In Season Cooking

Challenges are good in life. They help you grow, change, blahhh, blahhh, blahhh. I'm sure you've head that line before.

The last four weeks of receiving shares from my local CSA have been a challenge for me. Most of the foods in my weekly share have been complete strangers to me. Like Google the names to match the vegetable strangers. Still, the guilt from possibly wasting these local, organically grown veggies has driven me to step-up my cooking.

Here are a couple of the recipes from Wild Carrot Farm that the entire family has loved.

General Tao’s Stir Fry with Bok Choi

1 pound extra-firm tofu
¾ c. cornstarch
1-2 T peanut oil (I used olive oil and substituted peanut butter)
1 T extra virgin olive oil
3 chopped green onions
1 T minced ginger
2 T minced garlic
2.3 c. chicken or vegetable stock
2 T soy sauce
4 T sugar
Crushed red pepper flakes to taste
1 T white vinegar
1 head bok choi (thinly chopped)

Press water out of tofu and cut into 1” cubes. Place tofu in a mixing bowl with cornstarch and toss to coat tofu completely. Watch out that the cornstarch doesn’t clump at the bottom of the bowl. Heat peanut oil in pan and fry tofu until golden. Drain tofu and set aside.

Heat olive oil in pan on medium heat. Add ginger and garlic and sauté until garlic begins to turn golden. About 1 minute. Be careful not to burn garlic. Add vegetable stock, soy sauce, sugar, red pepper flakes and vinegar. Add green onions, bok choi and tofu and cook about 4 minute.

Serve immediately over rice. Super yummy!!


Garlic Scapes Pesto

1/8 pound garlic scapes
¼ c. olive oil
½ cup grated parmesan cheese

Chop scapes into ¼” sections. Blend scapes with olive oil (a food processor works best…trust me…I had a blender disaster). Remove from food processor and add parmesan cheese.

Use on bread, pasta, potatoes or as a dip.