About that CSA

Every Tuesday night, a woman from a farm 45 minutes outside Chicago sends me an e-mail about what's been happening that week. She tells me about the deer that are eating the leaves of her beets, the difficulty getting plastic coverings on the greenhouses, the best way to cook carnival squash. She includes, at the end of each e-mail, a list of vegetables I can expect to pick up the following day.

On Wednesday, I (or one of two friends with whom I am splitting this CSA) trek up to the most bizarre restaurant in Chicago, a "raw foods" place in the middle of nowhere, and pick up a box of vegetables that were delivered that morning from the farm. I then have six days to try and cook and eat my way through the vegetables. On the seventh day, a new batch arrives.

Now, I happen to have this fear of the kitchen. I've had it for a good four years or more, and it has resulted in a number of small disasters. I also used to be one of the pickiest eaters of all time. These factors combined are turning this CSA experience into a bit of a comedy.

This was week one. I had never eaten half of the things I received: kale, kohlrabi and wite satin carrots were all new. So far, I've used up the kale, the carrots, the onion and half of the sweet potatoes.
I made sweet potato fries first, which are super easy and one of my favorite fall foods.

Next I made a pasta with the kale and some ricotta cheese. I forgot to cut the kale into small strips before braising it, which means it was less of a sauce and more of a chunky addition to the spaghetti. Despite this, it was pretty damn good.

I also made a carrot soup with the white carrots. I'd show you pictures, but it looked like brown sludge and, unfortunately, tasted a little too sweet for soup. Maybe this is typical for carrot soup in general (I don't really know, honestly), but I'm glad I made such a small batch because it definitely wasn't worth keeping.

Despite still having the alien kohlrabi and a bunch of apples still in my fridge, the next batch came today.There were also brussels sprouts, but we cooked them up with some gnocchi before I even had time to unpack.
This will be my first time cooking with beets (though I've had my share of salads with sliced beets), and I'll probably stain all my cabinets purple, but my kitchen could use some color. The rest of this week's batch is a bit more familiar (except for the crazy squash, but I'm finding that all squash taste alike, to some degree). Figuring out what to do with a dozen apples might be the bigger challenge.

Also, that kohlrabi is still sitting in the fridge.