First CSA Box landed!!!

Today I went down to the Castro and picked up my first CSA box. Inside:


It's ok.... not really as much as I'd expected. But doesn't that produce look beautiful!!!

Tonight I'm making a couple of yummy things: one is garlic bread, which I just threw into the oven. I used half a loaf of Trader Joe's cheesy sourdough bread that was about to go bad, brushed some garlic, salt, olive oil and parmesan on the slices, and popped it in the oven wrapped up in tin foil. I found a recipe online instructing me to keep the loaf in the oven for 40 to 50 minutes, but that seems like a lot. I'm going to try 30 and see what happens.

Then, I'm making the recipe provided by Terra Firma for this week's box: Rice Noodles with Cabbage & Tofu. Here's the recipe:

For the dressing, combine the juice and zest of 1 tangelo with 1 T. soy sauce, 2 T. olive oil, and 1 T. minced green garlic (stems and/or leaves).
Cook 2 C. dry rice noodles (“rice sticks”) in boiling water for 2 minutes. Drain and rinse.
Crumble 12 oz. firm tofu, then drizzle with 1 T. soy sauce and 1 t. sesame oil.
Cut a cabbage in half across its “equator”, and then shred one half (or both halves of a small cabbage) as finely as possible.
Toss the ingredients together, then let sit for 1/2 hour. Serve with fresh spinach leaves.

You can also make a stir fry using most of the ingredients:
After marinating the tofu, stir fry it until it gets crispy. Remove the tofu from the wok, then stir-fry the cabbage and noodles for 3 minutes and remove from the wok. Add the dressing ingredients minus the oil to the hot wok, then stir in 1 T. cornstarch mixed with 3 T. water. Stir until it begins to thicken, then return the other ingredients to the wok and stir fry for another 1-2 minutes along with a few handfuls of spinach leaves.

This recipe meant I had to run down the street to the corner store and buy some vermicelli, which I'd never bought before but remember liking in Asian dishes at restaurants. I think I'm going to make the stir-fry version--it's cold, I need something warm and toasty. Speaking of which, I made some toast from the bread I baked yesterday (bread post soon to come). Yum!!!

RESULTS:
I need a bigger pan. Or a wok.


I had nowhere near enough room for all the cabbage, noodles and tofu to fit in the pan at once! Things kept falling out the sides and everything got a lot more cooked than I wanted it to be. Oh well. The sauce turned out pretty well, a little goopy but we added water. Even though the cooking didn't go as well as I'd hoped, the dish actually ended up being really delicious. And the garlic bread turned out well too. Leftovers for lunch!