Our second CSA box arrived with a heavy dose of fruit, which was much appreciated! 

What you see here is 1 quart of cherries, 1 quart of strawberries, 1 pint of raspberries, 2 pints of peas, and 1 quart of blackcaps (the blackcaps were from our garden).  This side of the box disappeared within 2 days, and without any prepwork needed!   uuhh... sorry there's no recipe ideas other than set the boxes out on the table and let the family have at it.

Now, since I'm on the topic, lets talk briefly about blackcaps.  I have a huge patch in the backyard that grows wild.  The berries are smaller than blackberries and have no pit, much like raspberries.  They make amaaaazing wine, and jam, if they don't disappear immediately upon being picked.

These little berries ripen every year on the 4th of July and keep producing LIKE CRAZY until the end of the month.  For the next couple of weeks, I'm expecting to pick about a quart PER DAY.   I freeze a good number of them and they work just fine for cooking and fermentation projects. 

She took a break from bike riding to help (EAT) pick blackcaps

There was actually 2 of these containers full today that I picked, and probably at least 1 more out there on the bush.  It'll have to wait until tomorrow!

Now that we've discussed fruit, how about the rest of the bin?

We  got 1 head of red romaine lettuce, 1 head of red leaf lettuce, 1 small bunch of kale, 2 crowns of broccoli, and 2 small zucchini.  The heads of lettuce and the kale quickly became  a raw green salad for a family get-together on Sunday night (with some leftover for lunches during the week... I just keep it sealed up in the fridge, ready to go).  The zucchini was sliced and grilled up with some of the leftover garlic scapes and some asparagus I got from the store.

That leaves the broccoli.  I'm going to be making a broccoli/cauliflower (non-dairy) cheese bake later this week which I will share the recipe and photos for in my next blog post.

** One note from this week:  I wasn't all that impressed with the volume or variety of veggies in our CSA share this week and I actually ended up buying stuff in the produce section at the grocery store to supplement!  We also ended up going to a local orchard and picking up an extra quart of cherries and a pint of raspberries...aaaand a half dozen friedcakes for the girls and hubby.