I’ve noticed we have a lot of new folks stopping by the site this week, so welcome! We hope you enjoy the daily local food along with us.
Todays post is the part of the Springdell Show and Tell where I usually review the things from the CSA box that weren’t featured in their own blog post, like this Springdell onion.
That’s not an onion, you say? You’re absolutely correct! Back when we were having the influx of delicious grapefruits from Springdell’s Winter CSA Share Box 8 and Share Box 9, my counterpart Sarah got one of these grapefruit savers for each of us out of a reduced bin at the market. She is so thoughtful! The only problem was those grapefruits were so sweet and so fresh, they didn’t stick around long enough to use the saver. Instead, my grapefruit became an onion saver. Unfortunately I overlooked my disguised onion and it started wilting a tiny bit. Phew, “let no veggie go unloved” is our motto, and I almost blew it before our 100th post! No worries, I ended up using it in a delicious Spinach Frittata. (I’ll post the recipe here sometime for sure). The tougher outer onion layers went into the veggie scraps bag in the freezer for a future veggie broth, as per usual.
My boys thought the frittata was too weird looking, and preferred egg and cheese sandwiches with raw spinach. To each his own, I suppose.
We had a lot of fun at the Anderson household testing out the Ben’s Pancake Mix in various versions this week. We first tried to substitute the water in the recipe with our Box Mill Farms Apple Cider.
It made the batter slightly thinner than usual.
The cider version came out a little more golden, a little more rubbery, and a little thinner overall. The flavor was good, but we liked the texture of the regular version a little better.
Below is the traditional version, following the recipe to the letter.
In the end, we found the best way to infuse cider taste with the fluffy pancakes was to mix the cider directly into the syrup. We mixed about 1 part cider to 1 part Ben’s Grade A Maple Syrup, and simmered it slowly while stirring on the stove until it returned to a syrupy consistency, about 15 minutes. Yup, it’s good stuff.
Above is my crustless sweet potato pie, two eggs short of the full recipe. (I accidentally exhausted my farm egg supply for the week.) When I realized I was short the eggs, I mixed in a tiny bit of heavy cream, and put on less “crust” than the recipe called for. It was more like a yummy side dish than a pie. I’ll make the real version again the next time we see a sweet potato.
The arugula has been slowly disappearing in my side salads, and spicing up my smoothies. It’s a blessing and a curse, but I’m the only one that likes arugula ’round these parts. Whenever in the season I am overwhelmed with greens such as arugula, one of my “tricks” is to wilt them.
My husband, as I mentioned, is not a fan of arugula (honey, please don’t read this next part) but he has eaten wilted arugula many times unbeknownst to him. When wilted, it loses some of it’s spiciness and becomes much milder to the tongue, making it much easier to pass off as spinach to someone that doesn’t like it. To take it a step further, toss it with garlic or, as seen here, the leftover Garlic Lime Aioli from the other day. Don’t forget to watch the video!
Speaking of video, here’s that one of the Sweet Potato Hash as promised.
See you tomorrow when we do the “Tell” part of the Springdell Show and Tell, reviewing the sharebox in it’s entirety while linking to the recipes. As always, we’d love to hear your comments and ideas!