In last week’s CSA box, we got: one bunch spinach, one bunch chard, one head romaine lettuce, one head cauliflower, one bag potatoes, one cabbage, one bunch carrots, one bunch green onions, two kohlrabi, three onions, three beets, one head broccoli, one butternut squash, and two heads garlic. We also received a bunch of parsley, but we left that in the trade box because I’m tired of coming up with ways to eat parsley.
Apparently last week’s theme was BIG. Most things that we got were on the large side. Particularly those kohlrabi—they’re enormous! They’re taking up a lot of room in my fridge right now because I haven’t cooked them yet.
The notable exception to the large trend was the butternut squash. Look how tiny and cute it is! I haven’t cooked it yet, but I will be curious to see how much flesh is actually on the inside. Some of those little squashes are mostly seeds with little actual squash flesh.
Amusingly, the butternut was labeled incorrectly:
Cute butternut squash
I think labeling squash is a great idea, since I know winter squash can be intimidating if you’ve never cooked it before. But how terribly confusing would it be if you were left thinking your butternut was actually a Yugoslavian finger squash?!
Jesse is still making his way through all of the potatoes we’ve been getting. Last weekend he finally got around to trying this hash brown recipe. The verdict? Really, really tasty. Now he’s trying to figure out if he can get the leftovers to taste just as good, as it’s so nice to be able to just make a giant batch and then enjoy it for a few days.
I used this week’s (large and heavy!) cabbage, plus the cabbage from last week, to make my first batch of sauerkraut in quite a while. Altogether it was about six pounds of cabbage, which fit into my four liter Pickl-It jar.
Making sauerkraut
Apparently I filled it slightly too full with brine, because when it started to get active on day three it started spurting brine out of the airlock until I figured out what I was supposed to do to make it stop. For a while there I thought we had some sort of a leak in the kitchen, as it was making such a funny noise whenever the brine came out! In any case, though, it’s a good sign, as it means there’s a lot of fermenting going on!
Speaking of fermenting, I wonder if I should try fermenting some of our green onions. I keep forgetting to cook them so they are just piling up in the fridge. Or maybe I will sauté some of them with the greens that I’m sure will be coming next week? I’ve already cooked up all of this week’s spinach as well as most of the chard, but I’m sure more will be coming next time we pick up our share.
I have really been enjoying the carrots the last few weeks. We never got many carrots in previous CSA years so it is fun to get so many this season. They seem so fresh and tasty. This week I put some in chicken soup and roasted the rest with beets, kohlrabi and onions.
Our Preserving Share of Onions
Last week we also received our last preserving share item: fifty pounds of onions. Here they are:
Fifty pounds of onions
Jesse and I had to carry the bag up the stairs to our apartment together. Normally I move the preserving share boxes outside briefly to take a picture, but there was no moving this once we got it inside so you get to see it in its new home in the hallway. 
I’m not totally sure what our plans for the onions are yet. Last year we just used them as is until about mid-December, when we decided that we needed to preserve the rest of them because they might go bad while we were out of town for three-ish weeks over Christmas. Jesse chopped all of the remaining onions and we put them in the freezer in freezer bags. That worked quite well; it really wasn’t any more work than chopping onions for individual meals, and it was great having a convenient store of pre-chopped onions for a while. The only drawback was that the apartment got VERY oniony for a while, as I’m sure you’d expect whenever you’re chopping fifteen plus onions at a time. Luckily I was armed with my onion goggles, but I don’t think Jesse was all that comfortable for a while.
I think this year we’ll do some freezing, as well as maybe some dehydrating. I’ll have to read about whether dehydrating produces overwhelming onion fumes, however, as I don’t really fancy hanging out with all that onion-ness for any period of time. Our dehydrator is in another room, but I could still see the fumes getting into the rest of the apartment…
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What local foods are you eating/preserving these days?
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Meghan, have you considered caramelizing any of the onions prior to freezing them? I just did a crock pot full the other day, and it did reduce in size considerably (not to mention taste divine!) You can see a pic of my onions at the end of my Butternut Squash & Caramelized onion enchilada post here http://www.farmfreshfeasts.com/2012/10/butternut-squash-and-caramelized-onion.html
I got the tutorial on how to caramelize onions in a crock pot here http://www.shockinglydelicious.com/crock-pot-caramelized-onions-slow-and-steady-does-the-trick/
BTW, thanks for the omelet post-I’ve made them for breakfast twice since I read that. Spinach/mushroom/feta my current fav!
kirsten@FarmFreshFeasts recently posted..Butternut Squash and Caramelized Onion Enchilada Casserole
Thanks for sharing this, Kirsten! Caramelizing the onions before freezing is a great idea. And doing it in the crock pot sounds so easy! I will definitely have to give it a try.
Glad you’re enjoying the omelet!
I was going to suggest caramalizing them as well. A 4 quart crock pot full of onions made about 1 cup of caramalized onions.
There are also instructions online about how to hang onions in pantyhose to keep them all winter. I might be buying a 50 pound bag myself, and doing that now that I have a cool room!
I think I have seen that pantyhose thing before. Very clever. Now I wish even more that I had someplace cool to store that kind of stuff…but alas our apartment did not come with a basement or garage!
I bet a closet with the door shut would be cool enough to keep onions for several months.
Ooh, interesting idea! I will look into that.
Especially if you’re out of town and the heat is off!
The onions will leave a huge onion smell in your entire apartment if you dehydrate them. I do onions, peppers, and anything else with a strong smell outside, either on the porch or in the garage. If you have a balcony that might work, although your neighbors might not appreciate that.
Annie, thanks so much for sharing this. Maybe I’ll skip dehydrating. We do have a balcony, but I don’t know if I feel comfortable using the dehydrator on it.
I’m thinking caramelized onion jam for eating with steaks, burgers and/or whatever else you can imagine!
Oooh…I bet my husband would love that. He’s obsessed with onions. Thanks for the idea.
I also save all my “ends” of onions and freeze them for when I’m making bone broth–if you’ve the room in your freezer, it would be less work to quarter them than to fully chop everything, and would knock out a few more for you…