The CSA Season for Bet Torah has begun, and we got greens, greens and more greens!

In this blog, I write about the things I cook from my CSA share and my home garden. My goal is for my kids to eat it alongside my husband and I. I'm lucky they aren't picky kids. Tonight, the first meal I cooked with my CSA produce, they gobbled up. I swear I have never seen them eat so many veggies as tonight.

Tonight's dinner was chicken baked over a mixture of rice, garlic scapes, green garlic and mushrooms. The green garlic & garlic scapes came from the CSA. Swiss chard with garlic scapes (all from the CSA), and sugar snap peas (from my garden), with green garlic and scapes from the CSA. Everyone loved it. It was awesome. I told them afterwards that they had just eaten garlic scapes and green garlic. Jack said YUCK. I reminded him that pesto has a lot of garlic, and he felt better. He loves pesto.

Baked chicken over rice, garlic scapes, green garlic and mushrooms

I was fortunate enough to have ripe sugar snap peas from my garden today. The pea part of my garden is so overgrown. I planted everything way too close together. And I labeled nothing. So at first I wasn't sure which were sugar snaps, and which were undeveloped peas. But I finally figured it out, even though they were all intertwined. I'm an expert now, so if you need help in this area, feel free to ask away. Oh, I'll just tell you. The sugar snaps have a thicker skin, like more plump. The regular peas have a harder thinner skin and you can see individual peas inside. Plus the sugar snaps are ready to pick now. The peas probably wont be ready for a week, they are quite thin, look more like snow peas.

raw sugar snap peas

I sauteed these with garlic scapes and green garlic. Way to yummy. The kids ate them all! Begged for more. I picked all that was ready. Maybe more for tomorrow.

sauteed sugar snaps with garlic scapes and green garlic

Then I made the Swiss chard. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Swiss chard. And the woodchuck thing in my woods that ate all of mine in the pot on the deck will have to be dealt with somehow. I grow a lot of lettuce type things on my deck in pots and leave the actual fenced in garden for tomatoes, cukes, squash, peas & peppers. I've never had an issue with critter eating from my deck, but this year some critter ate the Swiss chard, bok choy and some sunflowers. And he also got into the fenced in garden and ate a cucumber plant. I'm going to go all Caddyshack on him if this keeps up. Sorry PETA.

So the Swiss chard was the best. Simply sauteed with olive oil and scapes. I put the scapes and stems in first and almost carmelized them, then added the torn leaves with the water still clinging to them. It was the best.

Swiss Chard with Carmelized Scapes and Chard Stems

That was just day 1.

Tomorrow I plan on making fish, maybe flounder sauteed with green garlic. There was a recipe 2 weeks ago in the NY Times.

http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/green-garlic-says-spring/

I'm also going to probably make a spinach salad, or sautee the spinach from the CSA.

I'll roast the potatoes with green garlic and rosemary from my garden.

The mustard greens... Never made them, we'll see what happens. I'll probably save them for Saturday's dinner.