Making the most of our CSA veggies

Jon and I have been members of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) off and on for the past 15 years.  When we first started, back before Eli was born, we split a box three ways and still could not finish off the veggies most weeks.  We ended up with some good results from our experiments on the shelf life of beets and rutabagas.  Over the years we have gotten a little more adventurous and have learned several ways of pounding the always abundant beet crop into submission.  We can now also identify a few more greens and roots. 
But it wasn't until this year that we reached the point where we could consume everything on a weekly basis. Sure, there were some stressful Wednesdays as we tried to use up the last of a week's harvest before the new load appeared.  And having two rabbits as fellow housemates did indeed help- but they mostly ate the tops of the radishes, beets, and carrots- although I know a serious cook would have ingenious uses for those as well. 

Here are my highlights of CSA cooking this year:

Butternut Squash Bread.  It took a little effort to bake the squash, then puree it, then start the bread making process, but I do declare it worthwhile!  The whole family enjoyed this one, which has not always been the case with my experiments.  I have very high hopes the butternut squash ravioli I plan to make tonight with the left over puree.

Roasted Vegetable Sandwiches:   This was more of a hit with Jon and I, but the boys gamely ate there's and only 'accidentally' knocked a few of the harder to identify vegetables off of their sandwiches on the sly.  I am on to them. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by the rutabagas and turnips in this one.

Beet Burgers:  When you get 6-10 beets a week, you have to get creative.  My family would only eat the beet/arugula/feta salad so often.  Beet burgers were a mess to make, but I made a load of 15 at once and we are still pulling them out of the freezer and roasting them up in November.  They are a nice alternative to a veggie burger every now and then.

Chocolate Beet Cake:  I didn't tell my boys that there were beets in this cake before they ate some.  And they never knew!  Yeehaw.  Of course, there was also at least 3 pounds of sugar in the recipe as well.

Carrot Cake:  I've never made one before, and Ildar proclaimed my first attempt as the 'Best American Carrot Cake' he has ever had.  It was his first American carrot cake, but I'll log that praise in my little book anyway.

American Borscht.  As I have mentioned earlier, our Russian expert insisted that this soup was good.  But it was not borscht.  Oh well.  It was my first attempt at a beet based soup (but not the last, I am sure) and I think it came out ok.

I'd call it a successful harvest from our perspective.  From the farmer's newsletters I know the season was a struggle with heat and too much water, for a change, but they managed to get a pretty bountiful crop to our table.  We will miss it as we settle back into the store bought groove for the next 6 months or so. 

The harvest is over, I fear

Last night it really froze hard.  The basil that had been bravely blowing in the wind over the past few chilly days is now shriveled and dead.  Luckily I have a freezer full of pesto to remind us of summer in the months ahead.  One of the last things we pulled out were our carrots.  I am never good at thinning my 'crops' to the suggested spacing intervals.  I always feel like more = more even though I do somewhat understand the concept of crowding and such.  So our carrot harvest is always a surprise.  We get a few that run straight and true and look like something you might buy at the store (but taste SO much better) but most of them are short stunted little fellows.  This year we had one whopper of a surprise when we pulled up this mammoth mother of all carrots.  It was not really the length that was inspiring- but its circumference and just general heft.  I think it could have made a pot of carrot soup all by its lonesome. 

Spy Master

One of our first stops during our weekend blitz of Washington DC was the International Spy Museum.  It was a hoot.  Upon entering you are brought up to a room where you 'select a cover' and then throughout your visit you use little computer terminals to answer questions about your 'cover' and are given new segments of your mission.  And the whole time you are learning really a massive amount of information about the spy trade throughout history.  The only thing wrong with the museum is that I fear it might inspire my boys to jobs that I would really in the end hate for them to have!  Being the mother of a spy can not be easy. 
When we left the museum we practiced the techniques of espionage we had learned and spotted dastardly spies on almost every street corner.  Luckily they did not spy us, due to our incredible ability to blend in....

Surprising myself in Washington DC

If there is ever a time that I have to come up with a few adjectives to describe myself, patriotic is not one that comes to my lips right away.  It's not that I'm anti-American at all.  It's just that in my travels around this lovely planet I have at times felt a little sheepish about how others perceive us.  This feeling probably peaked back in the nineties when I was living and working as a teacher on the small Caribbean island of Antigua.  The experience most Antiguans had with Americans was when scantily clad tourists right of the cruise ships would rush by in taxi's, video cameras panning the countryside from open windows.  Anyway- back to our trip to the Capitol.  As we toured around at all of the sites I found myself getting teary with some frequency.  It happened when we were hearing about the incredible valor and bravery of those first rebels, when we toured the vast library of congress, when we watched old video footage of the astronauts stepping out onto the moon, when we gazed up at Abe Lincoln.  But the experience that moved me most was while we were standing in line on the bottom floor of the white house, waiting in the endless stream of visitors to weave our way up the steps and get a glance at just a corner of the famous estate.  As we waited in the line we moved past photo displays of life in the white house over the years.  Every large frame had pictures from different eras- and I was incredibly moved by the sight of Michelle Obama and her family looking out from the sea of otherwise white faces.  It struck me again what an amazing thing our country did back in 2008.  We elected a man because of his qualifications and talents and charisma and smarts, and didn't let the color of his skin trip us up.  If I could sum up the essence of DC that touched me it was just the outstanding evidence of bravery everywhere you looked.  It re-warmed my heart toward this old country of mine. 

High Praise

Last week while the boys and I were sitting in the airport waiting for our flight back to Minnesota, Eli was trying to get his math homework done.  There were a lot of challenging new concepts and he had neither textbook nor teacher handy.  He was getting a little frustrated and testy.  Lucky for him he was trying to figure out how to graph lines and write their equations.  This just happens to be one of my favorite math topics.  I was a math major for the first half of my freshman year of college, after all.  Then I bailed for a major where I could sit around and read books, but I put in the effort for a while there.  And at Avalon I am often called upon to help with algebra and geometry homework.  Kids know not to ask me for help once they hit the imaginary numbers.  I never got that.  Anyway- back to me and Eli and his math.  At first he was a little snippy with my because I was trying to explain the process in a way his teacher had not discussed.  I asked him if he wanted my help or not.  He thought long and hard about that and then conceded that yes, in the end, he would like my help.  So I gave it and I saw the little light bulb go off in his head- which was pretty exciting to see because what he was working on is really the crux of Algebra and if you get that, so much more becomes clear.  After he worked through a couple problems without my help he put his pencil down, looked me in the eye and said, "You know mom, I guess you are pretty proficient in math."  The woman (mom) reading a book in the seat next to me took a pause, looked up, and smiled.  I told her I was going to write that comment down and cherish it as we move through the years ahead.  So here it is.  According to Eli, in the month of October in the year of two thousand and ten, he has proclaimed that his mother is indeed proficient in math.  I will be reminding him of this statement often, I think. 

Feral brawling revisited

Last fall we took the kids down to the pizza farm on a September evening and the boys loved it- they ran around in the dark playing tag, chasing kittens, running wild.  When we returned and got snuggled into warm beds Eli said something along the lines of how much he loved it and how it made him feel like a feral brawler.  He admitted that the did not know what the term meant, just that it seemed to fit the situation.  Of course it did.  We took some city kids to the country and released them into the ultimate childhood pastime- running free in the night. They reveled in the freedom of it, felt the release, and at some point started rolling all over each other in their enthusiasm.  Hence the brawling.  We returned to the pizza farm again this fall, with a smaller group, and the results were the same- maybe a little less brawling this time, but as soon as the car stopped in the glowering dark, the boys tumbled out and were hotfooting it after a pack of kittens.  It was, once again, lovely.   It's just kind of far away, and only open on Tuesdays- so not super accessible.

Today we did the next best thing- we took the kids out to Camp St. Croix on a beautiful fall day.  Our boys, plus the three little NeskeMoens, had the run of the camp while the parents helped split wood.  They all have spent a good number of weeks out there as day campers, and some of them have now graduated to overnight campers and their level of ownership is pretty lovely.  They jumped out of the car and were off- playing on the A-field, creating structures in the woods, laughing and playing and without (direct) adult supervision for about 3 hours.  They returned to us when we called at the end of the afternoon- dirty and tired and grinning.  I don't think there was any brawling today, but I definitely saw something feral about them.  If I remember correctly, the definition of feral is to 'return something to it's more natural state'.  I love our city home- I love walking to their school, biking to work, being close to the dentist and doctor and grocery and farmer's market and park- but the kids need the time away from others, in the woods, without adult planning and supervision.  They need this time so that they can grow straight and true and tall- full time citified life makes you feel a little stunted every now and then.

Perspective

Today as we were heading out to Camp St. Croix for a log splitting jamboree, Ildar (the russian son) asked me when the snow melts in the spring.  I did a little calculating in my head, and in an attempt to soften the blow for him a bit I said, well February- mostly in February.  Which is almost true.  I just failed to mention that March is often our snowiest month.  This kid could have been sent anywhere in the US and he got Minnesota.  I was trying not to depress him too badly.  But then he did his own calculating, looked at me with a big grin and said, "So, your winters are pretty short then!".  He is from the middle of Russia, afterall.