Belated Maple Creek Farm Week 6 – Guest Post

Kevin, a librarian friend of mine who loves his job more than precious words can say, shares a dual CSA share with my husband & I.  He splits his share with another librarian friend.  Following? 2 boxes, 4 adults (2 of which are librarians).  Anyhoo – Kevin got an entire box to himself the week we were on vacation – this is his story.

So, why am I here? Why did I crawl out of my corner of the Internet and start throwing up words on this food blog? Why am I torturing you with my utter lack of poetics? This is what’s known as the James Stockdale introduction.

Basically Amberto said, if you want more foodz, you need to put words on this here blog o’ mine. It was a very convincing argument, and appealed to my desire to see more foodz in my CSA box.

See, back when this whole CSA thingamajobber got started, we all decided to throw in on a family share and split it 3 ways. Our CSA keeps tellin’ us things are gonna get mo betta soon, and I keep wanting to believe – but so far my half of a 3/4 bushel box has left
me with this deep sense of longing. I have yet to stamp the ground and throw a tantrum – but I’ve come close. [Ed. Note – I’m pretty sure you’ve stamped the ground & thrown a tantrum]

So when Amberto mentioned that the Gunts were taking a little vacation – and would I like to have their share on the condition that I spew some words here? – I ruminated – and then I decided. Obakaybee. I’ll do it. I’ll do this blogging thing and I’ll talk about the foodz that I get and maybe I’ll even make something A-MA-ZING.

So after they walked me through the process of picking up the share from a house just down the road from them – I had to start thinking of what I was gonna write. I’m still shaking the rust off from my own long neglected blog, and I’ve never really blogged about food/cookery, at least not noticeably so. How could I manage? Originally I decided
that I was just going to go into excruciating detail about what the food looked like. I would rant on and on about how green the cukes were until your eyeballs would bleed from the monotony of it all.

Then I picked up the CSA box.

Then I failed to take a picture of ALL the ingredients.

Then I confused radishes for beets.

Then I made a salad with the cucumber and one of the tomatoes…and it was good.

But the thing that really stuck out from the CSA box were the flying saucer squashes.

What the hell was I supposed to do with these things?

WELP – the first thing I did was figure out that they were actually called Pattypan Squash. It took me longer than I’d like to admit, given my librarian background – but I
found it. YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM ME PATTYPAN.

(I should note that with the CSA – every week has become a cooking lesson. There are things showing up in the boxes that I have no idea what to do with. The pressure is on though. You gots to be quick or sometimes that stuff goes bad right before your eyes. Which is something else I’m getting an education in — I could really go for a
flip chart of how to properly store your veggies. I mean – yeah – it’s probably out there on the Internets – but it’d be really handy to have a fridge magnet, gnaamean?)

BUT I DIGRESS…

Once I’d figured that out – it became all too obvious what needed to be done next. This recipe for Stuffed Pattypan Squash looked easypeasy — and I had all the ingredients
already, including BACON.

So I boils that Pattypan.

I cooks that bacon.

I dice those peppers and onions and cook dem bitches in the leftover
bacon grease.

I also cooked up a little ground sirloin, seasoned all that stuffz with salt n peppa, and stuffed those Pattypans good and full.

Now – the recipe calls for parmesan, buuuuutttt. GOUDA WAS ON SALE YOU GUYS. So I covered the whole mess with some of that delicious gouda mess and was ready to get it on with my foodz.

Pop that stuffed and covered pattypan back into the oven and grab some helpful accompaniments:

And then it was time to eat:

It might look slimy in that picture — but that’s mostly BACON GREASE you guys so it’s all good. If I had one thing to do over again it would probably be to wait a while longer before starting in on the ground sirloin, but it was still a pretty good meal for an easy to
please bachelor like me.

Good job Kevin.