part II: Bok choy, lettuce, Chinese cabbage, mizuna, rhubarb, garlic chives and sage

Last night I did manage to wash the lettuce, which turned out to be not so dirty after all, especially once I hacked off the bottom of the head. This was all so we could tuck some into pitas with felafel and lemon-tahini sauce (From Moosewood, but with the addition of some garlic chives). There's plenty of lettuce left still, and, luckily, some sauce, so I see a salad dressed with it in our future.

Someone forwarded the NYT rhubarb recipes to the CSA dropoff coordinator, who sent the link around to everyone. So far, good reviews for both the compote and the cobbler have come back, so my rhubarb is still in the fridge waiting for me to make up my mind. Tomorrow night will be dessert night, one way or the other.

With the positive response for those recipes, I decided to send in the one I knew for sure I'd be using this week myself: Chinese Cabbage Salad with ramen noodles. I learned it last year from a member of another CSA. It's good with either Chinese cabbage or bok choy, so we were very well supplied with main ingredients this week. I had only one scallion on hand -- the rest of the bunch had gone into my daughter's last batch of guacamole -- so I supplemented with a bunch of garlic chives. And also remembered the dressing is 1)too much and 2)too sweet. So I saved some dressing for another day -- plenty more lettuce and bok choy to come, I'm sure! -- and marked up the recipe so I'll remember to cut the sugar next time. Checking my email after dinner, I was inordinately pleased to see that another CSA member sending in a recipe noted that she'd made the cabbage salad and liked it! (She did recommend reducing the amount of sugar, so all other members are forewarned now, though I failed to do it myself.)

That fellow-CSA member was recommending a recipe for garlic scape pesto since we have scapes coming our way this week, according to the Sunday night email list. Garlic scapes stumped me last year when they arrived via CSA (a different one). I ended up throwing some in stir fry, but their flavor was rather drowned out that way and some I ended up -- egads! -- throwing out. So I am happy to be prepared this time around.