me things like ice cream and white flour bagels. I resisted, but a facebook fan said the reason for the non-nutritious cravings was that those foods would likely release serotonin...interesting. And worth an investigation!

* I have stooped to a new low. Now I am an out and out liar. I made the kids smoothies this weekend and I not only put in pumpkin puree, I threw in a handful of kale. Yup, really curly hearty raw kale. I couldn't help it, I had to try it. They drank it. The kids had no complaints. They only finished about two thirds of it, but I figured that the kale probably filled them up alot too. It wasn't exactly like my other smoothies. This time I mixed together yogurt, fresh not frozen pumpkin puree, a frozen banana, a frozen pear, some vanilla and some rapadura and the kale. But--wasn't the smoothie GREEN? It sure was! But you know what my trick was? My smoothie cups are colored plastic. We have a blue one and an orange one. I gave the blue one to the baby because it still looked a little green, and he is not going to care. But Thing One had the orange cup and you couldn't tell what the original color could have been. Go on, get out there and get deceitful!!

* I also lied about the coconut flour pancakes being easily made grain free. Yeah, I tried that this weekend and I was eating a soft mush of pumpkin coconut flour mash. The pancakes were too soft to flip. I quickly added the wheat flour back to the recipe and adjusted for consistency. I have removed that preposterous gluten free assertion from the original recipe. I have considerably more respect for gluten free cooks now.

* My kids won't eat pot roast. What kid won't eat a slow simmered (grass fed) chuck roast? This is not a complicated meal. Apparently MY kids. Man. Sometimes I think my food is falling like pearls before swine. I keep telling myself, they'll be different in ten years...

* The CSA popcorn was still attached to the cob. Plus I had four ears from last month. I decided to de-cob it all Sunday night. It was SO hard to get off the cob. It hurt so much and then after a while it stopped hurting. I did the work during a particularly rousing episode of the Wonder Pets, you know the one where they visit the Statue of Liberty and one of the characters has a really embarrassing New York accent? Nobody here really talks like that. I finally got all the kernels off, except for the last cob which was too difficult. I left the last quarter of it's kernels on and just chucked it. I now have a blister on my right thumb!! The blister doesn't hurt too much, thankfully.

Happy Eating Folks!!