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We Made out Like Bandits, I Tell ‘Ya

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Michael and I belong to a CSA, Spiral Path, which we pick up once a week from the Silver Spring Farmer’s Market.  Every once and a while Spiral Path will have an open farm day for its members.  It’s a cross between a harvest festival and a good backyard party, and we’ve been wanting to go for a while.  The only drawback is that the farm is 3 hrs away in PA.

However, this last weekend Michael and I had Ray visiting (who has a car that gets double the miles to the gallon that our car does). Coincidentally, there was an open farm day.  We decided to make a day of it, and got up REALLY early (before the sun rose) and drove to Spiral Path.

The drive was well worth it.  There was a fabulous pot-luck, tours of the farm, heyrides and other wonderful events.  Michael and I hadn’t quite realized how big Spiral Path is – they service 2250 members.  Just for perspective, most CSA’s have around 200 members.  Spiral Path is huge, but still very down to earth.  All the growing they do is organic, and you can see the values they hold in every choice they made about how the food is grown and prepared for shipment.  Michael and I feel very passionately about supporting efforts like this, and it’s great to know that we not only are getting great value for our food, but that it is going to a solid business model.

The most lovely part of the open farm day is the goodies that you get for free.  Spiral Path has a chunk of produce that it grows that for whatever reason isn’t considered sell-able – either it has blemishes, is too small, or has something else wrong with it.  Normally they donate the “reject food” to the local food shelter, but when they have the open farm days, they make this extra produce available to the members for free.

Our bounty from Spiral Path (the veggies) and Rock Hill (the apples)

Take a look at our haul:

We took home: 2 pumpkins, 2 butternut squash, 2 spaghetti squash, yellow squash, green beans, eggplant, summer squash, and a whole bunch of peppers, of various sweet and spicy flavors.

Finally, Spiral Path also had a herb garden where members could cut their own herbs.  We brought home mint, sage, and lots and lots of basil (for making pesto).

The event ended at 3, and by that time I was pretty tuckered out.  But we weren’t done yet.  On the way home, we stopped by Rock Hill Orchard, and picked up some Empire and Jonathan apples.  Just because it’s the beginning of fall, and that’s what you got to do.  Go apple picking.

Farmer’s Market Week 4 Sushi

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As I’ve mentioned before, Michael is working on making me a sushi roll every week from the Farmer’s Market share we get.  We like to challenge each other like this every once and a while.  We’re now starting to get some more interesting vegetables, and this means that Michael is able to get more creative.  Also, since I’ve been critiquing his sushi, it’s upped the bar, and he’s been doing some research to start to create more varied recipes.  I think this has been his best attempt yet.

The Sauce (to be served in roll or over)
3/4 tsp mayo
1/2 tsp black bean paste
1 splash soy sauce
1 smidgen red pepper flakes
1 dash coriander

Filling:
1 zucchini
1 Japanese white radish
2 sprigs cilantro
1 or 2 garlic scapes (if you like things super garlicky)
1 green Swiss chard

As always, roll, cut up, and serve

My thoughts: I really liked the crunchy aspect of this roll, from the vegetables.  I also liked that the sauce was a bit more spicy, and that combined with the bite of the pepper and garlic made this an unexpectedly zesty roll.  Also, because of the firmer vegetables, this had quite a bit more internal structure, which made things stay together nicer.  There was a better balance of rice and filling.  As I told Michael, he’s getting closer to delicious with each attempt.

Farmer’s Market Week 3 Sushi

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As I mentioned in my first post about this challenge to Michael, there’s a fair amount of limitations on him to create delicious sushi. He’s limited by his ingredients – with the exception of the rice, seaweed paper and any sauces/garnishes, the bulk of the roll must be from our Farm Share.  Thus, if he doesn’t get something, or gets things that don’t work well together, he’s limited.  I’ll touch on that more at the end, when I talk about what I thought about this week’s roll.

The Sauce (same as last week’s)
1 tsp mayo
1 splash soy sauce
1 dash sugar
2 pinches ginger

The Filling:
1 carrot
1 radish
parsley
green onion

My thoughts: my largest criticism of this roll is that it is bland.  While the first two were on the sweet side because of the strawberries, this one’s filling was filled with vegetables that don’t all have very strong flavors. Combined with the sauce also not really matching these veggies (I almost want something with a bit of a bite to it, maybe add a bit of tobasco sauce to the sauce?), I felt that the rice and rice vinegar were the dominant flavors, which is not what I’m looking for.  The center either needs to be heftier, or the rice less.  Since Michael isn’t too keen on eating sushi, I think it also works against him that he hasn’t developed any taste for sushi, nor would he really enjoy eating his own creations.

He’s hoping we get more variety of veggies and other goodies soon.

Farmer’s Market Sushi Recipe #2

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As I mentioned last week, I’ve served Michael a challenge: to make me a sushi roll using ingredients from the farm share each week. This week’s farm-share was filled with greens, carrots, strawberries and lettuce of various sorts.  I’ll be sad to see the strawberries go, I think next week will be our last week.

Week 2 Sushi Recipe

The Sauce:
1 tsp mayo
1 spash soy sauce
1 dash sugar
2 pinches ginger

Mix sauce and serve with or over the Sushi.

Filling:
1 carrot, shaved
frisse (basically, frilly baby endive)
green onion
2 strawberries

Arrange ingredients on mat, add sauce, and roll.

My thoughts: the ginger went surprisingly well with the strawberries. I’m still not sold on strawberries in a roll, I don’t think their lack of structure goes over well (on the other  note, avocado doesn’t hold structure  well either, and I like that just fine).  I think this roll worked better than last week’s.

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