The “Tell” – Springdell Summer CSA Pickup #19

Night one of the CSA was a simple carrot and spinach fried rice with egg. A simple and fresh dish for Meatless Monday!

Early in the week I whipped up a quick cornbread using Four Star Farms Corn Meal (available at the Springdell Farm Stand). I used my Vitamix to grind the coarse corn meal a little finer for the recipe. I broke  the cornbread into pieces and saved it for a few days to get stale for some corn bread and brussels sprouts stuffing.

Meanwhile, I blanched my sprouts for the stuffing so everything was ready to go when the time was right.

Since I already had the stove going, I boiled up a bunch of potatoes for easy home fries, mashed potatoes, etc.

Since this weekend was a poultry harvest, I roasted up a few pieces of chicken with lemon and thyme. The carcass, tough leek leaves, carrot tops, a couple of carrots and herbs went into a pot for stock. The breasts went in the freezer for later recipes.

In the interest of using the whole chicken, I decided to try some chicken liver paté. I didn’t think I’d like it, but found myself returning to the jar night after night for a midnight snack.

Leeks went into stock, potato leek soup, and a squash au gratin dish.

Here is the squash au gratin, ready for the oven. I used golden hubbard squash instead of the butternut squash that the recipe called for, no regrets!

I couldn’t help making another Apple Walnut Dill Salad. I’m the only one in my house that likes it, so the boys had applesauce while I happily engorged on this.

The golden hubbard that didn’t make it into the curry or the au gratin it was roasted with maple syrup and drizzled with browned sage butter before getting mashed. This squash is so creamy, the texture is just lovely.

On Wednesday I grabbed some shrimp from Jordan Brothers at the Springdell Farm Stand. What a quick and awesome addition to dinner! This recipe (shared by fellow Springdellian Dawn Demeo) called for parsley, which I left out of the version for the kids (they are going through a “green specks in my food is bad” phase, yet they’ll eat raw kale and spinach for a snack… Go figure).

When your kids fight you on eating veggies, puree them into their favorite dishes! This baked macaroni and cheese comes complete with a pureed acorn squash!

Here is the outcome of the Cornbread and Brussels Sprouts Stuffing. My other half said “If you want me to eat brussels sprouts, you can serve them to me this way ANYTIME”! Hooray!

Oh and another pumpkin pie, just because I’m in pumpkin pie mode.

Farmer Elizabeth from Fat Moon and I exchanged some leftovers this week for dinner. You may recall seeing her awesome veggie fried rice in last week’s post. Here, she made my slow cooker squash curry leftovers look so good topped with fresh cilantro! Sharing food with good friends is the best.

I almost forgot to share this cute idea. I wish I could take credit but this one’s all Martha Stewart. These apple faces are slowly shrinking on my counter. Hopefully they’ll turn into cute shrunken heads.  Martha, don’t let me down!

These carrots were so sweet, they almost didn’t need the glaze I added on there! The carrot tops were made into pesto with some mint from the garden. It was frozen into meal sized portions.

Lacinato Kale is my favorite of the kale. I think it makes the best smoothies and by far, adds the best punch of color to salads etc.

This is the apple butter I made this week. I know I wrote a whole post on it but I really needed to mention that it was on something in just about every meal I made this week, I can’t stop eating this stuff!

This is sausage crumbles with spaghetti squash and parm. This wasn’t quite the finished dish, as you can still see the butter hadn’t melted quite yet, but when it hit the table it was eaten so fast I didn’t get to snap a pic.

I went through the potatoes in my house picking out the smallest ones for the squished potatoes but didn’t realize I had so many types of potatoes! When I squished them I had red, pink, white, yellow and purple. It made for a beautiful finished product.