CSA Spectacular: February 2017

We have been cooking up a storm lately, trying to beat the winter blues with all kinds of cold weather, healthy meals. Here’s a look at the recent CSA recipes we’ve made.

First up, we did a double-feature CSA recipe night. We started with some garlic kale from Cooking Light.

As the second side dish for that dinner, we sliced up that ginormous sweet potato and made extra-crispy sweet potato fries.

Loved the kale; it had an earthy, meaty-yet-crispy texture out of the oven, and it was great for lunches all week.

But the true star of the meal was the sweet potato dish. They didn’t turn out crispy AT ALL but it didn’t matter because the taste was incredible. I ate servings of this all week (because that giant sweet potato made a huge portion). So good, and will definitely be on our regular sweet potato rotation.

In one of our boxes, we got a supply of parsnips. Parsnips are weird, and I feel like I’m constantly in search of a recipe that makes them taste less-parsnippy. I tried a recipe for parsnip & potato mash with spiced onions.

The onions on this were fantastic, and the mash was okay. It still seemed awfully strong on the parsnip flavor. I’ll keep working and tweaking, but this was a good starting place.

I cook a lot of dinners, but there is one breakfast item I swear by and make a few times a year: Red Flannel Hash.

I swear by this recipe. It takes a bit of time to get all the chopping done, but it’s so worth it. The recipe calls for bacon, but I like to use pork belly slices (pan-frying them in root beer first if you can before adding them to the mix). And you can serve it with any chilled white wine, champagne, or, of course, a French 75.

Finally, I made another fan favorite in our house: goat cheese polenta with basil almond pesto & spiced chickpeas.

This recipe is a big one, but it’s so hearty and filling that you can eat it for lunch & have that “full” feeling last all afternoon. I love eating this on a day when I do a big workout or a long run. I cut back the amount of pesto in each serving, which leaves me with a hefty side of pesto that I can use for other recipes (or just dip bread into) for the rest of the week.

We’ll be back next month with more winter-veggie goodness!