Last few CSA's and other cooking adventures

It is definitely winter in our CSA's now with the majority of the box being greens. But as people who have found a true love for swiss chard and kale through our boxes, we are pretty happy with our very green boxes.

Of note new items in the boxes:

Macademia nuts! Not the ones at the store, all salted and roasted, these are totally raw, and delicious! I keep thinking that I will make them into cookies or something... but they always get eaten as a snack first.

Kolrabi- This is the weird thing in the bottom right of the second picture. We only knew what it was because we had been looking at Burpee's seed catalog the day or two before, and had seen a picture of it. Oh my goodness it was so good! I found recipe to roast them in the oven... and I could have eaten three times as much!

Peas- This was new this week, and Blake was quite excited. I like them, but only cooked. So I planned a stir fry for them this week... but wasn't able to make it (grading) and Blake forgot to put them in it! I said he did it on purpose so he could eat them in his lunches.

We are still getting lots of citrus in our boxes (funny to think that during one season we were rationing them), actually our cupboard is pretty full of lemons and limes at the moment, and we keep getting oranges and tangerines too! (Oranges from CSA, tangerines from my parents and a co-worker)

So, we decided to try out the ice cream maker that we were given years ago and make tangerine ice cream! So far we have done the first few steps... but can't freeze it because one portion of the ice cream maker was supposed to be in the freezer for 24 hours first before using... and we just decided to pull it out... so we'll get to taste it after a day or two. Here are pictures of some steps for it:


we mixed half and half with some sugar and the peel, brought it to a boil and then let it sit.


Because I am so awesome at picture taking... here is a step somewhere in the middle of the process... :-)

In other cooking news, I am working on a big goal for the year (besides adoption lol): a cookbook!
There is a website where you can build your own cookbook for a very reasonable price and it looks very professional. It will definitely be an improvement to our current printed papers that just get put haphazard into a binder and then written all over as we change them to our taste.

The hardest part is that I have to be really good about taking pictures of the meals after we make them, so I can add them to the cookbook. Since I had the camera handy anyways, I was struck by the simple beauty of this scene:


all fresh, beautiful ingredients! (This was for a soup) We try really hard to not use anything from a can anymore, so we buy dry beans, and cook them instead of using canned beans, and we buy fresh tomatoes and cut them instead of canned tomatoes. Not only does this make them healthier (because we don't have the added sodium) but we have found that it makes a huge difference in taste too! If you don't believe me... try it! You might just get hooked!

p.s. yes, that is a Ghana book in the background... I am having to appease my desire for haste by reading adoption/Ghana books (also evident in the right side of the page) since I still haven't gotten a return e-mail since I sent one to the person/agency I want to work with. But I plan to give her another week before I write an additional e-mail.