CSA Efficiency (and a sorta recipe alert)

Well, it happened again, as it sometimes does. CSA produce was accumulating faster than it was being consumed. Between my travel schedule and some other life things that put the onus on the BF to be Head Chef for a few weeks, we were letting the food go the way of the compost bin.

Disclaimer: This is not a rip on the BF's abilities or initiative. Just imagine him coming home and being in charge of dinner and clean up for two while I busied myself with other things. That's a decent amount of time and responsibility to ask one person to do for another. Yes, he's great.

This week we did something unusually uncharacteristic of us: we planned ahead. In the past, it's been hard to sit down and pre-plan dinner. Beyond the time and organization needed, it takes some of the fun out of cooking and spontaneous menu planning based on what your stomach is telling you it wants at that moment. On the other hand, it can be necessary. This week it worked for us. We took inventory of what we had in our respective fridges and what we could make based on tried and true recipes, what we had already in-house, and what we needed to buy. One other uncharacteristic thing we did was to allow ourselves to go back and repeat recipes. We love trying new dishes and rarely repeat ourselves, even those dishes that we've loved, but it felt safe to do so this week.

So our dinner plates saw the likes of caprese salads, leek and swiss chard tarts, and more. The BF cold-canned some peppers to be consumed during the upcoming football season. Onions were set aside to make a batch of french onion soup this weekend. Feeling good, we looked at what remained: even more leeks, some peppers that escaped the canning adventure, carrots, and potatoes.

At this point we were both proud of ourselves and feeling a bit lazy. The laziness worked out well for one of the last remaining recipes on the list: the Hobo Dinner.

We've done this before, but I've never blogged about it, and feel like now would be a good time. Everyone has a need for a hobo dinner recipe. It's almost impossible to screw up and can be modified to include foodstuff that you need to use. In fact, in the past we've almost always made a vegetarian version, but we had some pasture-raised ground beef that we wanted to use and so made our first carnivore version.

I'm not going to post a formal recipe below. Seriously, this can be improvised so well that any recipe would be more an informal guide than hard and fast rules. Simply take any good roast-able or grill-able veggies- hot or bell peppers, carrots, zucchini, onions, even broccoli- and chop coarsely into chunks. Add potatoes (fingerlings are good because they're small enough to add whole; or grab some small reds or purples and just halve or quarter them), a couple of cloves of garlic, and a few generous pats of butter.  Season with some salt, pepper, and any other seasonings that suit your fancy- I enjoy rosemary. Wrap it all up in foil, and throw on your grill on medium to medium-high for about 45 minutes. Unwrap, and voila.

The great thing about this recipe is that, all wrapped up in foil, you can't really screw it up. The steam cooks everything without the risk of drying out, and you can easily do a readiness test  by unwrapping it slightly and testing a potato with a fork. If you wish to add meat, the juices will also keep the meat from drying out while seasoning everything else. No grill? Throw it all in the oven on 400.

I don't want to have to resort to a weekly hobo dinner if we get behind on our veggie usage; if we need to use it as a last resort only once or twice more during the summer, I will be happy.  But it's an easy and delicious recipe for anyone to have in their back pocket.

Beet Success **RECIPE ALERT**

I realize my re-experimentation with the Earthbox posts isn't really working. We've had many weeks of boxes for which I have not uploaded photos nor elaborated on how we use them. Part of me feels defeated, and part of me feels non-chalant: truthfully, we haven't done much with our produce except grill, eat in salads, or use as pizza toppings for a causal 4th of July get-together. In the end, they wouldn't have made for good posts. I probably would have lost readers.

However, there may be a few of you-- I'm looking at you, initial 3 or 4 early Loyal Readers-- who may remember my failed experimentation with beets detailed in one of last summer's posts.  For those of you who don't want to interrupt reading this entry to start all over with a different entry, suffice it to say I am not a fan of beets. Other than an amazing dish at Taxim in Chicago- and trust me, I've tried to find the recipe or at least a description-- I've never met a beet that I liked.

So, the more observant of you may have noticed that we've gotten beets in almost all of our boxes and are probably wondering how we've used them. As the BF is a big fan, they've gone with my best blessings to his fridge.

But they've sat there, neglected and unused. As we tend to cook most of our meals together, he hasn't really had a chance to use them on his own. Eventually, once the oldest batch was in danger of needing to be pitched, he proposed a solution that was both quick and shareable: Beet chips.

We've gotten good at making regular chips. I mean, really, who doesn't like potato chips in at least one form or another? With the abundance of potatoes that show up in the farm box, chips are both a non-labor intensive preparation as well as saveable future snack. Not that we've ever actually saved them. They're almost immediately consumed whenever we bake up a batch.

Beet chips are similar in may ways: easy to prepare, easy to store, easy to consume. And the best part of all? I ACTUALLY LIKE THEM.

So there you go! I'm sure the BF would like some variety in his beet preparation, but I'm happy if I only ever ate them in this form forever. And for those of you who are as beet-averse as me, go for the crispier, more carbon-covered ones. Normally I don't like burned chips, but for these, the crispier, the better.

As always, a few other notes before I grace you with the recipe. When it comes to any chips, but especially these, the thinner they are sliced the more solid and crispy they will be when out of the oven. If you have access to a mandolin, as we do, now is an excellent time to use it. Either the narrowest or second narrowest setting will do. If using a knife.... well, be careful.

Also, cooking times are approximate and should be adjusted based on your oven and how thin your slices are. We perfected the technique in my oven at 26 minutes. However, when making a batch in a different oven while on vacation, 26 minutes scorched them. We used a thinner slicer setting, but the oven callibration may have been different, too, and found that 15 minutes was perfect. Moral of the story: keep your eyes on the chips.

Enjoy! And if you are a new reader who likes beets, perhaps you'll like the cold beet soup earlier reviewed in this post. (See how I did that?)

Beet Chips

(serves 2-4, depending on your serving size)

Ingredients:
3 beets, de-stemmed

1 tbs olive oil or olive oil spray

Sea salt

1. Preheat oven to 375. Prick beets with fork and place into glass baking dish with 1 inch of water; cover with foil. Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until easily punctured with a fork. Remove from oven, allow to cool. When cool enough to handle, peel the beets.

2. Turn oven down to 350.

3. Adjust mandolin to the 1.5mm or 3mm setting. Slice beets onto plate or in bowl.

4. Line a baking sheet with foil; brush or drizzle olive oil lightly onto foil. Place as many beet slices as possible onto baking sheet without overlapping. (You may have too many slices to fit on one baking sheet, so you may need to repeat the process again a few times.) One by one, flip each beet slice over so they are coated on both sides with the oil.

5. Lightly shake sea salt on top of beet slices. It is not necessary to flip and salt the other side of the beets.

6. Bake beets for 15-26 minutes, depending on your oven setting. When chips begin to brown and curl up, they are ready. It is okay if some beets are not quite super crispy when you pull them out, as they will continue to bake a few minutes more out of the oven.

7. Enjoy!

A quick note- do not leave un-eaten beets out in the open for too long, especially in humid weather. They absorb water quite quickly and will turn limp and mushy. Store all uneaten beets in an airproof container for later.