First Weekend Dinners With The CSA

So I picked up my first CSA veggies from Red Wagon Organic Farm yesterday, and are they ever spectacular. I assumed one large grocery bag would be enough to hold them, but so glad I brought two of the large Natural Grocer size, as my delivery filled both. This week's offerings were much as outlined in my earlier post, but with a couple of surprises to spice it up; instead of a choice of lettuce or arugula (I was planning for the arugula), that one was limited to a beautiful big bag of spring lettuces, while there turned out to be a choice on the kale, as Tuscan was introduced as an option (I stuck with the original Russian red kale).

Now what to do with all those glorious veggies. This post will necessarily be quick, both because of lack of time and especially from the new world of not knowing yet just how I'll handle these veggies. General outline goes like this. For tonight, I'm thinking my idea of salmon with sorrel sauce will hold, as I got to the CSA drop off early enough to catch the sorrel option, and I hope I'll be able to get Copper River salmon later today at Safeway for just $12.99 a pound. The salmon should go on the grill, but if we get dark skies and winds like yesterday, the fish could just go on the grill pan indoors at that Safeway lure-in price. Wouldn't do that with Copper River from Whole Foods if that's still selling at $24.99 a pound. Sorrel sauce recipes seem relentlessly rich with cream and/or butter, which is probably why salmon with sorrel is always so darned good in France. I'm looking at the sorrel sauce recipe from Saveur as my likely go-to, knowing the only way I might lighten it without destroying it would be to use half and half instead of full cream. To compensate, we can have lots of Red Wagon veggies, including fresh thinly sliced raw turnips with hummus to start, and I need to decide whether the side veggie will be the Russian red kale or more likely the lovely turnip greens sauteed in olive oil with a bit of red pepper.

Okay, just writing that took basically all the time I have, so an abbreviation here. I'm thinking grill again for tomorrow, and the Longmont Lucky's Market has an excellent "flattened" marinated chicken for $2.99 a pound this week (so sorry no time to check their Boulder price). We last had that when the Longmont Lucky's first opened and it was excellent, and cleaving a chicken in half like that for the grill is in my mind better left to experts with better knife skills than ours. More of those fresh thinly sliced turnips with hummus will start, and the "grilling onions" from Red Wagon that look like humongous scallions will also go on the grill.

Sunday? I just don't know and haven't had time. The cod and sea scallop specials at Sprouts remind me of a chowder I've already made recently, so I need a bit of time to think out the options. Wish me luck with working with the remainder of this week's Red Wagon CSA bounty. New world here.