Help! There’s a box of vegetables in my kitchen!

I’m in love with Epicurious. You can search it all sorts of ways - not all the recipes are terrifying, and the ratings are really helpful. It’s what I do when I have an ingredient I don’t know what to do with.

Roasting, grilling, steaming, salad, or just plain rinsing and eating. Yep.

Does your box come with recipes or are they too complicated? Every box we’ve received from our CSA comes with recipes, which have come in very handy, since I had no idea what to do with cactus paddles. :wink:

It definitely is a great way to add more greens to your diet. I’ve been thoroughly pleased with ours.

Good luck with the home delivered veggies! We’ve started on this twice and after a few months given up.

For the first few weeks it’s great and you’re happy to search for yet another way to use parsnips and beets - it is winter after all :wink: - but in the end you realise you are leaving more and more veg each week. The problem is that the providors - at least the service we used here in the south of England - tried hard to use locally grown, in season veg and and you are to a large extent stuck with what they put in.

So it is back to choosing what you actually want at the shops.

Returning to the OP, you can find hundreds of veg recipes on the Abel & Cole website. I’m afraid the measurements are in grams but there are plenty of conversion calculators on the web.

I roast and grill a lot of vegetables too. I make cauliflower a lot like **anu-la ** does, and the kids and I go through a whole head at one meal.

In fact, since I started cooking things this way, even my pickier child doesn’t complain, but just eats it. My younger son prefers vegetables done this way to pasta even.

Almost any vegetable goes well with olive oil, a little balsamic vinegar, kosher salt and pepper, whether on the grill or in the oven.

I don’t know what I would do with greens though. I might find that cause to get that rabbit my son and I have talked about.

Heh. The only other people I know personally who used to get veggie delivery service like this also owned a large iguana. I’m pretty sure the lizard got the lion’s share of the greens.

Well, Agonist, thanks to you and your thread, you have helped this household take a step closer to healthier eating habits. We’re signed up and get our first delivery next Thursday. Woohoo! :smiley:

For people outside of Seattle who are interested in this sort of thing, look here: Community Supported Agriculture . This is a great thing and is available all over the country. Some places will exchange food for a couple of hours of labor at the farm each week. I have a desk job, and although I exercise, getting out and doing farm chores for a couple of hours is just good for your overall health. You feel really good when you’re done.

A simple thing I do with spinach is to wilt it in a large skillet with assorted veggies and herbs - garlic, onion, tomatoes, etc. - whatever you like - and then toss it with pasta and olive oil. I like to add some shrimp or salmon to it for additional flavor and protien. Spinach wilts down to nothing so you can fill a skillet to overflowing and it will soon take up hardly any space at all.

I don’t have a recipe - I just threw it together one day when I was in a situation like the OP’s. Everytime I make it it is different depending on what I have on hand.

The tossing-in-olive-oil-and-salt-and-tossing-in-the-oven also works wonders with brussel sprouts and asparagus!

I’ve often done a wonderously yummy salad with spinach and mandarin oranges. Toss 'em together. Make a dressing using oil, chopped garlic, honey, and the juice from the oranges. You can toss in some lemon juice, too, to counterbalance the honey. Mix the dressing to taste (I use just a little oil and then add everything else, tasting as I go) and toss the salad with it. Then sprinkle on some toasted slivered almonds. It’s really really tasty.

Spinach is also good to have in a white sauce (with gruyere and nutmeg, even) over poached eggs as a Benny Florentine. But mostly I just wash it and put it into salads.

Fresh Turnip/Daikon Salad (Indian)

Using peeler, peel off the dusty, just-pulled-out of earth skin on top

Once you have your clean slate daikon, grate using grater. Grate as much as you want.

Add a little bit of kosher salt, sugar, green chilies/cayenne, lemon juice and chopped coriander leaf to taste.

Mix well.

You can also toast a few mustard seeds and hing (asafoetida) in a bit of oil and douse it in the radish but I never get around to it. Plus, you need some specialised equipment and spices.

That’s it. I eat it with rice and daal, or chapati and some sort of fish/meat dish. Very light, healthy and requires very small amount of effort.

If you don’t mind eating unhealthy sausage with your healthy greens:

Cook sausages in a frying pan. Remove. Cut kale into large pieces. Add to the greasy pot. Cook until tender, adding water at the beginning if necessary. Sprinkle lightly with vinegar and eat with the sausages.

You can add onions, garlic, horseradish, tomatoes, and cut up sausage to the pan and make a stew if you want to get all complicated.

This thread and other people talking about it have made me look into getting on a CSA delivery list myself. I’ve been increasing my vegetable intake over the last year anyway, and this is starting to sound like a fantastic idea.

Now, to pick which of the two that are in my area…

Oh, sweet Og.

I just got my first bin of veggies delivered today - hooray! I tried two new dishes for the first time ever.

When I pulled a mango from the bin, my husband excitedly suggested I try making mango chicken. Holy. Cow. Or chicken.
I couldn’t find a definitive recipe on the internet, so I just kind of pulled ideas from all the recipes I found.
I cut up four boneless, skinless chicken breasts and fried them up (just spray oil) with a bit of soy sauce. I grated some ginger (included in the delivery) and chopped up two cloves of garlic (delivery) and tossed those in. I squeezed the juice from two oranges (mine from before) onto the chicken. I cut a little red onion (mine) and three small sweet peppers (delivery) and tossed those in. I chopped up the mango (delivery) and threw the whole thing in. I mixed up a bit of rice vinegar, chicken stock, a few tbsps of sugar (adjust to taste, of course), and let the whole thing simmer for a while. When everything was cooked but still looking broth-y, I mixed a bit of cornstarch with cold milk and tossed it in, and the mixture instantly thickened and coated everything. I removed it from heat and served with a heaping helping of kale fried in bacon with garlic that I’d made ahead of time.

I would serve that to guests, it was so damn good.

I can’t wait to figure out what to do with the rest of this stuff! I feel like I hit the lottery! I’ve got an acorn squash, some carrots, roma tomatoes, sweet peppers, garlic, ginger, braeburn apples, bosc pears, celery, red leaf lettuce, more kale, bananas, and tangerines. YUM!

Best discovery on the Dope ever! Thanks, Agonist!

:smiley: You’re welcome!

My box doesn’t come 'til tomorrow, but I’ll be right there with you. I may have to try your mango chicken recipe.

Wouldn’t it be cool to start a weekly dope CSA discussion, to swap recipes and ideas? We’d need more than just the two of us, though.

I’m running into a glut of apples this week, I think. Maybe I’ll make a cobbler.

glut of apples? chunk’em and toss them in bread pudding (cinnamon coated and before baking, of course)

Or do a potato salad with raw apples instead of potatoes (go light on the mayo). Great with ribs.