CSA Day

Better late than never...

Unlike in N.America, the CSA's here take vacations. I expect that is because of the 365 days a year growing season. They did send us an email telling us that that because of the holidays there would be changes in the delivery schedule. Having thoroughly confused SistR and me, they then sent us another 2 emails, further confusing us.

Yesterday we waited with impatience for our surprise package, but instead, we got another email telling us that we would have to wait until tomorrow. So today, I went upstairs to see whether tomorrow had arrived. It had...

An overflowing box was sitting in the middle of the floor waiting to be unpacked and explored. Of course, like all good things, it had to wait - Jesamine needed me urgently in the bathroom for help in scrubbing her toes and checking for potatoes growing behind her ears. Once she was scrubbed like a new penny, we all piled onto the sofa and started the unpacking and unwrapping.

Todays shipment included:

• A lovely juicy cabbage
• Eggplants
• Carrots
• Potatoes, sweet and white
• Green onions
• Summer squash
• Cucumbers
• Roma and tiny field tomatoes
• Sweet peppers
• Big chunks of pumpkin
• Parsley
• Basil
• Asparagus beans

The question of the evening was, what to do with my bounty? Especially as I still had some veg left over from last week - I haven't been cooking all that much - come winter I usually spend more time in front of the stove.

I still had parsley and mint left from Rosh haShana dinner {all washed and ready to go}, so that was a no-brainer - Tabbouleh. I made a very simple version - lots of parsley, mint and green onions, tomatoes, pomegranate seeds and salt, pepper, lemon and XVOlive oil. C'est tout.

Even after that, I still had lots of tomatoes left, as well as some eggplants, so I made a cheats version of vegetarian lasagne / moussaka.

I fried the diced eggplant with onions and garlic in a couple of teaspoons of XVO, until golden, threw in some oregano, mace and black pepper, then I layered it in a bowl starting with tomatoes, and spinkling with raw quinoa in the bottom layers. I used cottage cheese and Israeli Tal Emek cheese, which is like a very mild emmenthal, threw in a couple of leaves of Thai basil and nuked it just to get it warmed up. It got popped into the oven {on high and off alternating - still haven't fixed the thermostat} until it was all browned and bubbly. I know I should have used a bigger bowl, but I didn't want to spoil the layered effect by dumping from one container into another.

The juices that sploshed out have made my whole apartment smell like an Italian restaurant. All I am missing are the candles stuck into chianti bottles sitting on red checkered tableclothes.

And if it didn't need cleaning before,
my stove certainly needs cleaning now.