CSA hacks

I'm avoiding fiction writing and not getting much reading done, so hey, write about food. 

[Chimichurri sauted quickly with tomatoes over eggs in a flour tortilla. Mmm.]

One thing being a CSA* member requires is being adaptable because you end up with lots of vegetables that aren't easy to eat quickly in large amounts and may go bad before you finish them. It helps to have some recipes that preserve them a little longer or use large amounts at once. 

Parsley is one of those things most recipes use only sparingly. Cilantro, too. Cilantro chutney and salsa are an option. For parsley, a walnut parsley sauce or parsley pesto. But you may often end up with too much parsley, or parsley and cilantro both at the same time. My favorite easy way to extend their life and mix them together for maximum impact is chimichurri, a leafy salsa from Argentina and Uruguay originally.

Chimichurri 

Ingredients

2 cups packed parsley and/or cilantro, minced (you can't go wrong except to personal taste - online recipes are pretty evenly divided between traditional all parsley, 2/3, and 50-50 mixes) 

2-3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced or pressed

2 teaspoons oregano (dried, and/or mince some fresh)

1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes + (adjust to taste - start with less and see)

1/4 cup red wine vinegar (less if you want a less liquid consistency)

1/3 to 1 cup extra virgin olive oil (most recipes use a lot, but this stuffs expensive, so I just a little, adding at the end of food processing just until it gets a creamier texture)

Mince by hand and toss together, or mince the garlic, cut the greens down a bit so they'll process easily, add oregano and red wine vinegar (can start with less abs add as you go to adjust taste) and pulse in a  food processor. Once the mix becomes more minced, add the olive oil slowly and pulse to get a texture you like. 

Or just throw it all in together and process until you get the texture you want.) More olive oil and time processing will make it smoother and creamier but the original of more of a vinegary/ liquid sauce with minced leavesi in it. I like it less watery so it stays in top of stuff and is less messy.

Variations - alter the mix of parsley and cilantro to all of one or whatever you have on hand. Add a little ground cumin, or fresh basil or mint. Alter the amounts of oregano, red pepper flakes, and vinegar. Recipes vary greatly, even from Argentinians and Uraguyans. 

Uses- top arepas, tacos, quesadillas, grilled cheese sandwiches, meat, fish, veggies, potatoes. Toss with fresh chopped tomatoes and use it cold or warmed up to top stuff. Add it to a marinade for chicken or other meat, or mix with more oil and lemon juice for a marinade. Freeze it in cubes in summer to fall, to preserve it longer and be able to add a little green and spicy flavor to sauces or soups in deep winter.

*Community Supported Agriculture, where you subscribe to get a weekly or biweekly to pick up a "farm box" of fresh vegetables and maybe eggs, meat, honey, jam, flours, bread, or other products from a local small or family farm at a local store or other business. Check your local grocery coop - they usually have a list or a spring CSA fair. 

Spring bounty

My own garden plants are tiny, despite the rain that brought this old guy out onto the walking path by the creek and lake. But the CSA has started pumping out greens for their spring box. The asparagus disappears quickly, but the radish, turnip, kohlrabi, and beet greens need to be used, as well as the kale. I threw some greens in dal, and ate others with eggs steamed in the hole in the covered skillet. But still have tons of kale. 

The CSA also gave us coarse red polenta from Meadowlark Farm and Mill in Wisconsin. I'm not the biggest fan of polenta the gelatinous mass of porridgy corn stuff (if you can't tell). So I looked through recipes for polenta muffins and tweaked a few to make my own recipe. Made it vegan to avoid the need for eggs ($$$), and just felt like seeing if I could get a good fake bleu cheese flavor.

Polenta kale muffins with sundried tomatoes, walnuts, and vegan bleu cheese

tweaked from several recipes but mainly: https://somebodyfeedseb.com/cheesy-polenta-muffins-with-chilli-and-sundried-tomatoes/

Servings

8 small muffins

Equipment

8 Silicone Cupcake Molds, or 12-cup muffin tin with 8 cups greased well

Ingredients

2 Tablespoon canola oil (or melted vegan or real butter, plus extra for greasing) 

1/2 cup polenta (if coarse, soak it in part of the milk for a while before mixing this up)

1 cup plain (or half whole wheat) AP flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda 

1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon salt depending on the salt level of your sun-dried tomatoes 

1 egg (or flax or chia egg equivalent - 1 Tbsp chia or ground flax seeds in 3 Tbsp hot water)

3/4 cup non-dairy milk (I used oatmilk) with 1 tsp cider vinegar, OR plain unsweetened yogurt

Cheese substitute - mix together :

1/4 cup almond flour or ground almonds 

1 teaspoon mild/ white miso

1/4 cup nutritional yeast 

(OR 1/4 cup cheddar cheese coarsely grated, or bleu or feta cheese, crumbled)

kale (small bunch, to taste how much you use - more will make chunkier muffins) - wash, dice kale and microwave in a little water, covered, just long enough  to wilt. Drain and let sit a few minutes to cool.

Optional flavorings (I used them all, mmm):

1 to 2 Tbsp sundried tomatoes in oil drained and chopped (more to taste)

1/8 to 1/4 cup walnuts, chopped (I use "pieces" broken up more by hand because they're usually cheaper)

1 tsp chill powder

1/2 tsp chipotle flakes, or red pepper flakes 

1/2 tsp dried parsley

2 spring onions thinly sliced

Preheat the oven to 350° F regular oven (180°C Fan).

If you're using a 12-hole muffin tin, grease 8 cups very well with vegan or real butter, or use silicone cupcake molds. These muffins can really stick.

Mix polenta, flour, baking powder, baking soda and a pinch of salt in a bowl. Stir in the fake Bleu cheese mix or real cheese (reserve a small handful of real cheese for the top), drained and cooled kale, finely sliced spring onions and chilli.

In a separate large bowl lightly beat the egg (fake or real) with melted butter or oil, and the rest of the milk or yoghurt. Whisk together until mixed.

Pour into the dry ingredients and fold them together. Add the sun-dried tomatoes. Stir. If it seems too dry, add a little more of the milk or some water. It should be thick and clingy but not too dry.

Divide between the holes of the muffin tin. I got 8 muffins out of the mixture, piled up in a mound above the tin level - it will not puff up very much so put it in the shape you want. Top with the remaining cheddar if used.

Bake for 20-25 mins. They will not puff up too much but should be crispy on top and moist inside. 

Let sit a few minutes and use a butter knife to see how easily they come up. Loosen them all up in their cups or put out on a rack to cool. Test one by opening it up, or use a cake tester ur butter knife to see how clean they remain. If it's still undone inside, bake a little longer at a 300 or let it sit in the warm but off oven to firm up a little more. They should be moist but not gooey. To taste, of course...

The Sheep Look Up

Got about 30% of the way through the John Brunner book by audiobook, but rain has prevented the daily yardwork and my enthusiasm for runs vs Nordictracking inside (which needs video or music). Also, the disjointed structure from various sources makes it more interesting but is hard to follow in audio (unless laying down or something allowing total focus). 

I'm going to have to switch to paper, as it's not on ebook format that I can find yet. And the copy I have is really tiny print. After a trip to Uncle Hugo's, I hope to have a better edition...

It's actually better than I thought from trying the first five pages several times. It takes some getting past archaic cultural schtuff - particularly the parodic yet normal sexism and racism of characters and their chit chat - and getting into the to-me old fashioned style (though newish and zippy at the time, of course). 

The themes are timely. Some of the humor is quite funny still. I can think of many ways Brunner and peers may have influenced Johanna Sinisalo, which I'm always looking for. Especially the collage kaleidoscope style of storytelling.

It's in a way hard to take at this particular cultural moment, and yet also strangely comforting. Like Disch's dystopic novels.

 

More later. I'm trying to push gaily forward into a new draft of a thing I've been working on a long time, that is feeling more solid than it has been. Getting the genre mix and characters' tone right has been a struggle. I need to get my resume together and deal with home repair before deep winter junk, too. This leaves less time for reading outside of audio. (Got a mystery for that now. Killingly by Katharine Buetner, to fit my mood. Good blurbs.)

Working Up to the New Wave

I've been reading through an anthology of essays about the New Wave, Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1850-1885, by Andrew Better and Iain McIntyre, trying to get a better overview of what was going on at the time. Some of the essays were really interesting, especially about the changes in the publishing industry and legal battles over censorship that were a piece of that.

It sent me back to reading more some of the big influences, and the kind of stories that were developing into the New Wave. There was so much stuff that I've only ever barely dented the surface though I have dipped in again and again over time.

I also happened to listen to a Halloween reading of a Fritz Leiber story, The Black Gondoliers, and a collection of Asimov short stories, mainly "Nightfall." Mainly because these were available and I was bored by podcasts for the lunch walk and yardwork, but it was good to get a sense of the flavor of older SF again.

I started listening to John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up this morning, cutting raspberry canes back. I had to rewind due to not paying full attention at first, but it's picking up. This was highly recommended several times by a friend in the past, and I've tried before in print but I never got into it due to the tiny faded print in the old paperback and the slow start. 

In print, I'm still working on Disch's On Wings of Song, but haven't had a lot of time thanks to Halloween, yardwork before the snow season, and other stuff. One of the essays on Dangerous Visions talked some about him. I read some more biographical stuff, obituaries and tributes and people's comments on them. I still don't really have a good sense of where his novels fit into the eras, how groundbreaking certain things were. 

Unlike, say, Delany, Le Guin, Tiptree, or Russ. There was more about them in Dangerous Visions, and I ended up buying a couple books about and by Russ that I've never gotten around to. Getting ready for winter reading.

Meanwhile, I've been watching a bunch of classic horror movies over the last couple years. Rewatched some Stephen Kings and Halloween, and finally got around to ones that I was afraid would be too much nightmare fodder, like Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and some more recent stuff. I had that same sense that it's so hard now to see what was groundbreaking and a "first" back when the stuff came out. Kids today have no idea...

But even we who were around at the time forget. I've been trying to write something set in the 1980s and 90s, and it's go hard to really get back into the right mentality and cultural milieu. So much junk has been overlaid over it now - depictions that only capture certain parts of the culture, history accounts focused on things people didn't focus on then, remakes and revivals with a current sensibility. It's helpful to go to the primary sourced, but even then, hard to really immerse. Like learning second + languages. The more you become an insider the more you realize how much of an outsider you'll always be, and how much more really basic stuff there is to learn.

Just gonna keep digging around this winter, and try to understand the 50s-80s in SFF more, and the influences on the people who have influenced me as a writer and thinker about books and movies. And who came before I somehow missed - I had a very spotty sff education until middle adulthood. I kept reading a lot of current stuff trying to keep up, but never dug back very much. Seems like a good time.