Potato, cauliflower, and leek soup with swiss chard

After the first CSA delivery, we tried to get creative and try some new things. A long time ago, my mom had made a really good potato and leek soup with lamb. This is my vegetable based version using lots of our vegetables. I need to make this a second time and attempt to formalize the process, as I initially starting cooking this as a side dish for tamales, but unfortunately, the tamale place closed a few minutes before Nicole stopped by.

Rough outline: I sauteed leeks, onions, a few pieces of cauliflower, and finely diced potatoes in olive oil and garlic until the potatoes were cooked and crispy on the outside. At the same time I cooked cauliflower in vegetable stock until the cauliflower was tender. I added the swiss chard to the potatoes, leeks, and onions, and cooked until wilted. Using the stick blender, I pureed the cauliflower and stock and added this to the potatoes, leeks, onions, and chard. I added a pad of butter, a small amount of milk, and parmesan cheese to the mixture and it was all done.

It came out good and was quite creamy despite the very minimal amount of fat and dairy.

From YummyFood

Vegetable Lo Mein

We had purchased a head of cabbage for fish tacos and had a lot leftover. We were planning on making a stir fry, when Nicole randomly came across this recipe for cabbage lo mein. We made it twice in the last two weeks with various vegetables (including baby bok choy from our CSA delivery). Of course we added additional vegetables (carrots, cauliflower, leeks, celery), but followed the recipe pretty close. The main change was in the sauce; rather than chicken stock we used vegetable broth I made from various vegetables (carrots, cabbage, leeks, celery), a bouillon cube, ginger, dash of soy sauce and oyster sauce.

The first time we made it, we took some of the vegetable stock, added some chicken and cilantro wontons from Trader Joe's (although I need to make some wontons from scratch soon), and some sliced cabbage and sprouts. Both times, we made crispy tofu along with it...little tofu cubes tossed in cornstarch and fried until crispy.

From YummyFood

From YummyFood

From YummyFood

From YummyFood

Second CSA Delivery

Today we got our second CSA delivery. We schedule it for once every 4 weeks, which seems to work well for us thus far...we still have half a leek and a squash from our previous shipment. This week we got:

• two bunches of green chard
• a bunch of kale
• a bunch of collard greens
• a head of romaine lettuce
• a big bag of baby bok choy
• two large leeks
• two avocados
• two oranges
• two lemons
• one grapefruit
• one acorn squash

From YummyFood