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Colorado is not known for having the longest of growing seasons. When I receive my food magazines, they’re always touting the opening of farmers markets and the loveliness of asparagus when snow is still on the ground in my backyard. This year is especially onerous because weather has set the farmers a few weeks behind, about two weeks according to most.
Not that I’m complaining! Our CSA is rolling and we picked up our third week of produce yesterday.
However, there is still a minor problem: I love creating entire meals around our wonderful produce, but in the Spring — when you might get a side salad worth of greens and three, three-inch long squash — the flow is more of a trickle than a rush. How do you make good use of the small amounts of nonetheless excellent produce?
I’ll share a few of my easy ideas (though feel free to add your two cents in comments below).
No. 1: Throw it in your pasta.
This is a a well-known strategy at Casa Local Dish, which I spoke about before in regards to chard.. You don’t need a large amount to freshen up your normal spaghetti and it doesn’t take a lot more work, but adding produce to your pasta adds a tasty and healthy filler. You’ll use less carbtastic noodles because the veggies add volume, and the everyday meal will always be different and new. Other options: sauteed spinach, green garlic or garlic scapes, any squash, eggplant or carrots (yes, carrots, it’s good!).
The end result last night was bell pepper, squash and rosemary spaghetti with seasoned ground turkey. I don’t think you really need a recipe for this strategy, but if I do ever stumble on a particularly tasty version, I’ll let you know.
No. 2: Add a tasty protein (meat-eaters version).
I often have enough vegetables for a side dish, random seasonal vegetables that range from mustard greens to salad greens to beets, carrots and kohlrabi. They can be intimidating to cook. However, if you have an arsenal of tried-and-true, main-dish proteins, it’s easy to simply prepare whatever veggies you have as side dishes and still have a fresh, healthy meal — especially if you use fresh, healthy meat! Chicken, pork chops, steak: Plan your week around a few good main dishes, and you can roll with the punches of whatever else turns up seasonal that week.
Above is one of our new favorites, oven-baked chicken with honey mustard. The panko bread crumb crust is fantastic, crispy and tasty as most restaurant chicken fingers, but un-fried and healthier. I had only enough salad for a side, but I made extra homey mustard sauce for dressing and added some oven potatoes. (We wound up using the dressing on the potatoes, too. We love that stuff the way some people love ranch dressing. No HFCS in this sauce, though!)
We can’t recommend this chicken recipe, linked below, enough. Try it this week!
I’m still recovering from the huge party we threw this holiday weekend. I promise I will add some of the recipes served to the database and let you know when they’re available. We were too busy to take ANY photos, though! Sad, but I really had too much fun to care.
