Good Eats!

Here's the rundown of what we've been eating lately!

Here's last week's CSA box:Red Onions, Garlic Scapes, Broccoli, the Meat was Sirloin Steak, I also ordered Chicken, eggs, Chinese Cabbage, lettuce, 2 Kohlrabis, a bag of Snow Peas and a bag of Swiss Chard. Lots of fun and green stuff!!
Brent's been dying for these chicken tacos we saw on a food show for ages! They were very good but WHOA spicy!!! Next time I'll lay off some of the adobe peppers. Lilli took a bite of her little burritos and I think her ears blew off, ha. We had enough for leftovers the next day and I didn't think it was quite as hot but Brent did, so it might depend on what bite you get. Very easy and great flavors!
(Last Friday I took Lilli out for Italian Ice for doing so great wearing only her big girl undies for a solid week!)

We used the pork chops we had gotten in our CSA box to make Garlic Lime Pork Chops. I was not a huge fan of this, but we're not big pork chop people anyway. It was kind of a drier marinade and just didn't do much to the pork chop. Probably won't make that one again.
I also used the beef I had gotten from our CSA to make this Spicy Thai Beef and Jasmine Rice. It was so good and their ground beef had a great flavor. Lilli ate some of this since it is rice based, so that's always a plus! It's not the most gorgeous looking dish but it had nice flavors!
We used the spinach we got in our CSA box to make this baked ziti with spinach. It was really good that night, I didn't think the leftovers were all that great. And it made a TON. If I made it in the future I would definitely half it. We used the rest of the spinach from our CSA box to make a hot spinach artichoke dip for a party. We got more spinach this week and I'd like to make more dip, I could eat that stuff every day.
I've read Pioneer Woman's blog quite a bit but never made any of her recipes. One of the other couples in the CSA with us made this beef with snow peas recipe of hers to use our snow peas. It was pretty good, but the sauce is super heavy and more of a winter than summer thing to me. We had enough for leftovers the following day and we both thought it tasted better then when the sauce had soaked into the rice more.
We've made several side dishes with the vegetables - plenty of salads and other things. We roasted the broccoli we had gotten. You can never go wrong with roasted anything. We've roasted all the Kohlrabi we've gotten and really gotten that one down to a science. Now that we know you have to peel the skin it tastes SO good! And we cooked more of the snow peas with this Honey Glazed Pea Pods and Carrots recipe. Of course a vegetable is going to taste great basted in butter and honey!
We used the Sirloin we got in our CSA box with this Garlic Butter recipe. I actually used a lot of butter that night, ha! But everything on this plate was local, with the exception of the carrots (which were still organic). The steak was so good, it really tasted like prime rib. And it was all just as delicious for leftovers the following day too!
And our Memorial Day ribs!! Always delicious. We use Sweet Baby Ray's sauce. We served it with a side of Swiss Chard (delicious), baked potato and corn on the cob from Mom's garden. Our CSA box from this week looked pretty similar to the last few weeks.
We got Red Onions, the meat was Chicken (yeah!), Eggs, Broccoli, Lettuce, Spinach, Snow Peas, Cabbage, a huge Kohlrabi and BEETS! Yay for Beets. I've got a few ideas for them - a lot of people in our group have talked about baking with them and there's also some great salad recipes I've seen out there.
And last night we had a Weight Watchers spaghetti with Roasted Kohlrabi and a cabbage salad. It was ok, not my favorite spaghetti recipe we've ever made though but it was nice and healthy with some extra veggies in there.

I also made some Low Fat Choc Chip Oatmeal Cookies last night for a coworker celebrating her birthday. She's in Weight Watchers and these have low points and sounded pretty good. They really were very good and for sure didn't taste as healthy as they are! Much better than those awful black bean brownies I made a few months ago for another healthy coworkers birthday!

We are still loving being a part of our CSA (Avalon Acres out of Hohenwald) and thought I'd share a few of the reasons they shared about being a part of a CSA, which are exactly why we became farm share "owners".

-Buying your farm-fresh food locally through a CSA is a way of life. Shell peas and shuck corn with your children. Teach them that food doesn't come in a box.
-Keep your dollars in Tennessee by buying locally. Support the local farmer more directly. When you buy food from the conventional grocery stores .9 cents of every dollar goes in the farmers pocket. When you buy from our CSA 60-75% of every dollar goes in the farmers pocket. Your support DIRECTLY impacts small farming and the local economy. Assures more food dollars go to farmers and not truckers. Get rid of all the middle men who end up lowering the farmers income.
-Knowing where your food comes from (who, how, where).
-Eating healthier. Free-range meats contain CLAs and are the only way to get Omega 3s other than through fish. Produce that is picked fresh retains more of its nutrients.
-Enjoying a much broader variety of foods than you find in a store. You'll certainly try vegetables that you've never had before (or perhaps had as a child and never tried again).
-Knowing that animals have been treated with dignity. Supporting hormone-free, preservative free and chemical free meats.
-Preserving heritage breeds and seeds.
-Preventing antibiotic-resistant strains of disease.
-Saving petroleum and other resources.
-Enjoying what your state has to offer in food choices!

Your farm CSA supports not only me and Tim but also 15 employees and over 45 Amish family farms, a butcher (and their employees and families), 3 dairy farming families, a baker (and their 4 daughters) and a family who cans all of our extra produce for use in our Winter CSA program. All of these people reside in Middle Tennessee.

Additionally, our vendors are also local, our farm alone spends over $6,500 each month with the local feed store! We don't just ask you to buy local, we buy local too!

Have a great Friday!