The CSA

Well, today we picked up our first box of produce from the CSA farm we bought a share in. We actually bought a half share, so we could test it out and see if we like it and to see how much you actually get in a share/half share. The farm is an organic farm down in Merced, and it has eggs available, too, but we didn't get the egg subscription (I'm not sure what it would take to get John to agree to pay $5.75 a dozen for eggs, even if they're fresh and the chickens are free to roam the farm, as chickens should be, but we'll see).

The half share is about $15 per week, and I spend a lot more than that a week on produce. I do think that I would have spent about that amount on the same amount of produce at the store, and that's not even the organic stuff at the store. So, just on bulk alone, it's a good price, but then if you take into account it's organic and fresh picked, it's a real deal.

I definitely think a half share will not be nearly enough. A half share is supposed to be enough for two adults for a week. Hm, maybe, but it's definitely not enough for us. It might last through the weekend.

But, we did get some good-looking stuff! The box had in it:

• Radishes of various colors, with greens attached (so, for me that counts for two different veggies)
• A big bunch of spinach. I think we can do lasagna and still have some left.
• Bell peppers. They're small and there was one orange, two green and a purple one.
• Cherry tomatoes. A green basket-full. Very tasty. I'd be more excited about them if I didn't have a rabid tomato plant in my garden still. But we do like tomatoes.
• A head of garlic
• A just-right sized head of red cabbage. We never seem to be able to use the whole head of the big giant ones they have at the store. This one is perfect in my opinion.
• A huge gigantic head of red leaf lettuce. It has to be twice the size of the leaf lettuce heads in the grocery store. I bet we could get a couple salads at least. The outer leaves are nice, too, so we don't have to toss them.
• Some yukon gold potatoes. Just enough for one side dish. Might be small portions for all five of us.
• A pomegranate.
  

This stuff was all picked fresh recently, most of it this morning. It smells like garden-grown produce. Which is how food should smell.

We steamed the radishes for dinner tonight and the kids ate every bit of them. They don't like them raw, they think they're too hot. I had them each take a nibble off of them before we cooked them and they all hated them. After steaming, they tasted a lot like broccoli and cauliflower, but none of the heat. Perfect. Two of the kids also had lettuce on their sandwiches.

I'm thinking we'll have stir-fry with the peppers and the lone radish that escaped (found it in the box after dinner) and maybe toss in some spinach and some of the cabbage.

This weekend they're having a open house down on the farm so you can meet the farmer and see the farm. They're also serving lunch. We're going. Soup and salad made from their produce and homemade bread? Can't beat that. John was hesitant until I mentioned the lunch. It's going to interrupt our applesauce marathon planned for Saturday, but how often can you visit the farm and see where your food grows? Well, for this farm, twice a year, but aside from that.

The pick-up location for the produce is at a health food (vegan/vegetarian/natural remedy) shop downtown. Turns out, we know the owners of the shop from church. They have a huge shelf about six feet high and 10-15 feet wide packed with jars of every imaginable powder, herb, spice, etc. in glass jars. It's like an old-fashioned apothecary shop! There's also a yarn shop that shares part of the store, but it's an independent shop, and I bought some double-point needles so I can finish the hat I'm working on. I'm learning to knit in the round. But that's a story for another blog post.

The kids and I went apple picking this afternoon, so in addition to the CSA box, we have three 40 lb. boxes of pink lady apples that need to be made into applesauce this weekend. We'll see how far we get with that.

Salmon Biscuits: A Recipe

Last night we were heading home from piano lessons, and I was thinking that I hadn't been shopping in a while, didn't have much on hand, and needed to have a diner plan by the time we got home. I tried to remember what was in my pantry, freezer and fridge, and all I could remember was canned salmon. And then I remembered my mom's Salmon Loaf (which may have been called Salmon Roll, but I remember it as loaf), which was basically some kind of salmon mixture inside a biscuit dough loaf. I figured I could throw something like that together quickly, make a quick sauce and heat up some leftover broccoli from the other night.

Here's what I did. I didn't measure anything really.

1-6 oz. can Trader Joe's Alaskan Pink Salmon (doesn't have the skin and bones in it, easier to work with), drained, reserve liquid
2 cereal spoon glops (that's the technical term) of mayonnaise (not too much, you're not going for a sandwich here, just enough to keep it together)
1 1/2 soup spoon glops of sweet pickle relish
medium pinch of dried dill
salt and pepper to taste
squirt of lemon juice

Mix it all up to make the filling. Then I used Bisquick (that's right, I used biscuit mix, the reduced fat kind) and made 1 1/2 recipes for biscuits. It was the end of the box and I had to use my newly reacquired algebra skills to figure out the milk ratio for whatever mix I had left in the box.

I rolled out the dough fairly thin (about 1/4 inch) and used the biggest biscuit cutter I have in my set of biscuit cutters that we all got for Christmas one year (you know which ones I'm talking about). It's about 3 1/2 inches across. It's pretty big. Anyway, I got about 10 of that size biscuit out of the dough and I put a spoonful of the salmon mix on one side of each circle.

Then I folded the other side of the biscuit over and used a fork to press it shut. They looked like little tarts.

I baked them at 375 degrees for about 15 min. I set the timer for 10 min, and they needed about another 5 min.

For the sauce, I made a roux with butter and flour, then whisked in the salmon liquid and added chicken broth because there wasn't much from the fish. Once that got going, I added some milk, but not very much, just to make it kind of creamy. I added a squirt of lemon juice, pepper, salt and dill and stirred until bubbly and thick.

There was enough for each of us to have 2 1/2 of the biscuits, and Ruby ate about one, Sam ate two whole ones, I had 2 1/2, and Squig ate the rest, which was about 4 1/2. We just had them with a side of steamed broccoli, so we probably ate more than we would have if we'd also had a starchy side. I had thought of making mashed potatoes or something to go with the sauce/gravy, but we were in a hurry.

They were so good. The kids all loved them and my non-gravy eaters had sauce on every bite.

We'll definitely be making these again.

Some other ideas I had were to put in some sour cream or cream cheese in with the salmon for a different taste. You could also do this with your favorite biscuit recipe. It seems very flexible. You could do chicken, instead, and get something like the chicken rolls made from refrigerated crescent rolls, only without the partially hydrogenated garbage they put in those.

Anyway, this is a good recipe when you need to throw something together from whatever you have on hand. We always have canned salmon on hand, and if we don't have biscuit mix, we always have the stuff to make them from scratch. If you use a smaller cutter, they would also make a nice little appetizer or finger food for a party.

I meant to take a picture of all the cute little biscuits on the pan, but we were rushing to eat, and I forgot.

They really were cute, though.