We’re into week 2! We picked up our CSA box on Saturday and spent another great week cooking more vegetables than we can usually handle.

This week’s box had some new vegetables including broccoli rabe, and Adirondack blue potatoes. I should have kept some of them separate for our mystery food challenge since neither I, nor the kids, have tried them before. But they were so perfect for a July 4^th red, white and blue potato salad that I used them all in one fell swoop.

Given that we had a few families visiting the lake this weekend, I also loaded up on a few extras that weren’t in my box.

Here were the contents of Week 2’s box:

1. Green leaf lettuce
2. Italian parsley
3. Yukon Gold potatoes (from their regular farm stand)
4. Sugar snap peas
5. Garlic scapes
6. Bok choy
7. Red radishes
8. Adirondack blue potatoes
9. Sage plant
10. Swiss chard
11. Baby carrots
12. Broccoli rabe

*not pictured (in hiding?) were a boatload of English peas

Aside from the Bialas produce, I picked up some local strawberries and blueberries from another vendor at the Ringwood Farmer’s Market, The Orchards of Conklin, and a pork shoulder from Snoep Winkel Farm.

The kids have been pretty excited to pick up the box because it brings mealtime and playtime together. After I set out the vegetables and get them ready for washing & bagging, Lauren now asks me if she can do her own vegetable artwork. In theory I don’t have a problem with it, but it makes for a gigantic clean up effort. But if that’s what it takes to get the kids interested in eating their greens, I’m game.

One of the first things that the kids like to eat are the carrots. With the greens and peels intact. I’m a peeler myself, but the skins on these baby carrots are so thin, that they’re downright delicious straight from the ground with nothing but a quick wash.

This week, my first dish was a beet hummus, using some leftover beets from last week’s box, to serve as a dip for the radishes. To call this dip hummus is a bit of a stretch since it contains no tahini, and a fair amount of yogurt. But with its chickpeas and garlic, it’s about as close as Lauren will come to tasting true hummus given her sesame allergy. Potato potah-to, it’s still pretty fantastic, and I’ve included the recipe below.

To make the beet hummus:
Blitz a garlic clove in a food processor until minced.
To the processor, add a few roasted beets (roast the beets in foil at 350 degrees for an hour, let cool, and then slip from their skins), a 14-oz can of garbanzo beans, 14-oz can of butter beans and then pulse. With the motor running, add a ¼ cup of olive oil in a slow stream to emulsify. Add a 6-oz container of yogurt and a tablespoon of Harissa; blend to incorporate. Season with salt and pepper.
(Optional) Serve with a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkling of Maldon salt, and/or chopped fresh herbs.

The hummus was also really great stuffed into a toasted pita with a basic tabbouleh which I made with our farm share parsley, a tomato, bulgur and some lemon juice + olive oil. Feeling like I was going with a Mediterranean vibe that day for lunch, I rounded things out with some green leaf lettuce topped with grilled calamari. We don’t do this every day, but we should. It took almost no time to prepare and was a great combination of healthy and delicious.

We had fun with our greens at lunch this week and opted one day for a pasta bar instead of our usual sandwiches. I was skeptical about whether this approach would encourage the kids to eat more veg, but was shocked when Sam layered broccoli rabe and blanched English peas over his pasta. On top of the mountain of bacon of course.

Lauren, my resident vegetable eater, just went for bacon and a splash of the pasta cooking water, which she referred to as “dishwater”. Appetizing. Feeling bad for my neglected vegetables, I loaded up on ricotta, heaps of English peas, mint, lemon zest and chili flakes and it was one of the best pastas I’ve had in a long time.

With the heat this week it was hard not to go crazy for cold things, so we made a lot of pops. Thinking that it might help entertain the kids this summer, I went hog wild on Amazon before we left the city, ordering a few different types of popsicle molds. The added benefit being that it gets the kids off of the neon ice pops from the A&P, and gives them some added nutrition.

These ring pops were one of their favorites – we pureed strawberries with some mint simple syrup and poured them into the molds. The best kind of accessory for beating the heat…

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