For all the reasons I’m now obsessed with buying locally grown produce, we recently signed up for a farm box delivery subscription. This week’s arrived at the wee hour of 4:28 a.m. (farmers are up even earlier than I thought!) full of brightly colored produce. Vibrant yellow tomatoes, crisp green celery, and how pretty is rainbow chard?! Slicing it on my cutting board reminded me of my paint palette (and the fact that I needed to clean it) dotted with a lively array of acrylics.
This week’s box came complete with:
- 1 lb assorted heirloom tomatoes
- 1 large head of lettuce
- 2 bunches of broccoli
- 1 lb of green beans
- 1 bunch nantes carrots
- 1 pint of shishito peppers
- 1 lb zucchini
- 1 ginormous thing of celery
- .5 lb gypsy peppers (I actually Googled “what the heck is a gypsy pepper” when it arrived)
- 1 bunch rainbow chard
- 1 large cucumber
- 1 partridge in a pear tree (not really, but one can dream)
So, the question now is…what in the world are we going to do with all this produce. I refuse to have any go bad or be wasted. Time to get creative and get eating. Thankfully, we are having friends over with dinner tomorrow so hopefully, they will appreciate some farm to table veggies as much as I do.
I’m going to tackle the rainbow chard first. Fast recipe, cooks quickly, few ingredients, and it’s just so dang pretty. My favorite way to enjoy rainbow chard is to sauté the large, tender leaves and crispy, crunchy stalks with diced pancetta, a little lemon juice and lemon zest, and garlic. Get the recipe here.
I used the nantes carrots, gypsy peppers, and zucchini for a side at our Argentine Asado dinner party. They were a hit and added such beautiful color to our table.
I also made a simple salad for our Argentine Asado by slicing the cucumber and heirloom tomatoes and serving them on top of the lettuce, tossed with an avocado, cilantro dressing.
The broccoli was roasted several nights later with mustard seed and served with a garlic crusted pork tenderloin (you won’t believe how easy both of these recipes are!).
Green beans and shishito peppers were also oven roasted. Those recipes will be posted soon!
I noshed on raw celery for the rest of the week. It was a nice addition to my usual mid-morning snack of raw carrots, sliced red bell pepper, and almonds.
As for the partridge in a pear tree…I’ll just keep on dreaming…for now.
Enjoy!
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