New Year of Farm Share

Today was a modest day of work. I only had to assemble five items from Ikea and rewire the light in our ceiling. It almost felt like having a day off to be honest. I think I may be done the majority of the Ikea building and I'm really not sure what I am going to do with all the time this frees up in my life when I'm done. Surely two screaming babies will not be enough of a time suck to make up for the twenty-four-hour-a-day furniture building.

Surely not.



As well as all that building I also headed out to pick up our first farm share delivery of 2012. As this season begins I am hopeful that the 2012 NHL season ends as the L.A. Kings prepare to face off against the New Jersey Devils. By the time the game ends it will be way too late to comment on the blog. It's all I can do to stay awake until the end of the games these days.

For the first week we got six garlic scapes, a bunch of Suehlihung Mustard Greens, one bunch of mizuna, two bunches of bok choy, a head of Chinese (or Nappa) cabbage, a bunch of rhubarb, and a bunch of Cherriette radishes.

I've never heard of Suehlihung Mustard Greens before but given the fact that it is indistinguishable from mizuna I suspect the farm is pulling our chain.



As I put dinner together I put out this cheese and bread to snack on. We've had cranberry Wensleydale before but I've never heard of or seen its blueberry cousin. Since blueberries are a little more appropriate this time of year I picked it up. My cheese snob friends would not like me to say so but it was pretty tasty. It tastes exactly like I would have expected, just like a blueberry version of the cranberry cheese.



For the main course I chopped up the mizuna and tossed it with grape tomatoes, avocado, grilled corn, sliced radishes, lime, olive oil, basil, salt, and pepper. I blacked a few really nice sea scallops and put them on top of the salad. We had three scallops between the two of us as a way of being a little more budget conscious since they're fantastically expensive. It ended up being just enough with the huge salad.



For beer I decided to go with this Gumball Head Wheat Beer from 3 Floyds. This was another 3 Floyds beer brought to me by my amazing, thoughtful, and wonderful sister-in-law who had nothing but my beer enjoyment in mind.

Oh, except the stipulation that I had to mention her in this blog that has about six readers. There you go, Lauren!

This "deal" goes for anyone that wants to give me free beers I've never tried before. I'll be happy to give you a shout out after consuming the beer.

This was not what I expected at all. It was a hoppy wheat beer which I'm pretty sure I've never had before. It was quite tasty and a good mix for this late spring/early summer dinner.



For dessert I chopped up the rhubarb and cooked it down with some fresh cherries, water, and a little sugar and served it up hot with some vanilla ice cream.

All in all this was a good way to ring in the new farm share year. I think we'll need to take advantage of the next few weeks of creativity before we resort to donating all our farm share vegetables to a soup kitchen and getting some Chinese take out before we pass out on the couch.