This is a part of Alex's and my joint "new-year's resolution" (kind of) of trying to eat healthier and stay fitter this summer! Eat more veggies. First thing we tried (besides scarfing down the strawberries right out of the crate - yummy!) was this recipe for a marinated swiss chard salad. You can use whatever veggies you have to add to the salad, so I chose to add one of our cucumbers and a crap ton of radishes! Both from the CSA also.
Tonight, I will be making this green garlic pesto (and maybe with the garlic scapes too, if I want leftovers, but I might also save them for something else) to go on linguine!
I have also been learning a ton from our farm's blog on what these funny things are, what to use them for, and in cruising the internet for more infos. Thanks internet!!
Some cool things I've learned about vegetables (and herbs):
*You should add your herbs the last 20-30 minutes of cooking because they lose their flavor with longer cooking.
*Wrapped in wet paper towel, fresh herbs will last in the refrigerator about a week. (COOL!)
*garlic scapes are the flowering stem of heartier garlic plants. Normally, garlic scapes are removed from the plant to focus all the garlic's energy into bulb growth.
*green garlic is simply immature garlic and looks like a slightly overgrown scallion or green onion. They are pulled by growers when thinning crops.
*both garlic scapes and green garlic have a mild, garlicky flavor, but are much sweeter and vegetablier!
*strawberries, when smaller and less ripe, are really sour and tangy while larger riper strawberries are sweet and juicy. I cant decide which I like more!
*kale is actually a cabbage!
*swiss chard is one of the most nutritious vegetables around and ranks second only to spinach
*swiss chard, kale, and other leafy greens are very bitter fresh, but turn sweet and even buttery tasting when cooked (with heat or with vinegar, like my recipe above)! Yum.
*radishes will stay fresh like-forevs if you cut off the leaves and roots, and put them in a bowl of water in your refrigerator. (I had seen this done at a great aunt's house when I was younger, and just thought it was weird. was she trying to get them to grow? I now understand.)
