Summer CSA Week 9

It is the second to last week of the summer CSA. I’m splitting the box this week with friends who’ve been watering our garden for us while we were on vacation. In my half I ended up with

  • acorn squash
  • micro greens
  • zucchini
  • purple hull peas
  • cucumbers
  • eggplant
  • jalapenos

I’ve never dealt with purple hull peas before. They need to be shelled like regular peas and that took some time. Now I have a plastic container full of them that I’m trying to figure out what exactly to make using them. Serve as a side dish? A cold salad? Some kind of dip? Put them in pasta?

I’ve got a terrific amount of eggplant as well. I know EXACTLY what I’m going to do with this. Baba ganoush. I’ve been waiting patiently all summer to have enough eggplant to make this Mediterranean dish. Now I have three medium sized ones that should do super nicely.

I also have two acorn and two butternut squash from over the course of the last 3 weeks. It is really too warm to make mushroom squash soup. I have lots of quick breads in my freezer – pear, berry almond. So I don’t want to use it for that. My spouse is not a fan of it as a veggie. So I’ve got to get inventive.

Usually when I get inventive with vegetables it means desserts with veggies. One idea I have is to make fake pumpkin pie. My spouse LOVES pumpkin pie and I think the acorn squash would make a good substitute for the pumpkin. Another option is cookies. I found a recipe that looks pretty good on dragonfly in the kitchen. A third possibility is butternut squash and chocolate brownies which a found a recipe for on Food and Wine’s website.

As always I’ll report back on my adventures over the course of the week!