Recipe: CSA grab-bag breakfast muffins

A quick follow-up to yesterday's recipe for CSA grab-bag ragout. We were graciously invited to a gathering to meet the new baby of an old friend over the weekend. I didn't get a chance to hit the shops for a gift, so I figured I would bring something edible. Taking a gander at what I had on hand from this week's CSA, I saw peaches and carrots, and I noted that the party was scheduled for a brunch-type of hour. So I decided to bring something a little sweet, but not too dessert-y for the crowd.

Amy Daczyzn includes what she calls a "universal muffin recipe" in The Complete Tightwad Gazette. It's a wildly flexible recipe for using up odds and ends around the pantry and fridge -- or, I should say, using CSA produce efficiently!

These are not the supersized, cake-like muffins you get at the coffeeshop. They're dense and filling. The carrots and whole-wheat flour give you some fiber, which I remember needing in the early weeks after my daughter was born. And I think they taste great when spread with a little cream cheese or soft butter, served with coffee. Or with mimosas, which were on hand at baby Eddie's party.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups white flour

1 cup whole-wheat flour

1/4 cup white sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

ground cinnamon and nutmeg

1 cup milk

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 egg, lightly beaten

2 small peaches, chopped

2 medium carrots, grated

Method:

Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease muffin tins with butter.

Combine the dry ingredients and spices. Add the wet ingredients and stir gently until mixed. Fold in the peaches and carrots.

Bake 20-25 minutes. Remove and let sit about 15 minutes, then remove muffins from pan. Serve immediately, or let cool completely on a wire rack before storing or transporting. Yields 10-12 muffins.

Recipe: CSA grab-bag ragout

The summer bounty of our community-supported agriculture subscription continues. What I can't finish up by my weekly pick-up date fills the crockpot, leaving room for the new produce to fill the fridge.

It helps that I found a very new crockpot at my favorite charity shop some weeks ago. It looks as though it was never used -- perhaps a housewarming gift to an apartment dweller, in whose kitchen it languished, untouched, until the renter moved out in June. Their 4.5-quart loss is my CSA stew gain. And it's all black! I call it my Punk Rock Crockpot, and after the end of CSA season, I'll look forward to making stew and chili in it this winter.

Anyway, my point, and I had one when I started this post, was to discuss the issue that the selection of produce in your weekly CSA box isn't necessarily the selection of produce that you would bring home yourself from the supermarket. Instead of a balanced variety of items you know you like, you get a sack of multi-colored carrots here; two pounds of red potatoes there; and three large zucchini and pound of weird-looking heirloom string beans to top off the box. Plus a pint container of cherry tomatoes.

Ever cooked cherry tomatoes into a sauce? Well, we did. Since it's light on the tomatoes, I'm calling it a ragout, though it's not a terribly authentic one. But it successfully brings down the number of zucchini in the fridge this week.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 pint cherry tomatoes

1 large zucchini

8 ounces string beans

salt and pepper to taste

dried oregano and garlic powder to taste

2 servings pasta

Method:

Chop the tomatoes in half. Slice the zucchini lengthwise, then turn and slice lengthwise again. Chop into 1/4-inch slices, so that the result is quarter-circle sections of zucchini slices. Snap, de-string, and slice the string beans into 2-inch pieces.

Start cooking pasta.

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add tomatoes and season. Saute tomatoes a few minutes, until soft, at medium-high heat. Break tomatoes with a potato masher until a good amount of juice has run into the skillet. Add zucchini, toss, and heat through. Add beans, oregano, and garlic powder, and toss. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until the pasta is done. Drain pasta, add to skillet, and toss or stir. Serve hot with cheese grated on top.

Serves 2 to 4.

Top 3 tips for keepin' cool inside during an Excessive Heat Warning

Here at the homestead we're in the middle of an official Excessive Heat Warning, a severe weather condition where there is "heat index of at least 105 F [41 C] for more than 3 hours per day for 2 consecutive days, or heat index more than 115 F [46 C] for any period of time." In the mid-Atlantic we experience a spell of the former situation a few times every summer. Here's how Rowhouse Livin' prepares and bears!

1. Keep the thermostat up and use fans. We're blessed with a central air conditioning system in our home, but this tip works well with window-mounted room air conditioners, too. We set our thermostat at 78-82 F (25-27 C) (or set your window unit at "low" instead of "high") when the outside temperature begins to be unbearable. By itself, this air conditioner setting isn't the most comfortable, particularly if you're cooking or baking. However, when we use a box fan or two to stir the air around, we find it's totally acceptable.

It's not cool, or high-rise office building cold, but you know, nobody promised you a meat locker. That is to say, there's no reason to keep your home 35-40 degrees (20 degrees C) below the outside temperature. It's wasteful of your own money; it burdens the power grid; and, anecdotally, it makes you whinier about the heat outside when you contrast it to the bone-chilling cool inside.

The only risk here is what happens in some tragic cases during city heat waves. Some fatalities are caused by people running fans with their windows closed, while not running air conditioners at all. Without letting the heat escape through a window (or an air conditioner) in some way, fans simply turn the home into a convection oven (PDF, section 4.2.2). So don't try this tip without an air conditioner! It's a strategy for lowering the electric bill by cutting back on air conditioning, not by eliminating it completely.

2. Keep a jug of water in the fridge. This practice was standard operating procedure when I was a kid. Today, during a heat wave I'll fill a 2-quart pitcher with cold tap water and pop it in the fridge in the morning. I'll top it off with more water if we don't finish it by the end of the day, and I'll clean it a few times per week. It's devilishly refreshing to gulp down a glass or two of water after running errand in the heat, or hauling groceries or a briefcase home on foot.

Plus, tap water is cheaper than sweet mixes, sodapop, and instant iced tea. And it won't add empty calories to your diet while you're cooling down your core.

3. Keep your clothing loose and cool. And here's where you learn too much about me. I wear a housedress in the summer. Instead of wearing a t-shirt and jeans, khakis, or even shorts, I put on an old, oversized, sack-like sundress. It's a thin cotton weave, so it allows circulating air to touch my skin and keep me cool. It's old and stained, so I don't care if it gets dirty while I'm doing housework. It's ugly, so it gives my daughter an opportunity to roll her eyes at me and think I'm goofy. But I like it, because it helps me tolerate a higher setting on the thermostat when we get this ridiculous weather.

Now, if only it had pockets. Maybe I'll haul out the sewing machine and add one or two once the heatwave breaks.

Canning: Apple-blueberry . . . syrup

Canning season has started not with a bang but a whimper.

I tried to make an apple-blueberry jam with some CSA fruit, but I wasn't careful with the combination of sugar, acid, and pectin, so it didn't set properly. Now I have 7 half-pints of apple-blueberry syrup instead. And 2 of the jars didn't even seal!

Don't get me wrong: these 7 half-pints will cover a lot of pancakes. But since it was unintentional, and since it was the first project of the season, I'm disappointed.

So disappointed, I can bring myself to post a photo
of only 3 half-pints. Sob

Cheap eats: Croutons for salad or soup

As I've mentioned, when it looks as though I won't be able to finish a loaf of bread before it starts to go south, I'll slice up what's left into cubes, place it in some tupperware, and pop it into the freezer. Then I'll use the cubes as a topping for a casserole or gratin, or I'll toast them up and make salad croutons.

Ingredients:

2-3 tablespoons butter

2-4 cups bread cubes (1- or 2-inch dice)

salt and pepper to taste

oregano or marjoram and sage to taste

Method:

If the bread cubes are frozen, let them thaw at least partially before beginning. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the bread cubes and toss. Stirring occasionally, allow the cubes to brown gently.

Note that these started as 2/3 whole-wheat bread.
Your croutons may not be this dark as they toast.

Season to taste. For salad croutons, add oregano. For soup croutons, add marjoram and sage.

Salad of CSA greens and croutons. In the background,
Rowhouse Livin' pantry vinaigrette.

Serve warm or cool, but let cool completely before storing. Store in an airtight container at room temperature and use within 2 days. Quality is best when these croutons are used immediately; but at $0.45 per batch, you may not mind tossing a few out after they've gone stale.

Garlic scapes: Lipstick on a pig food

I'm being taken to task on Facebook for not declaring garlic scapes the manna of the late spring CSA box.

What's a garlic scape? It's the non-leaf stalk that grows out of a garlic bulb where, at its tip, sit the plant's maturing seeds. Farmers cut or pinch this stalk off so that the garlic plant puts its energy into growing a large bulb rather than propagating itself, which is what it wants to do. If the scape is left intact and allowed to flower and seed, the garlic that the farmer sells at the end of the season will be smaller and command a lower price. The economics are very clear for the farmer to make her garlic produce income two ways. First, harvest the scapes, which would cost money if left on the plant, and sell them; then reap the benefits later when the garlic bulbs come in fat and heavy.

I don't want to call farmers market and CSA patrons naive, but I think that some people see a touch of the exotic and rare in garlic scapes. In reality, they're merely an agricultural by-product. They can't be given to the dairy animals because they'll give an off-flavor to milk, cheese, and butter. But why toss them to the pigs if they cost nothing at all to produce outside of the labor to "harvest" and ship, and you can sell them at $4.00 per handful to city folk? Or toss them into the CSA share as something equal to a bunch of radishes, a pint of strawberries, or a head of Boston bibb lettuce?

For my CSA dollar I'd rather see young summer squash -- which I know has come in, because it's been at the farmers market for two weekends now -- than see pig food in the box. Instead, I'm left with stalks that are serviceable as an aromatic in a stir-fry, add a mild garlic flavor as a pizza topping, and are less convenient to handle than chives. I never buy them at the farmers market, but here's what we did with them this week, in the grand tradition of a farmers market producer we knew of in Seattle who would reply regarding any item one asked how to use, "Oh, it works great in a stir-fry":

CSA Garlic Scape Stir-Fry

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons high-temperature frying oil

4 or 5 garlic scapes

1 small head broccoli

2 cups snow peas

ground black pepper to taste

soy sauce to taste

brown or white rice, cooked

Method:

Prepare all vegetables before heating the skillet or wok. Trim the garlic scapes and cut into 1- to 2-inch lengths. Cut the flowerets off the broccoli and slice into bite-size pieces. Peel the broccoli stalk and chop into 1-inch pieces. Trim the stem and blossom ends off the snow peas; leave them whole.

In a heavy skillet or wok, heat the oil to shimmering over a medium-high flame. Add the garlic scapes and faire sauter until coated. Cover loosely with a lid and let soften a few minutes. Add the broccoli, sauté again, and let cook a few minutes, loosely covered. Repeat with the snow peas.

When the vegetables are tender but not mushy, add black pepper and 2 to 3 tablespoons soy sauce. Heat through and serve over rice.

Options: (1) Add finely chopped fresh ginger with the garlic scapes. (2) Thicken the sauce: combine 1 tbsp cornstarch, 2 tbsp soy sauce, and 1/4 cup water or broth in a cup; add the sauce at the end of cooking and heat until thickened. (3) Add sesame oil and serve cold, tossed with spaghetti or udon noodles.

Tragedy at a local thrift store

The Rowhouse Livin' household is devastated at the terrible news that six people perished at the Salvation Army thrift store at 22nd and Market Streets in Philadelphia yesterday. Our thoughts are with the victims' families and we fervently hope that the responsible individuals will be brought to justice.

I didn't visit that thrift store very often -- maybe once every few months -- but it was always a little busy when I was there. And there always seemed to be a baby or two there, so I was relieved, at least a very little bit, to hear that there were no very young victims.

If I'm not mistaken, that was the only thrift store (as opposed to upscale resale or consignment shop offering second-hand goods) in Center City Philadelphia. It was a very useful destination for casual clothing and housewares. The dishes I use for lunch and coffee at my office came from that very store. I'm very sorry to see it destroyed, and it seems unlikely, to me, that Salvation Army will find another Center City location with rent low enough to open a shop to replace it. But of course, this material loss pales in comparison to the unimaginable loss suffered by the friends and families of the deceased.

What an awful event in Philadelphia.

Cheap eats: Pantry vinaigrette

This isn't haute cuisine; it's merely cheap cuisine, nothing fancy, made with ordinary items you almost certainly have in your kitchen cabinets at all times.

The Rowhouse Livin' household finds that most bottled salad dressings are too sweet for our tastes, or they have hippie-scaring preservatives. When a bottle comes our way via a potluck or family get-together, it will often end up sitting in the fridge, unused, for literally a year. And who knows how old that dressing is? When were the ingredients produced, then packed, then sold at the grocery store, and then finally opened? Let's try something fresher -- especially considering that, at my count, we've had about ten heads of salad greens and two dozen radishes already this season with our CSA subscription.

This vinaigrette works with lettuce-based salads as well as pasta and cold potato salads. You can up the salt content if your greens are a little bitter. You can add dried onion flakes, dried marjoram, mustard seeds, or tarragon if you like. Paprika gives it a little kick. And it holds up well with crumbled bleu cheese over spinach.

Ingredients:

1 part white vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

1/4 teaspoon dried garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano leaves

2 to 3 parts olive oil

Method:

Small portion (for one salad, serving 4): Pour 2 tablespoons vinegar into the salad bowl. Add flavorings and stir to moisten. Whisk in 4 to 6 tablespoons olive oil until emulsified. Let stand while salad is prepared, at least 5 minutes. Whisk a few strokes again, add salad ingredients, and toss until salad is coated and a little wilted.

Large portion (to keep in the fridge): Put 1/2 to 3/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup vinegar, and flavorings in a pint jar. (Increase quantity of flavorings to taste.) Close jar tightly and shake until emulsified. Let stand at least 5 minutes. Before using, shake again. Store unused portion in the fridge and use within a few weeks.

Fresh herbs option (to go with a large portion): This works best with a single herb at a time, not a combination, and is a lovely way to feature whatever bounty is overwhelming the garden or the CSA box that week. Select a cup or so of fresh herbs. Prep them as necessary and chop them coarsely or into chiffonade. Add to the pint jar with the oil, vinegar, and seasoning, and proceed as above.

Compare and contrast nutritional data resources: USDA vs. Google

A friend of mine is on a diet for science (they're taking part in an investigational weight-loss program through a local university), and so they have to count calories very carefully. So far, they've been using a handbook by "the CalorieKing", provided by the program, as well as internet searches of varying reliability.

When I've wanted to look up nutritional information -- say, after a fitness professional friend suggested that I increase my magnesium consumption -- my go-to resource has been the super-comprehensive but somewhat user-unfriendly USDA National Nutrient Database. Dig it. There are some 8,000 foods in the system, both organized by category and searchable by name. Look at the nutrition packed in that CSA kale we got this week! The only question I'm left with is, what's the percentage of my DRI (formerly known as Recommended Daily Allowance, or RDA) for all those nutrients? I have to cross-reference with another USDA website or a PDF file from the Institute of Medicine, which is too bad.

Google to the rescue, maybe. They've just announced that they're rolling out a nutrition data aggregator. Soon you'll be able to type "how much magnesium in kale" into Google search, and you'll get an honest-to-goodness Nutrition Facts label right there on your computer or handheld screen.

Neato burrito, so to speak.

CSA asparagus casserole

Our CSA (community-supported agriculture) subscription has been generous with asparagus in its first weeks, so here we go: a very simple casserole to use the asparagus and another item in abundance this early in the season, green "baby" garlic. I love a one-pot recipe!

Ingredients:

1 bunch spring asparagus

2-3 spring onions or baby garlic bulbs, sliced small

2 tablespoons flour

salt and pepper

1/2 to 1 cup milk

2 ounces shredded hard cheese (Cheddar works well, as does mozzarella)

1 cup seasoned breadcrumbs [1]

1 tablespoon olive oil

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F. Remove and discard the tough lower ends of asparagus spears. Chop the spears to about 2-inch lengths. Toss with the onion or garlic and place into casserole dish. Combine the flour, salt and pepper, and milk, and whisk until no lumps remain. Pour over the asparagus and onion. Cover vegetables with shredded cheese.

Toss breadcrumbs with olive oil and scatter over the casserole. Cover and bake 35-45 minutes, or until bubbly. Serve hot.

Serves 2 as a main dish, 4 as a side dish.

---

[1] I keep no-cost breadcrumbs on hand almost all the time. When it looks as though I won't be able to finish a loaf of bread before it starts to grow mold, I slice it into very small cubes and place it in a plastic container in the freezer. For this recipe, I would measure out a cup of breadcrumbs; add some dried oregano, dried garlic powder, salt, and pepper; and toss with olive oil. If the breadcrumbs were still very cold when the casserole went into the oven, I would add maybe 5 more minutes to the cooking time listed.

Five-dollar rhubarb pie

I'm always excited when rhubarb starts showing up at the supermarket and farmers markets. I have a very fond memory of my grandma going out to her front stoop, hacking some leaves off a weedy-looking plant, going into the kitchen, and re-emerging a couple of hours later with a pie in her hands. I don't know where she got the recipe -- to tell the truth, she got most of her recipes out of the newspaper or Chatelaine -- but it's a highlight of my year to make a Mothers Day rhubarb pie for myself or to bring one to a Memorial Day picnic.

It's even better when I'm patient. When rhubarb first showed up at our farmers market this year, it was priced at an insulting $6.00/lb. Insulting because rhubarb, once established, grows like crazy, returns every year (and in fact prefers a good, hard freezing every winter), and doesn't require a terribly gentle hand to harvest and ship. Don't get me wrong: I want my farmer to get a fair price for what they take the trouble to bring me every weekend. But I'd also appreciate being charged a fair price for what I want to bring home. So I waited two weeks, and this time it was $4.50/lb. Still not ideal, but enough to make a pie for about $5.00.

Ingredients:

1 9-inch pie crust (a half recipe of Flaky Pastry Dough from the 1997 Joy of Cooking works well here)

1 1/2 cups white granulated sugar

3 tablespoons flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons butter

2 eggs, separated, yolks beaten and whites set aside

3 cups (about 1 pound) chopped rhubarb

Method:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Fit the pie crust into a 9-inch pie tin or plate (not a deep-dish pie pan). Sift together the sugar, flour, and salt. Rub in the butter. Mix in the beaten egg yolks. Combine with the chopped rhubarb and fill the pie crust.

Bake 15 minutes, then reduce temperature to 375 degrees F. Bake 35-40 minutes. Prepare a French meringue with the egg whites and about 2 tablespoons sugar (omitting cream of tartar); top the pie and bake until meringue is browned, about 5 minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool before serving.

The CSA season begins

Our community-supported agriculture (CSA) subscription started delivering last week, so my projects over the next several months will be to post (1) cheap, simple recipes to use up the produce, and (2) notes about canning. The recipes will be mostly about vegetables, and the canning will be mostly about fruit.

My past experience with CSA's: every week, we'd get a handful of strawberries here, a small sack of green beans there, and six pounds of kale. But that was in the Pacific Northwest, where there's an endemic blight that makes it hard to grow tomatoes. (Man, did I miss Jersey tomatoes while I was living in Seattle. Now that I'm back in Philadelphia, though, I miss getting apples for under $1.00/lb. This mid-Atlantic cheapskate can't win.) Word on the street from a friend who did this particular CSA last year was that the quantity of tomatoes can approach overwhelming levels, and fall can become Carrot Time. So if the same bounty occurs this year, maybe I'll try pressure-canning carrot slices for use in quick winter soups.

We've paid $640.00 up-front for a half-share of vegetables plus a full share of fruit. This amount is comparable to what we would pay for produce at the local farmers market from May to October -- but we'll be getting a larger quantity of produce. We'll still hit the market, though, for local cheeses and wines, plus occasional gifts. I'll look at the math again at the end of the season and see how we did. But with careful, complete use of the produce through immediate consumption and home-canning, I'm almost certain we'll be ahead, and into the winter as well.

Here's a recipe to kick off the season: CSA frittata, using what else? Kale.

Ingredients:

1 bunch CSA kale

1 bunch (or less) CSA spring onions, chopped

2-3 tablespoons butter

2 ounces shredded Cheddar cheese

6 eggs, well beaten

Method:

Wash kale and chop into bite-sized pieces. In a large skillet, sautée onions in butter over medium heat until tender. Add kale in batches and wilt. Season with salt and pepper and cook until tender. (Add a little water if necessary. If you do so, let the water cook off before proceeding.) Spread the kale evenly over the skillet, and place shredded cheese in an even layer over the kale. Pour beaten eggs over kale, reduce heat to low or medium-low, and cook until done, 10-15 minutes.

Serves 2 as a main dish, 4 as a side dish.