How Is the Food Co-op Cooking So Far?

So I pulled the trigger and decided that this was the summer we would try the NWPA Growers Co-op.  I had looked for a couple of years at it and just couldn't commit to the program.  Basically we are signed up to receive a small veggie share, a pound of ground beef, and a dozen eggs once a week and a whole chicken once a month.  The convenience of the pick up location was what sealed the deal for me.  We literally walk five minutes down the street, get our weekly lot and walk the five minutes home.  Sometimes we get a veggie or herb choice, but most often our share is predetermined by what has just been harvested by the farmers.  It has been a foodie-experimental summer trying to figure out what to do with our food stuffs.  Here are some things that I have tried so far:

Quiche two ways:  The eggs have been the toughest to use up.  I can do scrambled and omlettes every once in a while, but the few mornings I do eat breakfast, it's almost always oatmeal (my new thing is tossing craisins and walnuts in my rolled oats with a touch of brown sugar-delish).  I am just not in the habit of feeling satisfied if I eat eggs.  I enjoy tossing things into the eggs to liven them up, so I checked out a few quiche recipes and so far have tried a couple.  The first was a crustless mini-quiche that was baked in cupcake tins.  I added sun dried tomatoes and diced radishes and basil pesto, topped them with some shredded cheddar.  Quiche is easy in that it is basically scrambled eggs but baked.  However, I quickly have learned that eggs are basically the glue of the food world; they hold everything together.  This meant that despite my generous coating of shortening on the tins, the residual egg was not impressed with soaking in soapy water nor by my weak dishwashing rag.  It took several cleanings to get the sticky stuff out of it.  The second time I did mini-quiche, I used muffin liners.  Much easier!  My fo-real quiche was done using a pre-made pie crust and it also had sun dried tomatoes as well as ricotta cheese and spinach.  This was a pretty tasty bite. 

Rhubarb:  The rhubarb has been our surprise favorite of the summer.  I first did a rhubarb muffin recipe I found on the co-op website (they are helpful with things like what to do with your stuff).  Those did not last too long-very tasty.  The next thing was a strawberry rhubarb pie/tart.  You can see in the picture of the first version of this I folded over the extra edges of the pre-made pie crust (I have since tried making my own pie crust and still am learning how best to do that).  We ate the whole pie in under 48 hours.  A second pie has been made with my own pie crust.  Since we will be obese if we continue eating pie at this rate, we have frozen the remainders of our rhubarb to save and make at another time.

Swiss chard:  This stuff looks more intimidating than it really is.  Tastes great after being sauteed in a bit of olive oil and garlic and tossed in some pasta.  The Chubby has really benefitted from all of these veggies with thick stems; they get cut and instead of being tossed, the Chubby gets a nutritious bunny snack.  He has also gotten the collard greens we received last week, because I just wasn't in the mood to find a way to cook/eat them that isn't the traditional way of soaking them for hours in ham stock (blech).

Zucchini (green and yellow):  With the green zucchini I knew I would make zucchini bread, because delicious!  That business lasts about as long as the pies.  The yellow zucch got sliced and quartered with garlic scrapes and onions and grilled in our grilling basket.  A little garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil were just enough to really make this mix a delightful dinner.

Radishes:  I was really hesitant on what to do with these.  From my childhood I remember my mother eating them raw while sipping on Black Velvet, which honestly sounds really sophisticated and mature (seriously, no sarcasm).  I am not sure if my taste buds are just not yet mature enough for raw radishes, but no thanks.  Even when baked in the quiches, they still had a strange bite to them that I was not super fond of.  I found a swell recipe though that I tried that mellows our the peppery bite yet maintains the radish crunchiness that I do find appealing.  First I sliced them (using my mandolin, because prepping food should involve an overly-fun yet dangerous slide-like knife) and then wrapped them in foil with a little butter, garlic pepper, and garlic salt.  The recipe said the foil pouch could be cooked on a grill, but since we were match-less this week after leaving them out in the rain, I let the pouch bake in the oven until the radishes were mostly transparent in color and were softer.  Really it was a very tasty way to eat them.

Herbs:  These have also been tough to use, mostly because I am not super familiar with how and what to use them with.  The rosemary has been tossed into the most recent batch of na'an (Indian grilled flatbread) and I cut and used a bit of the sage in the swiss chard and pasta.  A lot of herbs can be made into dressings or used on meats, but I haven't had meat since 2007 so I will let my husband experiment and attest to the herby-meat business.

Potato gnocchi:  We did not get potatoes in our veggie share; we just had them from the most recent batch of clam chowder Peter made.  Potatoes always find their way to a dark place in the house that we forget about until they start to smell and we notice more fruit flies in the house (fist waving at freaking potatoes).  Why can I not buy them one or two at a time at a reasonable price; why must we buy a bag!  Before we departed on our west coast tour, I wanted to mix up and freeze gnocchi.  It was a process to be sure!  First came boiling the potatoes then peeling the still hot spuds.  I do not have a ricer, but I figured the Kitchen Aid grinder I had would work just fine (it did).  Then mixing in flour and finally adding in the egg yolks were the final ingredients added.  Then came my least favorite part.  I never like how flour makes my hands feel and gnocchi dough needs kneaded and then rolled out with plenty of flour and made into a thin rope that is then cut and frozen.  My hands felt like a caked sticky mess when I was finished.  I have not yet cooked or tasted them to see if they hold up or not so I don't know if this adventure was a success or not.

So it has been a learning experience, some wins, some draws (next time collard greens!-you will be cooked into something).  I feel good about the challenge to do something that stretches me a bit.  Any suggestions with what to do with all of these eggs would be appreciated.  I am thinking maybe a mayo-less egg salad of some kind.  How long do hard boiled eggs last?  Oh, goodness!