CSA Veggies Galore

So I am working from home today because I was in a minor accident on the highway that has left me really shaken up (I’ve never been in an accident before!), but physically OK.  Santana is trying to comfort me by climbing into my face every few minutes while I try to answer emails and conduct phone appointments from home.  She’s adorable and really knows just when to be sweet at the point when I need it the most.  Last night (after a morning of vomiting up her breakfast because she ate too fast), I fed her dinner by hand, piece by piece.  She got to practice her tricks (sit, down, shake) and we worked on “leave it”…she was NOT amused.  After we got done she searched around for a bowl full of food, and then she stood over by her bowls and glared at me.  To celebrate her cuteness, a couple pictures:

So, that was more than a couple…but she’s too sweet and adorable and I couldn’t choose! The first one is the day after we got her I think…she was SO tiny! 

To further take my mind off of this morning, here are a couple recipes, inspired by the return of our CSA box last week.

Crockpot Leek and Potato Soup

• 1 large leek, washed and chopped
• 1 lb red potatoes, peeled and chopped
• Minced Garlic
• Dry Thyme
• Chicken Broth
• Cream and shredded cheese to taste

1. Sauté leek and garlic in a bit of olive oil to get it nice and soft and translucent, with little bits of caramelization starting to form.
2. Add to Crockpot with potatoes, thyme and chicken broth to cover.
3. Cook on low for the day (I’d guess at least 4 hours, depending on the size of your potatoes…ours cooked until about 7:30pm, when I got home)
4. Puree or mash to your desired consistency. I left a little bit of potato chunkiness, but pureed it with my stick blender quite a bit.
5. Add a bit of cream to smooth it out and shredded cheese (we used cheddar) depending on your taste.  The cream and cheese could most definitely be left out.

Easy! These heaping bowls of soup were our whole dinner this night, and it was a perfect soup for a rainy and cold evening on the couch. (Again, what is going on with me and the fuzzy pictures lately??)

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We also had some HUGE stalks of asparagus in our box this past week.  Some of them were almost an inch wide at the bottom!  I chopped them up and made them into a quiche!  The recipe I started from had completely different fillings, but quiche is one of those things that you can turn into whatever you want, which is why I love it so much!

Bacon and Asparagus Quiche

• 2 batches of pie crust of your choosing (homemade is obviously best, but Pillsbury works in a pinch)
• 8 eggs, beaten
• 2 1/2 cups half-and-half, cream or milk
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tsp cayenne
• 1 large bunch of monster asparagus, washed and chopped into small pieces
• 5 thick slices of bacon, cut into bite-size pieces
• 2 cups shredded cheese (we used an Italian blend we had in the fridge)

1. Cook bacon pieces over medium heat until they are rendered and crispy.  Drain and set aside.  Sauté the asparagus for just a few minutes in  tiny bit of the reserved bacon drippings (um, YUM) to get them just slightly cooked.  Set aside, with the bacon.
2. Line pie plate with the rolled-out crust.  This recipe has enough for two whole pie plates.  I filled one regular-sized dish and then cut the rest up and made mini-quiche in a muffin tin.
3. Line the pastry with two sheets of foil and bake at 450 for 5-10 minutes.  Remove foil and bake an additional 3-8 minutes, until the crust is a little dry.  The mini-quiche will get brown and dry much faster than the large, so keep your eye on them.
4. Lower the oven temp to 325 degrees. 
5. Mix eggs, dairy and seasoning in a large bowl.
6. In the bottom of the crust(s), evenly distribute bacon, asparagus and cheese.
7. Pour egg mixture into crust.  Here’s a tip….pay attention!  I had a few mini-quiche that didn’t want to come out of the muffin tin because some egg had leaked outside of the crust.  Whoops!
8. Bake until you can put a sharp knife into the center and it comes out clean.  The small ones took about 15-20 minutes.  The large quiche will take 40-45 minutes. 
9. Let rest before digging in.

Since I had a HUGE amount of quiche, we froze a few of the minis and saved the large quiche for weekend lunch and weekday breakfast over the next few days.  We served a couple mini-quiche like this:

On the side:

• CSA broccoli steamed with garlic and soy sauce
• Thin spaghetti with an onion, white wine, slightly-creamy sauce and tossed with fresh tomatoes and half a bunch of spinach, chopped small. 

A really satisfying dinner with lots of veggies! Plus, we had a handful of broccoli and about 1 cup of the pasta left which made a really great lunch at work! Thanks to local and organic farmers! YUM! 

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 11:47 am and is filed under Leftovers, Life, Matthew, Puppy, Seattle, Work, Yum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.