Green Options

One of my favorite parts of the week is picking up my Growing Communities veg bag from Hackney City Farm. As I’ve written before, a veg bag is the British equivalent of a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box, filled with organic and mostly locally grown produce. Following a veggie burger as well as carrot potato pancakes, I’m doing more fun kitchen experiments figuring out how to use all the random vegetables that come my way.  It’s the veg bag game! Can’t beat anything that combines games and food: two of my favorite things on the planet besides panda babies.

Growing communities is nice enough to include a recipe in the bags each week, which I’ve found to be a great starting point for figuring out what to make. It’s amazing how many dishes can be made based on what can often be found in your average kitchen - today I debated a pasta primavera and a stir-fried eggplant with brown rice - but decided to riff off the Courgette and Cheese soup recipe from the bag.  The fun part of the game is playing with ingredients depending on what I’ve got lying around and seeing what deliciousness results. I didn’t have any cheese, but I did have cherry tomatoes and some verging-on-stale whole wheat bread so I tossed them both in for a texture similar to ribollita (a Tuscan soup made with stale bread).  The bread makes it hearty, but it’s got the lightness of a vegetarian as well as dairy-free soup. Depending on what you’ve got lying around, you can make any adjustments as well. Enjoy!

Lovin’ Fresh is a series of recipes
designed to showcase produce gathered
from local farms or grown in my own garden.

I tip my hat to the plate in the picture below - without it I likely wouldn’t have made cake with sweet little Purple Haze and Kinko carrots, making the best carrot cake ever thanks to the intense natural flavors of the farm fresh carrots grated right before I tossed them in the batter. I give the plate credit because looking at it sitting empty on my counter made me think of cake. With young carrots being one of the early birds to show up in the farmers market in spring, carrot cake makes a perfect seasonal dessert that a clever eater can justify as getting his or her daily dose of vitamin C.

Carrot cake’s nothing new or exciting for me, but I’ve usually “cheated” in the past by using the bagged shredded carrots from the supermarket since I’m a little lazy and usually pressed for time. I’ll not make that mistake again. If you haven’t tried getting local carrots to put in your cake, you’d be well advised to do so. The other key, of course, is the freshness of your spices. People, if you’re aren’t grating your own nutmeg by now, get yourself a microplane and see what you’re missing!

Farm Fresh is a series of recipes
designed to showcase produce gathered
from local farms or grown in my own garden.

It’s only April but I’m already thinking about breaking out my grill. My grill is, well, not something to really write home about, or, for that matter, to write a blog post about. I got it for about five bucks from some big box store a few years ago. But, when there are fresh young vegetables to be cooked up, it’s my weapon of choice. Nothing beats grilled asparagus, zucchini, eggplant, and peppers. Nothing, that is, except for Grilled Baby Bok Choy.