So, I'm a little sad.  After getting used to the abundance of the end of the CSA season, the veggie/fruit selection around here has become a tad lackluster.  I'll be heading to the local cider mills and markets soon to see whether I can dig up some inspiration.

With that, I think that the last of the CSA produce and green tomatoes from the garden needs to be chronicled on this blog.  I made pickles and sauerkraut, of course. And they're fantastic.

I actually got this Kraut to self-brine!  For the first time ever!   I think it had to do with the addition of 2 whole (sliced and cored) apples.

I wrote about how we had gotten some beets with our CSA share last week.  Well, I cooked the greens a while back but the roots still remained.  I have a recipe for  Refrigerator Pickled Beets that I really LOVE which involves cooking the beets first and then pickling them in vinegar.

This time I decided to try getting a little probiotic goodness in there as well.

So!   I was presented with this lovely head of Nappa cabbage.  The only answer I could think of was Kimchi.  As a matter of fact, I couldn't help myself.  This particular cabbage was SCREAMING Kimchi!

I've made Kimchi in the past.  Both Classic Kimchi and Baek (White, or Vegan) Kimchi.   I personally LOVED the Vegan Kimchi.  It has a great light pickle flavor, and was super-fast to make.  I wasn't such a big fan of how the Classic Kimchi practically burned my face off when I tried it!  My husband, however, loved it.  Especially on hotdogs!

This time around I'm going for less heat, but the added classic flavors of chili, garlic, and fish sauce... along with the probiotic "pickle" tang that I love so much.

I also went ahead and substituted in easily-found (read, in my cupboard) ingredients along the way.  

I see now that I wrote about my projects last week, but failed to explain what was in our CSA box.   Well, we got 1 bunch beets, 1 bunch radishes, 2 quarts sour cherries, 1 pint blueberries, 1 pint wax beans, 3 cucumbers, 3 small zucchini, and  a head of red leaf lettuce.

We'll start with the beets.  I separated the greens from the roots and will be making roasted pickled beets ala Alton Brown's recipe . I usually fiddle with recipes and make them my own, but this one is SO GOOD that you'll eat the whole jar in one sitting.  Trust me.

The beet greens were stored in the refrigerator and later chopped and sauteed along with chopped swiss chard, bacon, salt and pepper, and a sweet onion.  We ate this with a loaf of crusty bread and it was a perfect light dinner on a 90 degree day!



At this point, I actually had 2 bunches of radishes waiting to be eaten.  I did a separate post dedicated to this because I came up with a radish salad idea that takes the bite out of radishes. And I was PROUD of it!




The blueberries were eaten before the day was out.

The sour cherries were pitted and made into Blackcap/Sour cherry wine (it's still bubbling on the counter!).  

I made the wax beans plus about a quart of green beans from my Mom's garden into Dilly Beans!   I wait all year to make these!

The cucumbers were eaten whole by my husband and kids.

The lettuce was washed, chopped and kept in a bag in the refrigerator for easy green salad making.

AND the zucchini will be grilled tonight in oil and garlic to go alongside some BBQ chicken.

ENJOY!!

The first week of our full share from the CSA included a lot of greens.  I described the contents in detail in my last post. 

Here are the recipes and photos from my two featured recipes this week. 

We had the Buttercrunch Steak Wraps on Sunday (along with a vegan pesto over whole wheat bowtie pasta). 

Radish pickles with garlic scapes, caraway sauerkraut in back, and kale ribs pickling on the right.

So, as promised, here's the haul!    It's very, VERY green... which I LOVE.  I love the challenge put forth too and getting the kids to try everything in this bin (including radishes and garlic scapes).


Over on the right you'll see that there's 2 quarts of strawberries and a pint of sugarsnap peas.  Um.  Those disappeared within the first 24 hours that I brought them home.  I just left them out on the table and they were eaten as is.  The peas were, by far, their favorite and I only actually got to try maybe 2 or 3 of them before realizing that they were completely gone!



Next we have 2 bunches of Kale, 1 bunch of rainbow chard, 1 head of Green Leaf lettuce, and one head of Buttercrunch lettuce.    The first thing I did was make a huge tossed 100% green salad with some kale, Green Leaf and Buttercrunch lettuce to put in the fridge for dinner accompaniment/snack.  I will continue to replenish the bowl as it empties out during the week. 



To finish off the Butter Crunch lettuce, Sunday dinner this week is going to consist of some Seared Steak and Veggie Lettuce Cups.  These cups will also feature the garlic scapes as a background flavor.     I will update the blog later in the week with my recipe/any modification ideas that I come up with to make it super-kid-tempting.

So, that leaves us with 1 small bunch each of rainbow chard and kale.  These will be going into one of my favorite recipes:  Smoked Pork with Greens and White beans.   I'll share this recipe later this week along with the Lettuce Cups.

And then, we are left with a bunch of radishes.  Um.  So... nobody in our house actually likes radishes raw.   At all.   But, I figured out a trick a little while back when I had a leftover veggie tray (FULL OF RADISHES):  They make really tastey, crunchy, not-at-all-spicey pickles. I'll be lacto-fermenting this bunch whole in 2% brine along with the remaining garlic scapes for a little added flavor.  They'll be ready in about a week, and I'll share the process with everyone once they're complete.


Summer time with the kids actually came early this year when preschool ended the first week in June.  Things around here have been nothing short of hectic, trying to keep 2 preschoolers entertained, but I'm so glad we decided to do this CSA project. It gives us all a great thing to focus on and my eldest really enjoys going with me to pick up our box every week.

We even made some stone "markers" with veggies on them one day while we were waiting for pickup to start.  I wanted to get the kids as involved as possible with the process and what better way that with arts and crafts that require a picnic trip to the park/lakeshore?




That's acrylic paint on Lake Ontario stones from the nearby lake shore.  I let the kids do the initial painting, and then I went over it to define a few parameters/make things a little more recognizable.  

Hope you're enjoying Summer and the abundance of green that's suddenly available!

While I was poking around online about a month ago I came across a technique that you can use to pickle (Lacto-Ferment) whole cabbages... several at a time, if you have a huge enough container.  Well... it's a long and tedious process and involves skimming and smelling fermenting cabbage (sulfur) in your house for weeks on end.  Uhh... no thanks.   But, my curiosity was piqued because I really REALLY wanted to try fermented whole leaves to make a variation of my classic Galumpki recipe that I shared on here a little while back. 

So, why not try rolled-up whole leaves in my usual mason jars???  That's exactly what I did and I'm never looking back to the full-head option again!

Pack the little cigars tightly into a quart-sized jar along with the horseradish matchsticks and caraway seeds. 

A while back I made a batch of Traditional Korean Kimchi.   It came out beautiful and SUPER spicy.  Like, definitely too spicy for the kids an me.  My husband and one of our friends decided that it was best enjoyed on hotdogs and they devoured quite a bit of it that way.  HAH!  I think that it would also be really well suited to flavoring different things... Hot and Sour soup comes to mind.

I decided to do an  Americanized version of White Kimchi in response to the SUPER-HEAT of the other variety.  I wanted something more slightly spicey and mostly sour and I'm pretty sure this is going to hit it right on the head.    Again, I switched up some of the traditional ingredients to include things that are easily accessed in most Grocery stores in the U.S.A.

• 1 large nappa cabbage
• ⅓ cup, plus 2 tbsp  kosher salt
• ½ bunch radishes, sliced
• 2 medium carrots cut into matchsticks
• 1 bunch chives, cut into 1 inch pieces
• 5 fresh chestnuts, peeled and cut into thin strips
• ½ of red bell pepper cut into thin strips
• 1 medium pear, peeled, cored and cut into matchsticks
• 4 garlic cloves
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

Core and chop cabbage into small pieces.  Put in a large bowl and sprinkle 1/3 cup of salt evenly between the leaves. Fill the bowl with enough water to submerge the leaves, and then weigh them down with a plate.  Let sit on the counter for 24 hours.

Drain and rinse the cabbage lightly, retain about 1 cup of the brine.


Assemble some mason jars and lids (I had various sizes this time, my daughter  helped and she was the one who picked them out of the cupboard).  Wash the jars and caps thoroughly and set aside.

Prepare the remainder of your ingredients and toss them together in a large bowl.

Ani peeling a chestnut

Sprinkle 2 tbsp of salt on the veggie bowl  and toss.  Then add the veggies to the cabbage and toss again.   Pack your veggie mixture hard into  the mason jars ( I used a rolling pin) so that water starts to be extracted from the veggies.  Top off the jars with enough brine to cover the veggies.  Cover and seal with caps and rings.

Fermentation station!

Wait about 7 days before trying.  And then transfer to the refridgerator.  Eat it all right away, or wait until the sour  "pickle" flavors develop further.

Enjoy!

I took the plunge and made a batch of Sauerkraut.  This was an intimidating project for me to take on because of some of the preconceived notions I had about traditionally fermented kraut.  1)  that it would need a special crock that I didn't own and didn't have any practice using 2) that it would inevitably get moldy and gross like so many people complain about and 3) that I'd be too grossed out to eat it after the 6 week process was complete with all that skimming and the different "phases" of fermentation which can sometimes be more than a little off-putting.

I had read about how people make these huge 20 lb batches of kraut and *mostly* seal them and put them in a hole in the ground to ferment for weeks and about how Michael Pollan had a really hard time with mold infestation in his first (and only) 10lb batch.

Then cabbage came into season.  And it was staring at me at the store. It was only $.69 a lb... and a  relatively small one somehow made it into my cart and then into my refrigerator.  And there it stood... staring at me... taking up a TON of room right there on the top shelf.

And so I gathered my tools, and my ingredients.

First, core and chop up the cabbage, leaving the outer leaves intact.

This was about 1.5 lbs of cabbage once it was chopped/cored

Then combine all of the ingredients into a large mixing bowl and get out a wooden rolling pin to crush the cabbage/start the process of brine creation.  The salt pulls the water out of the cabbage, so if you have a really fresh cabbage there's no need for added brine!

Stuff the shredded cabbage mixture into a quart jar, using the end of the rolling pin to really crush it down in there between handfuls.  Then use the intact outer leaves to seal off any small pieces from the top of the brine. The key is that you DO NOT want any of the cabbage poking up above the brine or it WILL MOLD.


Allow the jar to sit at room temperature for 24 hours.  By the end of that time, enough brine should have formed to completely cover the top cabbage leaf.

In my case, I had let the cabbage sit in the refrigerator for the couple days  before starting my project. After 24 hours, my brine was about 3/4 of the way up the cabbage in the jar.  I created some extra brine at a ratio of 1 tbsp seasalt to 1 quart of water and I topped the jar off.

See?  Nothing above the water line.  I then decided to be extra careful and fit some wooden skewers across the top of the cabbage leaf (also completely submerged) to make sure that the bubbles coming up during fermentation don't push anything up above the waterline.  This added precaution should completely eliminate the need to skim or otherwise mess with the ferment altogether.

Today is day 3 of my sauerkraut ferment and it is starting to actively bubble.  I've had to "burp" the jar 3 times to decrease the pressure build up under the lid. I'm expecting another 2-3 days of this rapid bubbling variety of fermentation, and the rest of the process will take about 5 additional weeks (tasting at 3 and 4 weeks to check for desired flavor/consistency. I'm really excited to see how it turns out and have a good feeling about this batch. I'm really happy that I decided to employ my tried-and-true fermentation method of using small batches of vegetables in mason jars. This was a very fun and satisfying project.

Enjoy!

Dilly Beans are great!  I'm sure these'll disappear fast since I only made one quart.  But that's what's so great about Lacto-Fermenting... you can make as much or as little as you happen to have on hand at the time.

My daughter helped shake up the jar!

We have been watching my Mom's mini-farm while she's been on vacation, and guess who got into the carrot patch?! :-D  Don't worry Mom, I left some for you too!

These beauties were quickly made into lacto-fermented ginger carrots because the cucumber version that we made a couple weeks ago were SO good I couldn't help but try another variety (probably several varities when it's all said and done) of veggie using this method of preservation.

AND I used the greens in a cooked vegetarian greens and beans side-dish last night.  Did you know you can eat carrot greens?  YEP!   Don't waste 'em, they're delicious and the feathery part cooks up just like any other cooking green.  I'll be using the stalks as part of my next veggie stock when I get around to it.

YUM!  boy were these good, too bad I only made 2 quarts!  I make pickles a few different ways, as you probably noticed from the Zucchini Pickle post, I make sweet "cooked" style pickles, as well as the vinegary, tangy refridgerator version (which I'll be making in the next couple of days and posting very soon after).  But before there were refrigerators, and easily obtained mass quantities of vinegar, there was brine and lacto-fermentation.  Lacto-fermented pickles are sour, and salty, and delicious and FULL of probiotic goodness.  You can make them with pretty much any spice and veggie combination you'd like.  I made mine out of whole pickling cucumbers with garlic, and dill as the main flavors. 

The first thing you need is a couple quart-sized wide mouth mason jars, with resealable caps.  Such caps can be ordered online fairly cheaply from here. 

Then you'll need an airlock with a rubber stopper to seal up the hole in the resealable cap, so that air can escape during the fermentation process. 

Jars are pictured in back of the ingredients