What we ate and made from our autumnal CSA box

A parsnip in a pear tree: surviving root season

For much of my life, I thought the “Twelve Days of Christmas” lyric was “a parsnip in a pear tree.” I didn’t know what a parsnip was (or a partridge, for that matter), but I sang along anyway.  

This time of year, when the celeriac, rutabagas, turnips, and, yes, parsnips find their way into our mostly seasonal, mostly local kitchen, I become acrimonious. I am not a winter girlie. I don’t like hot chocolate, most stews, or being bundled up. I even resent the first crisp fall day—I know its pleasantness will end swiftly and we’ll be left only with darkness, cold, and root vegetables. 

I try to coax flavor and life into the roots and tubers. Some can be shredded and hidden inside dal or roasted and dressed up on a bed of lemony yogurt. Maple syrup is a reliable trick to bring out the sweetness of a roasted carrot or squash. I won’t ever love roots with the same fervor as I do eggplants, summer squashes, and tomatoes, but I’m hoping that, with practice, I can appreciate them as I would any other gift from my true love. 

I wanted to share a mid-autumnal CSA box in contrast with my summer CSA diary. Meals are easy in the summer—cherry tomatoes and freshly picked herbs can brighten even the quickest of dishes. If winter produce plagues you too, I hope you’ll find some inspiration in this week’s letter. 

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Below you’ll find everything we made and ate from a November 607CSA vegetable and fruit box. 

This week we got both vegetables and fruit. Pictured here are salad turnips, parsnips, potatoes, parsley, chard, spinach, rutabaga, red onions, pears, apples, applesauce, apple cider, and sparkling apple cider. 

Not pictured were a dozen eggs, chicken thighs for Skylar, and a hard tilsit-style cheese flavored with dill from Harpersfield Cheese Company. 

Bolded items in the meals below are from the CSA. 

Tuesday dinner 

Earlier in the afternoon I’d baked a loaf of proofed sourdough, from which I ate a few buttered slices while I put away the CSA box. For table butter, I usually buy Vermont Creamery’s cultured butter with sea salt, as it may allegedly be a bit healthier. I keep it on the counter in my beloved silverplate shell butter dish. 

I adapted a recipe for roasted carrot and red curry soup from Yogurt and Whey by Homa Dashtaki. I make yogurt at home (with milk from the CSA) and am left with a lot of whey (the liquid strained off cultured yogurt). I was happy to use up a whole quart of it in this soup—the heat does kill the healthy probiotic bacteria, but the protein remains. 

I swapped the carrots for chopped, parboiled parsnip, and red for green curry paste. To replace the carrot’s natural sweetness and to help temper the whey’s acidity, I added a few shakes of Panela cane sugar. I also threw in diced farmer’s market sweet peppers, for color. 

I really liked this curry! I will be making more whey-based soups. But I can’t lie, I wished the parsnips had been potatoes.  

Wednesday breakfast 

I don’t know what your family called this dish, but mine called it, quite precisely, “egg in a hole.” We keep an old orange juice lid for a “hole” cutter for this very occasion. I used my sourdough bread, an egg, and drizzled hot sauce over it. 

Wednesday lunch

There was leftover rice in the fridge that I packed with the leftover parsnip curry for lunch at the office. 

I also grabbed a banana from the sad Wednesday breakfast spread in the office kitchen and scarfed down a handful of almonds at my desk. 

Wednesday dinner

After work I went to a hair color appointment uptown. When I got home, I was starving. I made a grilled cheese with sliced pear, dill cheese, honey, and sourdough. I munched on the rest of the sliced pear while I watched the sandwich grilled in the pan. 

Thursday breakfast

I made two scrambled egg tacos with Caramelo tortillas. (I buy a dozen or so bags a few times a year and freeze the extras.) 

Thursday lunch

At work I ordered a Sweetgreen salad for pickup. I always order the same custom salad—chopped romaine with parmesan crisps, cilantro, roasted tofu, cherry tomatoes, tortilla chips, and caesar dressing mixed in. I skip the bread because I have better sourdough at home. 

Thursday dinner

Once a month I host book club (this month we read Emma Cline’s The Guest), but various scheduling conflicts caused me to cancel it at the last minute. Since I had gone to the office and had no energy to cook, I returned to old faithful: another grilled cheese. I used the dill cheese with sauerkraut and spinach.

After two long years, I made it off the Rancho Gordo Bean Club waitlist and have been trying to keep up with the quarterly shipments by making a pound of beans each week. Before bed, I soaked a pound of Rancho Gordo’s Ayocate Morado beans with a few tablespoons of yogurt whey (to break down the phytic acid which can aid with digestion).

Friday breakfast

I decided to make a protein powder smoothie for breakfast with the acai mix from Farm To People. I liked it on balance but would have preferred something less cherry-forward. 

Friday lunch

I thinly sliced tempeh and marinated it in the fridge. On my lunch break, I went to Saraghina Bakery and picked up a coffee for Skylar and a baguette. When I got home, I grilled the tempeh and made a baguette sandwich with the dill cheese, spinach, and thinly sliced red onion. I dressed it with Kewpie mayo and red wine vinegar. 

Friday dinner

While working from the kitchen island, I cooked the soaked beans in water with a head of garlic, bay leaf, dried chili, and a generous glug of olive oil. As usual, I set aside half to refry and froze the other half in their liquid. While I was cooking the beans, Skylar diced and roasted the rutabaga, potatoes, and remaining parsnip. 

I scarfed down two tacos with the beans, roasted vegetables, and pickled red onion before we ran out the door to make it to a showing of Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla.” 

Saturday breakfast

We went to a birthday party at a bar in Williamsburg after the movie and got home quite late. When I finally pulled myself out of bed, I decided to make a potato and chard frittata. I swapped in an onion for the leek and garnished with parsley.  

Saturday lunch

We had a late lunch of tacos with the leftovers. Somehow during this time, we ate the whole jar of applesauce. 

I sliced up the baguette from yesterday into small slivers for oven roasted crostini. I pretty much stopped buying snack crackers because of the plastic waste, and the crostini have been an easy and delicious replacement. For a $5 baguette I get 1.5 litre of “crackers,” a perfect vehicle for hummus, dips, or a sliced cheese snack. I keep them in an airtight container at room temperature for a week or so.  

Saturday dinner

Skylar made me a rice bowl with sesame seeds and chili oil. 

He also made us a late night “snack plate” with almonds, sliced dill cheese, apple, and honey. 

Sunday breakfast

I reheated some of the potato and chard frittata in the oven with a dollop of homemade yogurt. 

Sunday lunch

I met my friend Aimée for a massage at Renew Regal, a massage spot in Chinatown that I’ve been going to for years. 

Afterward we went to Au Cheval, where we shared the Cobb salad (without bacon), crispy fries with an egg and Mornay sauce, and Aperol Spritzes. We loved the Mornay so much that we ordered a second round of fries to scoop it all up.

Sunday dinner

Skylar made taco salads with the beans, grilled tempeh, shredded cheddar, and red onion.  

After dinner, I made sparkling apple cider cocktails. The flavors were there, but we both agreed it was too sweet for our tastes. 

I pulled out a quart of cooked beans from the freezer to thaw overnight in the fridge (I think they were Marcella, also from Rancho Gordo) for a Monday dinner of Italian-esque red sauce and white beans. 

Monday breakfast

I made a protein powder smoothie and added a few frozen pears from a past CSA.

Monday lunch

I had a simple rice bowl with red onion, avocado, fried egg, and sesame seeds. 

Monday dinner

I made a Marcella Hazan-esque red sauce with an onion and a bag of frozen San Marzano tomatoes from the farmer’s market. Freezing them is to extend their shelf life, of course, but I learned from my homesteader YouTube moms that running frozen tomatoes under hot water (just from the faucet, or in a bowl) will make the skins slip right off. 

I saved chopped basil from my summer CSA in frozen olive oil cubes, so I dropped one of those into the sauce near the end. We grilled halloumi and served it over the red sauce and beans. 

While the sauce simmered away, I chopped and salted cabbage for kimchi. I’ve made this Eric Kim kimchi a few times, to great success. I used apple, pear, and carrot, and made it vegan by using doenjang and soy sauce in place of fish sauce. The sauce came together quickly in the blender, and I left it on the counter to ferment for a few days. 

Tuesday breakfast

I made scrambled egg tacos again. 

Tuesday lunch

For lunch I had leftover beans and sauce with a slice of sourdough toast. 

I worked a weird schedule due to election coverage, so in the early afternoon I made an apple cider doughnut loaf cake. I made it once a few years ago, and I had forgotten how flavorful and delicate it is. Be warned that the cider takes much longer to reduce than the recipe indicates. My cake fell in the center a bit, but it tasted lovely regardless. I ended up bringing most of it to work to share. 🍎