Mindless Sweet Potato Hash (introducing the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve)

It's been several weeks since my last CSA delivery.  The spinach has been eaten mostly in pizzas, the cabbage went into breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and the carrots and celery jumped into both hummus and soup (not at the same time, they divided into teams and the cool kids went to the hummus and the rest went for the soup).  The eggs are so long gone that I've had to buy eggs several times!

However, I still have some unprocessed CSA produce to cook with.  On CSA days, once I get home from pick up, I perform "vegetable triage".  What vegetables are most perishable?  They go in the fridge, right in front, so I can cook with them first.  What else is perishable?  In the crisper for a few days.  Something that I know I won't cook in the next week (like the week I got turnips with greens, kale, mustard greens, and cabbage?  We eat greens, but come on!) gets put up in the freezer for later cooking. [I chopped the turnip greens, the kale, and the mustard greens together, then blanched them, spun them dry, and packed them into quart size freezer bags.]  That leaves the longer-storing produce.

Ready to go in the oven!

All Fall, unless I was roasting it for this or that, I have been piling up the pumpkins, balancing the butternuts, stacking the sweet potatoes, and arranging the acorns in the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve.  It's in a cold corner of my breakfast nook (55 degrees Fahrenheit on a sunny January afternoon!) and though it's chilly to sit here and write about it, it's a pretty good spot for semi-long term storage.  Cool, definitely yes.  Dark, not so much, but there's no sunbeams slanting in either.

Once I've used all the more perishable produce from my farm share, I turn to the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve for inspiration.  Another source of inspiration is from the leftovers I am blessed with.  During the holidays we had a nice time with the relatives, and I came home with leftover pork steak.  This is a new cut of meat to me, and since we rarely eat a steak, quite a treat to have some leftover delicious cooked pork steak.  I literally lay awake planning a pizza using the pork (stay tuned!) but I had a lot to work with, so I decided to try my hand at making hash.

I consulted my Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook for advice, and loosely adapted their Corned Beef Hash to what you see here.  The best part was when I read the oven baking directions.  How simple is that?  A bit of cooking on the stove, then chuck the whole mess in the oven (ok, BHG said to transfer to a casserole, but I skipped that bit by starting with an oven safe cast iron skillet).

This tasted great, used up both leftover cooked meat as well as some items from the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve, and was mindless to make.  If you've got leftovers (of the meat or winter squash variety) consider this dish.

Do you perform vegetable triage?
Do you like getting leftovers from relatives?

Butternut Squash Waffles

Putting up packages of fruits and vegetables when they are ripe from the farm share means that I can pull them out in the middle of winter and feed my family from the farm share all year 'round.

Like the other morning.

I had buttermilk and was in a waffle mood.

A long time ago, while watching the Food Network, I'd written down Alton Brown's waffle recipe.  I love his Wet Team and Dry Team talk.  When I got to the "just walk away--walk away" part of the recipe (let the batter rest) I decided to take him literally.

We took the dog for a walk!

Not-So-Simple Cheese Pizza (Fresh Tomato Pesto Sauce on Spinach Crust) Pizza Night!

"It's very greeeeeeeeeen."

So says my daughter when she spied this pizza coming out of the oven.  If the people you feed don't like green in general, try this pizza.  It's the first way I got my kids to eat spinach, and remains a tasty option when I get spinach in the farm share.  Especially when it's cold and my body craves warm things, not cold green smoothies.  Seasonal eating at its best.

This pizza uses the spinach crust from my Deployment Pizza, adds a (put up, from my freezer) fresh tomato pesto from Heather at In Her Chucks, and tops it off with a creamy Philly-Italian shred blend.  Tonight's tomato pesto sauce uses red farm share tomatoes, arugula pesto, and cashews.  It's delicious--as are all the permutations of fresh tomatoes, green herbs, and salted nuts that I've tried so far.  I cannot wait until summer when each week I plan to whip up a new fresh tomato pesto for the pizza.  For now, however, I'm delighted I discovered Heather's recipe in time to put up several batches of sauce for pizza.