Week 16, Box 16

This week I drove the hour in traffic to pick up The Box, only to find out 3 hours later that The Husband was also heading over to the area where we pick up The Box to give something to MIL. The location of course is completely out of my way, but on his way home from work. Nothing like bad coordiantion, darn. Anyway, we are starting to get some of the fall veggies and I am very excited. This week The Box looked like this:

The Whole Enchelada

This week The Box provided me with 4 tomatillos. Tomatillos are related to the husk cherry, and are not, despite the similarity in their name,are not tomatoes. Prior to creating my most recent creation, described below, I had never worked with them before. Tomatillos are frequently found in native Mexican cuisine, and being Italian and Jewish and The Husband being Irish, we don't usually eat a lot of Mexican food, and we certainly rarely choose to dive into that cuisine for cooking. It requires ingredients not typically found in our kitchen, and a taste palette that we are unaccustomed to balancing. However, the whole purpose of this little exercise is to expand our culinary horizons by dealing with the ingredients that appear on our doorstep. So, I made enchiladas.

Week 15 Box 15

This week The Box was lovingly delivered to me by The Husband and I had about 5 minutes to look it over, take a picture of it and then run out to a hearing that lasted till 12:00am. Wonderful. Not to mention that I then did the exact same thing on Tuesday, quick PB and J dinner and then back out to a hearing that didn't end till 10:00pm. Welcome to my life. I'm exhausted and in desperate need of a full day of TLC but I don't want to pull a last week and forget to post anything about this week's box so here it is:

Bonus: It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time

So last week's box gave me these:

Concord grapes, about 13 oz of them. Now here's the thing about concord grapes, they are NOT grapes which are made to be eaten. This is not your lean back on a chaise lounge while a scantily clad brawny young man feeds them too you while fanning you with a palm leave. These grapes are extraordinarily difficult and rather disgusting to eat.

First, there is the skin in all it's thick and chewy glory, then there are the pits which are not meant to be consumed and are surrounded by the only truly edible part of the grape the pulp which clings to the pit like it's life depends on it in some sort of embryonic sac. To eat successfully you need to pop the grape out of it's skin into your mouth, and then trap the pits on the outside of your teeth while you suck strongly on the pulp to get it to release. Then swallow. Like I said, not good eats.

But the flavor, oh the flavor, it brings you right back to child hood. Sweet, heavy and heavenly. Smelling like the first day of school or the end of a really long hike. Something about that flavor tells you it's peanut butter jelly time. And so, come hell or high water I was going to turn those grapes into jelly.

Week 14 Box 14: Spicy Fun Arugala

Because of the way my day job works we are getting into the heavy season at work. Which means my posts are going to start condensing because I don't have nearly as much time to work on them as I would like too. Sorry folks. I'm going to try to get better at spacing them out, maybe get on a regular schedule like The Husband recommends. We shall see. Anyway last week The Box Contained the following:

• Red Potatoes
• Many tomatoes of the red and heirloom variety
• Yellow Onions
• Celery
• Concord Grapes
• and Two Bunches of Arugula

Since, of course, Arugula is one of my favorite greens due to it's spicy fun flavor and I had an excess of tomatoes I went looking for a good old fashioned quick pasta recipe for a Tuesday night dinner.

TWO TAKES

Last week I made a couple of dishes for the blog, went through the whole taking pictures process, but they seem repetitive from prior posts. So I've mushed them together for you here.

Happy New Year!

For those of you who may not be aware, this week was the Jewish New Year. It's the time of year where we eat a big meal, and dip apples in honey in hopes of evoking a sweet new year. Weirdly, because of the way the Jewish Calendar works, this year's "Leap Year" brings the holiday almost a full month earlier than it usually is. Apples, therefore, are barely in season, and peaches, which showed up in The Box this week, are at the very end of the season. I wanted to create something for our New Year meal that combined peaches and honey. A little bit of time on The Google Machine yielded a Honey Peach Upside Down Cake. I decided to make two.

Week 13, Box 13

Last week was a disaster, not only was The Box unforgiving minimal, forcing me to work with Beets (ick), but that week, my kitchen also made the untimely decision to FALL INTO A MILLION PIECES. First the dishwasher, then the sink, and of course I was on a mini-break visiting my two very good friends and trying to get some culture/history. Meanwhile The Husband was dealing with the mess that was my kitchen appliances circa 1967. Luckily between himself and my amazing uncle, things were, for the most part, fixed by the time I got home. and BONUS, new dishwasher!!!!!!

Anyway, for what lacked in The Box last week, this week more than makes up for it. I guess you could say I have an over abundance of.... interesting:

OOOO WEEE OOOO Killer Tofu!

For the most part, I am NOT a fan of Beets. They look funny, taste funny and tend to dye any dish they are paired with bright red. So when the farm box gave me beets my first instinct was to throw them back. However with the pickings being so slim this week, I felt compelled to use the only interesting item in some way for this blog. I tried to remember if there was ever a time I ate beets with abandon, or noted them in an interesting culinary technique. I recalled a meal The Husband and I enjoyed on our honeymoon in Iceland. We were in Vik (which by the way means "village"), we had just spent the day hiking glaciers and seeing ice floes. It was 7:00 at night, the sun wouldn't be setting for another 5 hours, we were exhausted and hungry and we stopped in this little place with "puffin" in the name for dinner. One of the appetizers we ordered was cured horse meat with pickled beets. I remember the horse meat being delicious, and I know I cleaned my plate, I'm even positive I said something like "hmmm I don't usually like beets but these are good."  Of course all this could have been the Icelandic air, romantic atmosphere and general jet lag, but if I liked pickled beets once before, I may just like them again.