Osborn Fiber Studio

Am I two months behind? Really?! Oh dear oh dear. Just goes to show how CPE shoved every single thing out of my mind unless it was absolutely necessary to my sanity or my family’s continued sucking of oxygen. Now that my breather is really settling in, it is amazing how important these unimportant things are becoming again. If for no other reason than that I’ve been collecting all these photos of vegetables…

But this is going far back. Way far back. Like I don’t remember what I did with half of these things. I’m having to go dig up CSA preview emails, and look at my calendar to remember what was going on these weeks. It isn’t really that important, but I do want to document what we received during each month of the program, and some of the things we tried. If most of the things were just parboiled, roasted, or salad-ed, then no skin off my back!

Week #11 (June 25th. This was the week Jared was in Belize, but my mom was up, so we made a good time of it.):

• scapes – see below.
• a “green bell pepper” (is that what that looks like to you?) – I think this got chopped up and with some regular onions, to make what we call “fajitas” (fried onions and peppers that you put in a fajita, with everything else. I blame Chipotle for this strange nomenclature.)
• head o’ broccoli – almost got forgotten, poor thing! In the end we just roasted this, I believe.
• “firehead” lettuce – um, this probably became salad? My mom was in the house, so it probably survived to be eaten.
• cut lettuce – same as the above.
• bag o’ spinach – Definitely just parboiled this and ate it as a side. One of my favorite things to do with spinach. Which I love. Not because we were raised watching Popeye, which we were, but because we were allowed to put mayonnaise on our greens. It’s my dad’s fault. Upshot: now I love me some spinach and broc! (Even without mayo sometimes!)
• strawberries – My littlest sister was in the house, which in the summer means there are always strawberries in the house, being rotated through eating straight and salads. They never last long enough to be frozen, whether farm- or store-bought.
• one last gasp of green onions – By this time we’d gotten pretty good at just throwing them in whenever a recipe called for onions. And whenever it didn’t.

I can’t help myself. Scapes are just so… sexy. How can you not love a vegetable with curves like this?

I was determined to make something other than pesto with these scapes, but I had so little time and even less energy. In the end I managed to make a batch of scape hummus. I even doubled the amount of scapes in it, in an attempt to use more of them, but that just made them more garlickey, and used like… two scapes. So I made more pesto. Next year, I will be prepared for grilled scape pizza, or something else spectacular!

July was an insane month in which I preached twice, led church once, and traveled the fourth weekend. Without taking any days off CPE, because that’s not a thing you can do. Week 12 was the week I preached a 20-minute sermon (my first genuinely lame sermon, even. That feels like a milestone), so a lot of stuff got ignored.

Week #12 (July 2nd):

• “baby” fennel – this fennel was no baby. I love fennel just roasted with some parmesan, so that’s what happened to most of it. But I couldn’t bring myself to throw away that wealth of fronds. A little intuition and googling later, I had made – you guessed it – fennel frond pesto. Dudes, we are going to have SO much pesto this winter! It is going to be awesome.  
• broccoli – This might be the broccoli that got ignored into oblivion… it was bound to happen once. Sad face.
• new potatoes – I ignored these for a couple weeks, knowing they’d keep, then roasting them with some… interesting things… keep reading.
• one zucchini – my mom has gotten into adding cider vinegar to her usual sauteed zucchini medallions, so she tried that for us. Pretty good! I still like ’em just straight with salt, pepper, and parmesan though.
• baby swiss chard – see a picture below; are they not so cute! More parboiling for these tender greens.
• butterhead lettuce – salad! salad salad salad
• “a fresh herb” is what the email said, and I’m really not sure what it was. Our best guess was “savory.” I’m still not sure, as we let it go bad in the fridge. I wanted to put it with the potatoes in something, but I didn’t use them fast enough.
• strawberries – see above. Probably went into a salad with the lettuce.
• snow peas is what the email said, but I think these were sugar snap peas. I think I succeeded in eating them as a snack. 

Baby rainbow chard glamour shot just for fun. So adorbs!  Especially once all the dirt and bugs are washed off. (Mmm, organic!)

…. which will have to make up for the next week, during which I apparently took NO pictures. I was recovering from preaching, then getting ready to leave town, so you’ll forgive me for losing my mind.

Week #13 (July 9th): this is what the email says we got: 

• cucumber – stored for use the following week.
• zucchini – ditto.
• baby beets – ignored utterly until the greens turned to liquid… but I rescued the roots for later, as we’ll see.
• green onions – these are pretty much just onions to me now.
• cauliflower – … actually I don’t think we got a cauliflower, come to think of it… and I can’t recall if we got something else instead. Hm.
• garlic scapes – more pesto. I just gave up being creative.
• rhubarb jam – this went straight into long-term storage, but man, I wanted to crack it open so bad! I have a lot of other mostly-used jams to scrape through before I can justify opening another one. (Such scraping is likely to happen a lot faster now that I’ve finally been successful in bread… more on that another day.)
• kale – This came on our trip to Maryland and became a salad.
• Romaine lettuce – This came on the trip too, and I begged my mom to take it from me. I told her if she didn’t use it and it went bad, I didn’t care, just don’t tell me.

Week #14 (July 16th): I was gearing up to lead church, but that’s a lot less pressure, so I had a little creative energy this week. And a hankerin’ for quinoa.

• kale – see below
• blueberries – see below
• 2 cucumbers – still being stored away, though one of them was used below…
• 2 zucchini – stored for another week with the growing mound of zucchini.
• green beans – as you can see, I immediately pulled them out of the package and sauteed them. I’ve never sauteed green beans before, but I had a brand new cast iron skillet to play with. (Anniversary present. “Iron” is the material for six years, according to someone. It’s been nearly two months since our anniversary and I still haven’t come up with something iron-related to give Jared. Not even in a punny way.)
• “candy onions” – I am not sure what earns them that name, aside from their smallness making them a little sweeter. We pretty much used them as ordinary onions, though I wished I had just tried caramelizing them to see if they were extra sweet.
• “Temptation” cheese – seriously, that’s just what the label says. Sort of mildly cheddar-ish, but softer? I don’t know what “temptation” means, and the dairy’s website isn’t helping me categorize it. But dang, I am hooked. I can only imagine the enormous wheel of decadence whence cometh this tiny sliver of deliciousness.
• parsley (not pictured) – oh, poor parsley. Somehow it snuck into the fridge, never even coming out for a photo op, and I didn’t even know it was there until it was yellow and pasty. Herbs and I are working on our relationship.

This week’s burst of creative energy went into an unusual quinoa salad. I mixed that glorious little grain with small-snipped kale, blueberries, cucumber, almonds, and the chevre from Week 10 that was waiting for just the perfect use. I followed this recipe, adding lemon juice, salt, pepper, and olive oil as directed, subbing only the cheese. If I were to do it again, I would go ahead and use feta; the chevre didn’t crumble well and just collected quinoa into little clumps. Still, so tasty. Perfect GF lunch for days.

That brings us up through Month 3, and the toddler sounds like she’s waking up from her nap, so I’m out of time. Tomorrow I’ll bring us up to date through mid-August…