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Onyah Fail. Weeks 12 and 13 whizzed by without getting a chance to blog anything. I’m a big sack of lame, I know. Here are a few highlights from the past two weeks…

The End of Peaches! When I was picking up my share yesterday, Mr. Farmer said that there will be no more peaches, and a small cheer went up from the crowd. Which made me laugh. But the end of peaches heralds the arrival of craploads of apples! So it’s time for me to stock up on T. Marzetti’s fat-free caramel dip and start gathering apple recipes. Here are the results of some apple research I’ve done:

• Golden Delicious: Sweet and well-balanced flavor makes it perfect for fresh eating, salads, and processing in applesauce or pies.
• Grany Smith: Tart but well balanced flavor. Their crisp bite and tangy flavor can be enjoyed out of hand or in a salad, but their flavor really comes through when baked or sautéed
• Rome: Good eating apple due to its sweet and mildly tart flavor. Better as a cooking apple because its flavor grows richer when it is baked or sautéed.
• Grimes: Rich, distinctive, aromatic, and spicy in flavor. Perfect for applesauce. It is an excellent, juicy, cider apple; good for all kitchen uses except baking.

I’m happy to see squash, eggplant, and sweet potatoes. The DC weather has turned cooler lately, and I am loving the feeling that fall has arrived! I used the eggplant and basil to not-so-creatively make my usual eggplant parmesan. The sweet potatoes I foresee being turned into these curried Sweet Potato Wedges, which I’ve made before and found very tasty. I’m also planning on roasting the tomatoes and tossing them with whole wheat penne and shrimp for dinner tonight. (The tutorial on tomato-roasting on Smitten Kitchen’s blog is excellent. Interesting side note: I learned that my friend Karen and her boyfriend Jwon are friends with Deb from SK, and I was totally starstruck and dorked out in her dining room when she told me this. Deb is one of my heroes.)

My last peach recipe: This one was a real crowd-pleaser, so I wanted to share. Another gem from SK was this Peach Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Frosting recipe. I brought them to a BBQ and to work and everyone thought they were mega-tasty. I was glad to see the Great Peach Onslaught of 2009 go out on a high note.

Weigh-in switch: I’ve been forgetting to weigh in on Thursday mornings. Every other Thursday I’m out the door before 6:00 AM to hit the gym, and I’m just not capable of remembering to weigh in (and then remembering what the scale said) that early in the morning. So I’m switching my weigh-in day to Sunday. Sadly, my first Sunday weigh-in was not a stellar one, likely because of all the beer and Mexican food I consumed on the Saturday prior.

What a lovely assortment of stuff this week! An eggplant! Hot peppers! A tomato the size of my head! Since I’m around this weekend, for the first time in a while, I have no reason to fear that we’ll have any trouble gobbling up all this tastiness. I foresee eggplant parmesan, more tomato sandwiches, some spicy stir fry, and maybe… mojitos? Yum.

Wednesday night, I used the purple potatoes to make purple French fries. I’d had purple potatoes twice before—once in chip form (one of those artsy brands of tri-color chips), and once in ice cream form (in Japan, where purple potato ice cream is popular, very delicious, and a really gorgeous color). They’re kinda sweet, but not as sweet as sweet potatoes. And they made some awesome fries! I roasted them with salt, pepper, rosemary, and olive oil, and they had such a delicious flavor.

In the “after” picture, you see them served beside what I have come to refer to as “Robin burgers,” because I had them for the first time when my friend Robin made them for me when I was visiting her in Morgantown, and she was kind enough to photocopy the recipe for me. They’re made with red peppers, couscous, and an assortment of curry-ish spices, and they always turn out awesome.

Today, I committed a full-on CSA failure. In the photo at right, you see a mystery vegetable. When I went to pick up my veggies, farmer-man was saying that this mystery vegetable was a cross between several crops—broccoli, cauliflower, and kohlrabi—that had interbred in some sort of sexually explicit way that only vegetation can accomplish. So I told Steve, “I dunno what it is, but I’m cooking it.” I ripped off one of the leaves and tasted it, and it was very bitter and icky, so first I tried trimming off all the leaves, with the intention of slicing up the remaining stalk-ey bits and sautéing them in olive oil. But the stalk-ey bit was filthy, and no amount of scrubbing with my Veg-Hog would get it clean, and every time I thought I’d gotten the thing clean, I’d turn it in one direction or another and uncover a caterpillar, clinging to one of the stalk-ey ridges with all its might. I found a total of four of them, and was just kinda grossed out, and uncertain about what the heck I was doing in the first place… so I just tossed it, and we ate a veggie-free dinner. CSA fail.

I’ve tried peach muffins and peach pie and this week decided to try something savory, and attempted this recipe for pork chops and peaches tonight. Steve and I were both pretty pleased with the outcome, and I succeeded in using up four peaches to make it—woo hoo! I’m thinking that before this adventure is through, I’ll be making this one again.

While I’ve been loving the weekly dosage of fresh basil, I decided it was time to try drying it. I trimmed off all the leaves and layered them between some paper towels, which I clipped together and hung up to dry. For the next few days, I’m supposed to flip them twice a day, and hopefully they’ll be nice and dry by Friday, since we’re leaving town this weekend.

One last cooking effort this evening… I finally used up all the tomatillos to make this green salsa recipe, which made a pretty hefty batch of salsa. I was surprised by two things: 1) tomatillos are really sticky, and 2) the salsa had a nice, sweet flavor. Here you see the results festively displayed with Steve’s chili pepper Mardi Gras beads

And lastly… I’m psyched that the tomato time of year has finally arrived. Consuming farm-fresh tomatoes is no kind of challenge at all. I’ve been making a lot of tomato sandwiches—thick slice of tomato with salt, pepper, and light mayo on a toasted sandwich thin. Delicious, satisfying, and only 2 points apiece!

While last week’s delivery was a pretty sane assortment of things that are none-too-difficult to use up—a tomato, a pepper, a few peaches, a few apples—this week is a bit more challenging! Another dozen peaches have arrived. And I’m flying to Houston for my cousin’s wedding this weekend! How am I supposed to consume a dozen peaches when I’m not even around?

Also… when I land on Sunday afternoon, Steve is picking me up at the airport, and taking me directly to our friends’ house for a BBQ (and not just any BBQ—a goat roast)! So I did a little research on pie-freezing, and the internets say that you can freeze your pies before you bake them, then pop them in the oven and they’re good as new. Trusting that the internets know what they’re talking about, I embarked on another cooking adventure!

I took today off to prepare for the trip, and spent the better part of the afternoon making these hand pies from Smitten Kitchen. The recipe calls for a lot of prepping and chilling and prepping some more and chilling some more… so it takes a while. But I baked two of the hand pies, just to see how they would turn out, and I had one of them and they. are. awesome. The crust turned out wonderfully crispy and flaky and I’m sure all those chilling steps are to thank. The rest of the pies are in my freezer, and baking instructions have been written down for Steve, so he can bake them on Sunday and we can bring them to the goat roast. Lord knows I don’t need 20 tiny pies sitting around my house!

Before I yak about the foodstuffs we got this week, I have some happy news. I lost three pounds this week! If you would’ve asked me at the end of the weekend what kind of weight loss I expected to see this week, I would’ve predicted, er, nothing, because last weekend was my birthday party weekend in the woods, and I consumed a ridiculous amount of beer, cake, quiche, beef, galette, cheese, and other deliciousness. But somehow the gorge-iest weekend I’d had in a while yielded the best weight loss I had in a while. It’s funny how that can happen sometime. It’s like eating a lot shocks your metabolism into paying attention. Sadly, I know it catches up with you eventually!

Anyhoo, here’s what we got this week. Not millions of peaches, but a lot! They are the best peaches I’ve ever tasted. I had one in my lunch every day this week, but it’s a lot of fruit for two people to consume. So I made some peach muffins, which turned out very tasty (even after I swapped out Splenda blend for the sugar, Egg Beaters for the eggs, and cut the quantity of butter way back).

I made and froze some more pesto with the basil – they gave us a ton this week! Tomorrow, I’ll be making a green salsa with the tomatillos, and I’m still doing research on what to do with the baby celery. While regular celery is kinda bland and watery, this baby celery smells very tasty and flavorful, so I want to make sure I do something awesome with it. I’m pondering making this chilled soup, but cutting back the quantity of leeks so that the celery flavor can shine through. It’d be an awesome thing to bring in my lunch this week (with yet another peach on the side).

How does this spread look, eh? So nice that it attracted not one but two kitties! I apologize for the delay in writing about my week 6 delivery—it’s been a very awesomely busy week. We got the veggies Wednesday, I spent the better part of Thursday night and Friday morning cooking, then we drove out to The Plains for a birthday weekend in the woods. Here’s how I used the foodstuffs this week:

Oregano: Dried for future use (just like week one)

Peaches: Eaten just as they are. Crazy-delicious!

Zucchini and garlic: Mediterranean Quiche for Saurday morning, which was pretty darn tasty. If I were to make it again, I’d put some effort into squeezing the liquid from the cooked zucchini—I thought it was a little watery.

Cabbage and basil: Horseradish Cole Slaw, which paired awesomely with the BBQ Brisket that was served Saturday night.

And then there were the apples! They’re lodi apples, and there were eight of them. The farmer warned that they don’t last very long, and eight is a lot of apples for two people to eat… so I decided I should make something pie-like! A while back, when visiting Iowa over the holidays, I thoroughly enjoyed an apple galette (which is like a tart, but more rustic) that my stepmom made, and I asked her for the recipe. She ever-so-kindly scanned and e-mailed me the pages of Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home that featured this awesomeness. The recipe is actually pretty simple; the filling is apples, dried apricots, and dried currents, and the glaze is apricot jam and Grand Marnier. In addition to the anxiety around making my first pie crust, I was a little nervous about the lodi apples. I found very little information about them online—one site said they were good in pies, but I had no idea if it was trustworthy. It turns out it was—the galette was perfect! I can’t say enough about how tasty this was, and what a crowd-pleaser it turned out to be this weekend. Next time I have a surplus of apples and an upcoming special event, I’m breaking this one out again!

I’ve been looking forward to the week when we start getting vegetables that are more food-y and less accent-y, and that week has arrived. Cabbage! Zucchini! Potatoes! Things that you can make meals out of! And just look at those tiny tiny pears… aren’t they adorable?

I am also thrilled (as always) to get more basil. I shall never tire of basil. But more garlic scapes? Ugh. I am taking Friday off, and I think I’ll spend that day making a vat of garlic scape pesto (I still have last week’s left, too) and stick it in the freezer until enough time has passed that I am no longer sick of them. I’m also thinking… zucchini bread!

You’ll also notice that this week, I couldn’t seem to keep Kesey away from the veggies. The farm website says that sooner or later, we’ll be getting catnip in our shares. That will be a fun week!

God bless federal holidays. This last week has been so insanely busy that I haven’t had any time to get stuff done—cooking, cleaning, laundry—and today is the catch-up day that I’ve been needing for ages. Last weekend was very much consumed with dealing with a sick kitty (Kesey, who is doing much better now, thank you). So a lot of what we got in week 3’s delivery has been sitting untouched in the fridge for nine days. But the beauty of vegetables directly from the farm is that they last considerably longer than grocery store produce that has been trucked in from who-knows-where. For lunch today I made a stir-fry with the Chinese cabbage and spring onions from last week’s delivery, and they were still fresh and tasty.

So this week we got some more of the same—basil, garlic scapes, salad greens—but there was a little something new—the radishes, and…kohlrabi! Is that a weird-looking vegetable, or what? We got our delivery on Wednesday, and that night we were going over to our friends’ house for dinner. Before we left I did a little quick internet research on what the heck they are and how the heck you cook them. The internets said that the bulby part is the only part you eat, so I whacked of the greens and we showed up at our friends’ house with a weird spikey purple bulb in-hand. We sliced it up and sautéed it with olive oil and some herbs, and it was delicious! I hope we get another one! I later regretted throwing the greens away. I’m sure that they could be cooked and eaten like turnip greens, but it was too late by the time I realized that.

Today I used both this week’s and last week’s basil to make more marinara and pesto, which I put in the freezer. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the garlic scapes. I think I might pass them off to a coworker who told me she wanted to try them—frankly, I’m getting a little sick of them!

Today’s CSA share has a lot in common with those we’ve seen before—garlic scapes, Chinese cabbage, baby onions, and basil. What’s new is the salad greens, cilantro plant, and the cutest little bunch of lavender. And the cameo from my cat, Navin.

I decided to shake things up a little and try something new with the garlic scapes. I took a cue from this recipe from an adorably-named blog, and made garlic scape pesto. Of course, the version I made was altered to cut way back on the fat and calories. I chopped up two scapes and blended them with 1 T each of olive oil, grated parmesan, and toasted pine nuts. I tossed it with whole wheat pasta and some sautéed mushrooms and spinach. It was really good—the scapes have a very fresh flavor that somehow manage to taste like spring. If I were to make it again, I would endeavor to chop up only the more tender parts of the scapes; the woodier bits at the ends made for some grittiness in the pesto.

Another project for the evening was to wash and trim the salad greens. I sampled each of the different greens as I was washing, and discovered this uber-delicious green called purslane. It’s crazy-delicious! It’s so flavorful—kinda citrusey and tangy and I can’t wait to eat it in a salad.

Since I didn’t really get to dive in to my Week One CSA share until 4 days into the week, Week Two feels like it came up pretty darn fast. Here we see a not-too-different batch of veggies from what I got last week—I got another batch of green onions, garlic scapes (yay!), and basil (but more this time! Double yay!), and the enormous Chinese cabbage is pretty similar to bok choy. New this week is the parsley, tarragon, and mustard greens.

Right away, I used the parsley and one of the green onions to make a batch of tabbouleh. I used this recipe, but also added a can of chick peas, because I think it’s wicked-yummy that way.

I was going to use the mustard greens to make this pasta recipe tonight, but I realized too late that I didn’t have enough sausage. So I instead whipped up the same chicken piccata I made a few weeks ago, but I swapped in mustard greens for the zucchini (and used a second green onion). This was tasty, but probably not the best use of the greens. The bitterness of the greens would be better complimented by something spicy-sweet, like sausage, than something acidey, like lemon sauce. Lesson learned for next time—I didn’t really have any idea what mustard greens taste like. I read a few blogs on which folks likened them to spinach. Those folks was wrong.

Tomorrow night I will commence to make more of the garlic scapes dip I made last week. It is so freaking good. Tonight I bought a bunch of carrot and celery sticks for munching, as the pita chip munching was starting to add up, points-wise. I’ll make pesto from the basil this weekend. My plan for the tarragon is to let it keep growing, and see how the cats do with having an herb in the house. As for the Chinese cabbage, I’m thinking a nutty-flavored fried brown rice for next week’s lunches, using the rest of the green onions and some Egg Beaters, but I haven’t arrived at the recipe of my dreams yet.

I still have a lot of chives left from last week. I’m thinking I’ll make a chive-y egg dish for breakfast on Sunday, but that won’t even use a quarter of what I got. Some people at work have said they’d be willing to take them off my hands, but I’d much rather find a way to use them myself. Any suggestions??