The special tonight is...

A lot of people I have talked with are often intimidated with the idea of getting a weekly supply of whatever veggies might be ready to pick. I know that some of them have never learned to cook with what is on hand and many have not worked with such a wide variety of produce. I want to make it easier and even exciting for just those kind of people. For those that are old hands at this sort of thing, maybe you'll find some new ideas to try. I'll be posting what I do with my CSA share fairly often. Sometimes there will be recipes or at least an idea of what I did. Here's to eating all that great local produce!

Tonight's meal featured some of those yukon gold potatoes from this week's share and basil from my herb garden along with sauteed spinach with local garlic from Feral Fruits Farm. The protein for the night was a calamari purchased from my local fishmongers: The Olympia Seafood Company.

We had just a touch of Cascade Fresh Sour Cream (a Seattle company) left in the fridge as well as an abundance of basil from my herb garden and that is what inspired the mashed potatoes. The potatoes were boiled in their soft "new potato" skins and then mashed with a little of their cooking water, the sour cream (maybe 3 tablespoons), sea salt, and garlic powder. They were served with a pat of butter and a generous sprinkling of slivered basil. Yum!

The Spinach was cooked very simply: sauteed up in it's own juices, a little butter, sea salt and the fresh garlic.

The Calamari Salad is a staple for us when ever I have basil growing. It's a very simple recipe from The Trattoria Cookbook. We cut the recipe in half for the two of us, all except the garlic, we are rather fond of garlic! Here's what it looks like the way we prepare it:

1 pound calamari (cleaned, tubes and tentacles)
3 tablespoons olive oil
10 medium size basil leaves torn into bite size bits
juice from half a lemon (to get the most juice from your lemons, roll them on the counter before slicing and squeezing them)
2 good size cloves garlic
sea salt to taste
fresh ground pepper

Bring water to boil, add calamari, cook till al dente (about 1-2 minutes) don't over cook or it can get tough! Drain and cool with cold running water or ice cubes.
Mix the remaining ingredients together in a serving bowl, add the calamari, and mix well. This is best if the calamari gets to marinate for a little while (at least 10-15 minutes or while you prepare the rest of your meal)

All together this meal took maybe 30 minutes to prepare from start to finish.