Readers, I seek your menu-planning genius. But first, a little back story.
Every Wednesday, we pick up our share at the CSA. It’s a lovely experience: You get out of your hot car, open the door to the walk-in cooler near the barn, and step inside where the shares are lined up in shopping bags on the floor. Each bag has enticing-looking leaves poking out the top: collards or kale, scallions, maybe fennel or carrot tops…
When you step out of the cooler, it’s as though you return to reality, which demands that you make good use of all this excellent, organically-grown food. Our CSA is great about e-mailing recipes, keeping us experimenting with new ways to eat beets and some of the other crops that tend to show up week after week.
I also find that a little musing about meals can lead to some good ideas. Last week, we got some chard in our share, and I thought first of a chard frittata that we’ve made once or twice in the past. Then I thought, how about quiche, with a nice pastry crust? Then I thought, wouldn’t that be good with the leeks that also came in the bag?
As fast as I could type "chard leek quiche" into epicurious, I found this recipe, which turned out to be totally delish (and easy, too).
But I’m inexplicably bad at using up potatoes, and cabbage is wont to sit around in the fridge for months. Potato cabbage soup, right? But who wants to eat that on a hot summer night? If you search epicurious for "potato cabbage," all the recipes that come up were originally published in the cold months, and with good reason.
I need other ideas, folks. Got one?
