kohlrabi

Kohlrabi. That often-massive light green orb with tentacles, excavated from under your piles of chard and kale at the bottom of the CSA box. “Weird,” “alien,” and “compost pile-bound” can be heard when describing it. But beneath its rough exterior lies a tasty ingredient for your stir frys and slaws that will leave you wishing for more.

A member of the same family of vegetables as cabbage and kale, kohlrabi is high in both vitamins C and B6, as well as many other vitamins and minerals. It’s readily available during Minnesota summers at farmer’s markets, co-ops, and occasionally more traditional markets, and it’s usually inexpensive.

This is part 3 of a summer long series about our CSA boxes and what we do with them. Recipes for Broccoli Cheese Soup and Instructions for Quick Pickles follow.

Suddenly I hated broccoli.  

I used to boast that I’ve liked every vegetable I have ever tasted. But when I kept pulling bunches of broccoli from the depths of my CSA box, I found myself filled with dread.  

This is part 2 of a summer long series about our CSA boxes and what we do with them. Recipes for Mandu (Korean egg rolls), Simple Turnip Greens and Marinated Cucumbers are below.

We are a month deep into our first CSA box adventure. While June’s first box contained mostly salad greens and green onions, the following boxes grow larger by the week and deliver an ever-diversifying selection of vegetables. Many of the vegetables are new to us. For two, fleeting weeks, garlic scapes graced our boxes. I added them to everything, from bulgogi marinade to salads to cream cheese wontons.  

This is the first part in a bi-monthly series featuring the CSA vegetables we receive on a weekly basis.

It is sort of like getting a care package from your best friend...who happens to be a farmer. In February, my fiancée and I signed-up with Bluebird Gardens of Fergus Falls, MN to receive weekly half-bushel share boxes. We paid just $395 for the whole season!

My husband and I first joined a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program about 14 years ago. We shared a membership with friends and split the box of vegetables each week. It was the early days of CSAs in the Twin Cities, and the variety in the box was, well, not very various -- a three week stretch of nothing but bok choy pretty much ended our interest. But then, four years ago, circumstances conspired to bring us back into the CSA fold. Just when my husband and I were ready to reconsider, we visited some relatives in Madison and happened to be there when they received their CSA share from Harmony Valley Farm, located in Viroqua, WI.

You say brussels sprouts, I say Brussels sprouts, she says brussel sprouts. What’s in a name? That which we call a rose…a rose cabbage, that is. This is what the Germans call these baby brassicas (“rosenkohl” = rose cabbage) that may be the funkiest and prettiest vegetable you’ll ever see growing. A tall, single leaf-topped stalk supports 20 to 40 buds crammed together like peas with no pod.

In the summer, we see local vegetables everywhere: at the grocery store, in a backyard garden, the farmers' market, or our CSA (community supported agriculture) box.  Sometimes there are so many vegetables, it's overwhelming to find uses for them all. (How do I prepare kohrabi? Can I eat carrot tops? Is there anything I can do with all this zucchini?) Plus, if you're like me, you have the additional challenge of living without air conditioning; so people like us want to avoid cooking and baking as much as possible. This video shows me demonstrating a few recipes for the less familiar veggies, prepared using little to no heat -- including carrot-top pesto. (No need to ever throw them into the compost again!) Enjoy!

Two summers ago, my good friend Becky made me a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) alternate — when families who picked up CSA shares at her house were out of town, I was the beneficiary. Several weeks that summer, I had a bin full of fresh, local veggies, and the pleasant challenge of figuring out what to do with them. It was a gateway experience.

So last summer I bought my own half share in a CSA for Foxtail Farm. The downsides soon became apparent. Interestingly, they weren't ones I could have predicted, like, I never had a zillion zucchini to use up in a hurry.

Last Sunday, my family and I (and a few friends) took the opportunity to visit the Kingfield Farmers Market in South Minneapolis. It's been ages since I've been there, but pretty much everyone I know raves about it. It's easy to see why.

What a fun night we had at the Red Stag Supper Club in Minneapolis! The room was gorgeous, the food was superb, and the company was best of all. The photos, taken by my friend, fellow foodie, and excellent blogger Kate Sommers of Les Petites Images, tell the story way better than I can.