Compost Soup. And a great hash of potatoes, fresh garlic, spring onion, oregano and thyme. Plus dolmas.

All winter long I was making what I call compost soup. On Friday I would take out all the near rotting vegetables and peels and scraps I had saved over the week, throw them in a soup pot with some salt and pepper, sometimes a chicken leg or two, whatever. Then when the stock was done, I'd freeze it. I'd ladel 2 cups into freezer bags and store them for later use. I haven't done it in a while. So I decided to start this again with all the scraps leftover from the CSA, like the spring onion stalks, the garlic stalk & scape, the herbs I haven't used up yet that are begging to deteriorate. So tomorrow, it's compost soup time!

I made a great potato hash tonight with the potatoes, fresh garlic, spring onion, oregano and thyme.

Early in the day (when the house was cool) I roasted the potatoes:
Oven at 400 degrees.
Placed all my small potatoes and added 2 yukon golds (cut up) in a roasting pan, drizzled 2 TBSP olive oil, a tsp of kosher salt and the garlic. I didn't peel the cloves, but broke up the head into unpeeled cloves. Covered with foil and roasted for 45 minutes.

getting ready

Then I squeezed the garlic out of the skins and put in a bowl with the oil left in the pan. Then let it all cool for later in the day.

Letting it all cool

Then when it was getting close to dinner time, I crushed the potatoes by hand, just crumbled them. Then I heated a frying pan, added 2 Tbsp olive oil and the potatoes. Left it undisturbed for about 8 minutes. It got all crusty. Flipped it, let it cook until that side browned. Then I added 1 chopped spring onion and the garlic paste. Lowered heat to a simmer and cooked until the spring onion was translucent. Added a touch more salt. Voila!

So good!

The baby bok choy

I sauteed/steamed this in a little water, and then made a miso butter glaze. My kids loved it! After it was done cooking, I took it out of the sautee pan and added butter (2 tsp), white miso (1/2 tsp) and a bit of water, like 3 tbsp. I let it simmer over low and poured it over the bok choy. Excellent!

I actually basically steamed it in a tiny bit of water 

Finished. It was glazed in the miso butter

OK, then I did something crazy. I made dolmas from grape leaves off my grape vine.

I was perusing the Blooming Hill website on Tuesday, before we got our e-mail about what our share will contain. I was looking at the produce list of the possibilities. I saw grape leaves was on there. Then I though, huh, I have a grape vine. It's leaves are so thick and it's shading part of my vegetable garden. So I googled how to use fresh grape leaves for dolmas. I have a great dolma recipe which includes brown rice, raisins, pine nuts, tomatoes, olive oil, lemon, allspice and onion. I hadn't made it in years. But now I was faced with this challenge. I know the leaves were not from my CSA, but it was inspired by the CSA. So I made them today and they are out of this world. So much better than any I've ever had.

all packed away in tupperware for the July 4th weekend

Tomorrow I'll be using the yummy looking arugula and squash. Already looking forward to next Wednesday!