Green Beans

What I’m Doing With My CSA Shares: Weeks 10 and 11

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Week 10

  • Green Beans: Putting 1/4 of them in cauliflower rice and the rest we’ll steam and toss with butter and garlic.
  • Potatoes: We turned these beauties into a breakfast skillet.
  • Tomatillos: We’ll probably turn these into either a salsa or a stew this weekend. We’ll see.
  • Green Peppers: We put one into tacos and another into the aforementioned breakfast skillet. The other two will probably go into salads.
  • Heirloom tomatoes: We turned one into a glorious BLT and the second into a caprese salad.
  • Regular tomatoes: I cut up one for a taco salad. The other two will probably go into regular salads.
  • Cherry tomatoes: I cut each of these in half and made a quick pasta sauce (which we ate with Banza chickpea pasta) with onions, garlic, and oregano.
  • Yellow Squash: I’ll probably cut this up and add it to a big salad for a Friday picnic.
  • Green chiles: I added a few of these to tacos so far. The rest might go in the tomatillo salsa or stew.

Here is the BLT and breakfast skillet:

 

Week 11

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  • Onions – We used one for a breakfast skillet with potatoes and another in cauliflower rice.
  • Hot peppers – There are three different types here: Jalapeno (left), shishito (middle), and some unknown long green chiles (right). We used the 4 shishito in cauliflower rice.
  • Green tiger tomato – We’ll either use this for another caprese salad, or perhaps roasting with some garlic for a simple side dish.
  • Green peppers – We used one in a breakfast skillet and another in cauliflower rice. I’ll use the other two for similar things.
  • Garlic – We’ll probably save this, use up the garlic we have, then use this. It is a hardneck variety, so it will last a while.
  • Tomatoes – We put one in a corn and tomato salad with Old Bay. We’ll put the others in salad or roast them.
  • Not pictured: A beautiful heirloom tomato, just like last week. We made it into another caprese salad with our apartment-grown basil.

What I’m Doing With My CSA Shares: Week 7

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Here’s how I’m using this week’s share:

  • Green curly lettuce – We’ll turn this into salad.
  • Napa cabbage – I’ll probably combine this with the carrots, some chicken, cilantro, jalapeños, scallions, and some fresh mint to make a Goi Ga – a Vietnamese chicken salad.
  • Swiss Chard – I’ll combine this with some Lacinato kale from our garden and sauté it with some garlic, onions, and bacon to make a dinner side dish.
  • Carrots – See above.
  • Green beans – We’ll probably blanch these and sauté them in ghee with garlic, salt, and pepper.
  • Jalapeños – See above.
  • Zucchini – We’ll probably roast these. Half of last week’s ended up on beef kabobs for a picnic and the other half got roasted.
  • Cucumbers – These will probably be snacks, though I might make a spicy and vinegary cucumber salad for a dinner side.
  • Green peppers – These will end up in salads, most likely.

What I’m Doing With My CSA Shares: Week 6

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  • Lettuce – Salads. Each Sunday we wash the lettuce, cut up a bunch of veggies, cook some chicken, and assemble it all into salads for our lunches during the week.
  • Zucchini – We’re getting sick of zucchini noodles, so we’ll roast most of this with various spices for dinner sides during the week. We could also make it into Fergus Henderson’s Mushy Zucchini.
  • Cauliflower – We are adding this to another head of cauliflower we have and making cauliflower fried rice.
  • Scallions – We’ll use some of these in salads, then the rest in the cauliflower fried rice.
  • Cucumbers – We’ll chop 1-2 up in the salads for the week and the rest we’ll cut into spears and eat with salt for a snack.
  • Swiss Chard – We’ll sauté this up with some bacon, onions, and garlic for a dinner side.
  • Green Beans – We’ll blanch these and then sauté them with ghee, garlic, and lemon zest. 

An Unexpectedly Good Side Dish (or, How I Learned About Beurre Meuniere)

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It was around 6pm last Friday. The huge ribeye I picked up the weekend before had been in my sous vide for 3 hours. I was ready to start making my sides: Roasted potatoes and pan-fried brussels sprouts.

I just had one problem: I only had three small potatoes and one small package of brussels sprouts. I had used the rest of both earlier in the week and didn’t leave myself enough for another meal. I thought I had, but I was wrong.

I have almost nothing else in the fridge. Little in the pantry. We’ve already planned to go grocery shopping this weekend. If I hadn’t already cooked the steak, I would have ordered pizza or Chinese food. But the steak is already cooked, so now I’m stuck.

I started digging through the freezer and pantry to see what I had to work with:

  • 2 bags of frozen corn
  • 1 bag of frozen green beans
  • Quinoa
  • 1 lemon
  • 2 apples, 3 pears, and 2 bananas
  • Onions
  • Butter
  • 2 bags of frozen whole edamame

Sure, I could roast the edamame with some oil and spices, but that is more of an appetizer, not a side dish for this beautiful ribeye:

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After about 10 minutes of furiously searching, I found something that seemed to fit the bill: Potatoes, Green Beans, and Corn with Lemon-Brown Butter Dressing from The Kitchn.

I’ll admit, I was skeptical. Would a mixture of potatoes, beans, and corn actually be good? I decided to go with it, though, because I had no other options. I also didn’t really have enough potatoes to make the full dish, so I decided to cook a cup of quinoa to toss in the mix. As you know, I rarely follow recipes.

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When I tasted it, I was pleasantly surprised. The lemon-brown butter sauce changed the whole flavor of the dish. It was delicious. Both Amanda and I ate huge helpings at dinner and we gladly ate a bowl of it as a snack a few days later.

After one taste, I decided that I want that lemon-brown butter sauce at least once a week this summer. That lemon-brown butter sauce is going to regularly grace our dinner table. I now know that it is called beurre meuniere. Parsley, shallots, or garlic make nice additions to it. It would go well with asparagus, cauliflower, broccoli, white fish, green beans, or even as a light pasta sauce.

I don’t forsee us needing green beans, corn, and three potatoes to swoop in and save the day any time soon, but I’ll definitely make this again in the future. We’re definitely making that sauce again. Probably next week.