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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!

I’ve had my new swimming toys for over a week now, and I’d review all of them most-favorably. The long hair swim cap never slides back on my head, the Vanquisher goggles do not fog or leak (though they leave some really crazy-looking rings around my eyes), and the kickboard has enhanced my workout exactly like I wanted it to. These few small purchases have made a pretty big difference in my workouts—less reason to stop, more variety to keep me going. Yay!

I also, on a whim, signed up to be a member of US Masters Swimming. It’s an organization for adult swimmers, and while many members swim with local clubs (as in, they practice with coaches and compete in meets and stuff) there are also benefits to being an unattached non-competer like myself. Their website has a great forum where swimmers can share recommendations on workouts, pools, and equipment, and there are competitions and challenges that you can participate in even if you’re not with a club.

For example… they have a year-long challenge called Go the Distance, which I have signed up for. You use their online fitness log to keep track of how much you swim from day to day, and you get awards for major milestones. They have awards at both 50 and 100 miles, and it’s now my goal to get both of those by the end of the year. At the rate I’m currently going (15 miles a month), I should have no problem. It kind of works on an honor system (there’s nothing to stop me from lying about my progress) and the awards are nothing fancy (certificates, suitable for framing), but hey! It’s a motivator! They’ll list my name on their website when I succeed! That’s enough for me.

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 I figured out how to back-date my blog entries, so I’m going to move all my blog posts over here from onyahisaloser. This will allow me to just take that whole she-bang down, and still be able to search for recipes and the like. It’ll be my weekend project!

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.

I forgot to weigh myself before I went swimming yesterday, so I’m tracking my weight a day late. I lost 0.2. Again. Given the bachelorette happy hour and dinner, bridal shower, rehearsal dinner, and wedding that happened in the last week, I shouldn’t be too bummed about a 0.2 loss. But I was kinda expecting the weight to start falling off now that I’m exercising more ambitiously than I ever have! Grrr… This week looks like a far more normal week, food-wise. Here’s hoping that I’ll see something exciting on the scale next week!

I am loving the swimming. Every other day, I’ve been getting up between 5:30 and 6:00 and heading directly to the gym (though on weekends, I do let myself sleep in a little). Sometimes on the drive there I feel groggy or achy and think to myself, “This is gonna suck,” but every time, as soon as I push off from the wall for the first time, I suddenly feel awesome. I take the first 100m really slow and make long, stretchy strokes that warm up my muscles and feel soooo good.

My routine, in case you’re curious, is to swim my mile (1650m) in 400m chunks. I swim 100m freestyle, 100m breaststroke, another 100m freestyle, then 100m backstroke.* Then I pause for one minute to drink some water, adjust my cap, and de-fog my goggles. After I do this 4 times, I swim a 50m “victory lap,” then I am done! I try to consciously alternate between focusing on speed and focusing on form, but I confess that sometimes I get lost in the music and realize that 200m have gone by and I haven’t focused on anything other than Gogol Bordello.

Within the next day or so, I should receive a package from SwimOutlet.com, which contains a kickboard, fancy anti-fog goggles, and a swim cap designed for people with lots of hair. I’m excited about all three! The cap and goggles will hopefully save me from all the adjusting and de-fogging I have to do every time I swim. And I am thinking I need the kickboard because I don’t feel like I am working my lower body enough. My arms, shoulders, and abs are surely feeling the burn of all these workouts, but I have yet to experience butt or thigh soreness.

I keep reminiscing about my childhood swimming days. For example… one day, during practice when I was about 9, Coach Scott (the “big kids” coach), pulled me out of practicing with the other kids and spent a half-hour working with me in my own lane. He took the time to show me what I was doing wrong with my freestyle strokes—the above-water stroke should be low and wide and the below-water stroke should be an s-shaped push through the water. I’d kinda just been flailing my arms in circles. That half-hour he spent with me did more to improve my swimming than countless hours of unguided practicing.

I also keep thinking of Coach Brian (one of the “little kids” coaches). He had this enormous booming voice, and when I would swim breaststroke in competition, I’d hear him booming “go” over and over, one “go” for each time my head popped out of the water. I was never an awesome swimmer, but he was always so encouraging, and I still hear him in my head.

The only downside of the whole swimming arrangement is that regularly getting up before 6:00 am is making me a pretty lame person to be around in the late evenings. I should make myself go to bed at 10:00 pm, but I’m having a hard time doing that. Instead, like a child, I whine, “no, I’m not tired, I can watch the Daily Show,” then I promptly fall asleep on the couch.

*When I described this routine to my mom, she pointed out the conspicuous absence of the butterfly. Yes, that is true, I’m holding off on it for now, because it is hard and I have always sucked at it. Maybe someday I’ll feel up to the challenge?

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??