Mustard Greens Kheema (Ground Beef and Mustard Greens Curry)

Ground beef and a whole bunch of mustard greens magically transformed into an Indian-spiced main dish the whole family enjoyed.

I've been calling myself a seasonal eater for many years now, since I embraced the concept of eating locally from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. I've recently realized that's not entirely true. A more accurate label would be I am a weather-dependent eater.

While I do eat locally [as in, you won't find fresh tomatoes or fresh berries in my house unless they came from the garden, the farm share or the farmer's market because I like food that tastes good] I don't care what season we're supposed to be in. What matters more is what it feels like when I step outside with the dogs each day. Menu plans get tossed out the window if the weather is not as expected.

Let's take the other day, the first of June, as a prime example. According to the guy on public radio it's the 37th Week of Middle Spring or something and I planned to use up the rest of my son's birthday dinner--steak, potatoes and Bernaise sauce--in an omelette with a side salad from the farm share. Sounds like a lovely Spring meal, no? Except June dawned cold and rainy, not omelette and salad weather. We turned the steak into beef stroganoff instead. I am a weather-dependent eater.

This recipe works for a wide climate range which makes sense because we eat Indian food year round. Last Fall I asked my friend Laura, author of The Spiced Life, for a recipe to use both ground beef [from the cow in the freezer] and mustard greens from the farm share. She sent me to her Kheema with Springtime Greens. My spice cabinet is not as extensive as Laura's and I wanted to just throw everything in the skillet, so I had to modify.

It looks like a giant skillet of mustard greens--but cover and wait!

Last week I posted an easy vegetarian recipe for using your farm share greens--Artichoke & Arugula Pesto Burrata Pasta. A year or so ago I posted an even easier vegetarian recipe--Squash, Mustard Greens and Chick Pea Masala.  I'm ready to share a more involved recipe. While it does have the extensive spice list of Indian food at home, it's also a one pot meal (ok, rice cooker = second pot). My kids liked both the near uniform texture of the meat + greens as well as the familiar flavors of their favorite Indian foods. I liked getting rid of an entire bag of mustard greens in one swoop.

Do you see how much this cooks down? Shown before adding yogurt.

For more recipes using Mustard Greens, please see my Mustard Greens Recipe Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. For more recipes using ground beef, please check out my round up of 106 Food Blogger Recipes Using Ground Beef. I've got a Greens board on Pinterest where I'm pinning interesting recipes I find around the web, and I also share some on my FB page.

Fresh Cherry Muffins--with Roasted Beets

Roasted beets and fresh cherries are baked in a tender--and shockingly pink--muffin.

Over the weekend I realized the cherry trees in my neck of the world are ready for harvest. My first clue was walking the dogs along a sidewalk covered with what looked like  . . . well, cherries like I get at the store. I could not pause to pick any fruit up like I did when encountering plums all over the ground because when you're holding leashes to a 16 pound, a 42 pound, and a 66 pound dog your hands are already full.

Yesterday I saw a dad holding his son steady on a ladder while the kid picked cherries from their tree.[At least I assumed it was theirs. Who am I to comment on foraged fruit?] The sight reminded me that I'd been sitting on a fresh cherry recipe for nearly a year. Since I like to share muffin recipes on Mondays [and I've been spending time updating my Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient as well as adding a grilling section to my drop down menu recipe index, not plotting out the month's worth of posts] I figure today is as good a time as any.

Grab a cup of tea with these muffins--even though they have beets in them, they are delicate enough thanks to the yogurt. My kids ate them warm for breakfast and room temp for an after school snack with peanut butter and/or Nutella. Any method to get beets from the farm share into the family is a good method in my book.

For more recipes using beets, please see my Beet Recipes Collection. For more recipes using cherries, many of them dried, please see my Cherry Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. I've got a Fruit board on Pinterest where I gather interesting recipes, and of course I'm sharing other bloggers' successes and my epic failures over on my FB page.

Grilled Bok Choy (A story of a picky eater reformed by the farm share)

I'm throwing the farm share on the grill this summer, starting with Bok Choy. This easy and versatile side dish of tender stems and smoky crispy leaves is great with fish or chicken.

In honor of my formerly picky eater's 17th birthday, I thought I'd share a story about picky kids and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm shares. 

Ten years ago we set off on our first CSA adventure filled with loads of idealism (farmers! local food!) and a smattering of technical skills. Our kids really didn't have a say in the decision, but being resilient military kids they were used to going with the flow, living in a variety of settings and being offered a variety of foods. 

The kids were not big on a lot of vegetables, however. Sure, my daughter would eat raw broccoli stems for a snack and my son (a carb and cheese lover) would eat the occasional baby carrot under duress, but mostly they'd eat corn or potatoes. [One glaring exception was Yakisoba.] When a box full of vegetables comes into the house, and then another and another and another every week, though, you have to figure something out or you'll end up wasting food.

I hate wasting food. It's a waste of my money and our farmers' time. If the food came to us all packaged it would be an even bigger environmental waste, but in this case my compost bin doesn't complain.

After the massively steep learning curve of the first year farm share I picked up a few tricks [and shared some of them in a post written during the slow winter months]:

• Make familiar foods with additional vegetables added.
• Perform Vegetable Triage to identify and use what is most perishable first.
• Think outside the salad bowl.

Every season some new-to-me vegetable will throw me for a loop, but eventually I find a way [or fake one, our motto Peary high] to love it. Or at least tolerate it. I've had plenty of failures, some shown on my FB page, but the one that is family legend is Grilled Radicchio. I tried some recipe years ago and we hated it. [Like, straight into the compost bin don't even pretend to eat it for the kids'  sake hated it.] The only Good Thing about grilled radicchio became the story.

When you take your kids to the pediatrician they'll get asked "what fruits and vegetables won't you eat?" I'm sure it's a roundabout way to gauge a child's nutritional status. My kids will always answer without hesitation "Grilled Radicchio!". This usually shuts down that line of questioning. I can only assume it's because a kid who has an opinion on grilled radicchio has probably been exposed to more than just baby carrots, corn, and potatoes.

When I picked up the first farm share the other day I was delighted to see strawberries, spinach and salad mix and unsurprised to see additional greens. It's Spring, after all. I decided to grill some bok choy partly because I had the grill out for tilapia and salad turnips and partly to try and change our family's perception of grilled leaves. I loved how the edges of the leaves got all crispy like kale chips, and was pleased at how tender the stems became so quickly. I kept the seasoning simple--a splash of soy sauce--because we ate it with fish and rice, but I think you could go in a variety of directions. Maybe some lemon pepper seasoning, or hot sauce, or a balsamic vinegar reduction.

For more recipes using bok choy, please see my Bok Choy Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. For other ideas using greens, please see my Greens board on Pinterest.