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Rarely do I get a creative spark when it comes to mixing flavors and ideas for dinner. Tonight’s fare was certainly an exception. The best part? I made the meal entirely from local food! The bonus: a gorgeous, flavorful, colorful plate of pork, carrots and fennel.
I scoured the fridge for some marinade ideas and found some Annie’s organic teriyaki marinade — so I cheated on the pasture-raised Minnesota pork with store-bought marinade. Hopefully I can be forgiven. But I needed to devote my attention to the vegetable accompaniment: sauteed carrot ribbons and fennel. My friend Andrea sent me the recipe since I needed something to do with the organic fennel from last week’s CSA box. I also had fresh carrots on hand, recently purchased from the St. Paul Farmer’s Market on Saturday. (Simply saute the carrots and fennel in 2 tsp of olive oil, with a dash of red pepper flakes, for about 10 minutes.)
I wasn’t exactly sure how to create a “carrot ribbon,” so I simply pushed harder than usual with the vegetable peeler to create longer, thin slices of carrot. It seemed to do the trick, and I was sauteeing in no time:
I marinated the pork for about 40 minutes, then tossed it and the marinade in a saute pan for 12 minutes — adding the marinade to the pan helped keep the pork juicy and moist.
And I was right about the flavor combination: the hint of licorice in the fennel and the sweetness of the carrots paired wonderfully with the teriyaki-drowned pork. For once, I, Ms. Picky Pants, found myself piling all of the ingredients onto the same forkful, it was that good. Doug and I celebrated the delicious meal with a glass of crisp, fruity pinot grigio. Magnifico.
The finished product:
I am super pleased with our first CSA box of the 2009 season!
Here’s what we got:
arugula
broccoli
green garlic
green butter lettuce
green onions
mint
purple kohlrabi
potatoes
spinach
radishes
The box!
And the kohlrabi and green butter lettuce are just fabulously vibrant:
Beautiful veggies
The variety is awesome, and I can’t wait to see what the next box brings. Our newsletter tipped us off that strawberries are on the way!
In addition to the tiny green iris shoots sprouting in my front yard, spring is also showing itself in Wisconsin: The Driftless Organics farmers are getting ready to plant their greenhouse seedlings.
Yesterday’s OnePotatoTwo blog post was indeed optimistic. The first broccoli seedlings are prepped and ready for planting. The growing season has started!
Only two more months until we get our first CSA box.
More food-related blibbity-blah today. I just received a really cool thank-you email from Driftless Organics, confirming my membership! The owners seem really committed to keeping their members informed and up-to-date on the farm goings-on, which is pretty dang awesome. It’s great to know what they’re up to, and that they’re just as excited for the growing season to start as we are.
In addition to maintaining its well-organized and thorough website, Driftless Organics started a blog to communicate to members on a regular basis. OnePotatoTwo is the perfect way for me to check in and get to know the farmers. Love that.
Tally ho! We’re on our way! I’m feeling really good about choosing Driftless Organics for my inaugural CSA season.
Yes! I have buy-off from Doug, and we are going to submit a member application to Driftless Organics for their 2009 CSA.
I mulled over the information yesterday, and calculated the weekly cost to be about $17. If I were to buy organic produce at Whole Foods or Kowalski’s, I’d spend at least that or more every week. Plus, I’m horrible at deciding which vegetables to buy at the store — I can never make up my mind on what would be good to eat that week. Having the every-other-week CSA box will motivate me to do more meal planning around what we get in each box. (We decided that a weekly box would be too much for two people to consume.)
I’m really looking forward to this!
I had a chance to look over the Land Stewardship Project’s CSA brochure (downloaded as a PDF from the LSP’s website). After leafing through the 40-plus pages of CSA listings, I think I may have found one that fits our needs.
Driftless Organics in Soldiers Grove, Wis., offers an every-other-week share at a reasonable price, with the option to split the cost into two payments. I don’t think we need a full box every week, since there are only two adults in our household — so it wouldn’t be practical for us to buy a full weekly share. And the St. Paul pickup site is close to home, which is ideal. They also offer specialty boxes, such as a Thanksgiving box and beef boxes (of organic, pastured beef!).
I nearly did a backflip when I saw that parsnips are available — I’ve had a fondness for parsnips since a scrumptious meal at The Crafstman introduced me to them a little over a year ago. I am intrigued by the prospect of learning to cook with them.
I think my overworked brain would benefit from sleeping on this thought, before I instinctively pull the trigger on the application form, as I am usually wont to do when it comes to making and acting on decisions.
There are days when I really wish the previous residents of my house would submit a permanent address change to the Post Office, but today is not one of them, for once! I went into the office to grab my laptop and spotted the misdelivered “mix” newsletter from the Twin Cities Natural Food Co-ops association. And lo and behold, the cover story is “The ABCs of CSAs.” How appropos, given the suggestions I’ve received based on my recent “meat research” posts.
As I presumed, there are several CSAs within Minnesota, and a handful of local co-ops are having CSA fairs this spring, where consumers can meet the farmers and see which CSA best fits their needs.
Needless to say, I will be doing some research to see if this is a viable option for us — I am totally on board with the concept and would love to give it a try.
I don’t think I can wait for the Seward Co-op’s fair the last weekend in April (because I’m an anxious, compulsive weirdo), so once I return from the gym tonight, I plan to check out the following websites for more information:
More to come, once I’ve had a chance to work off my nervous energy and focus on this newly discovered option.
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