dtremit

@MokaPot — still there, through tomorrow. I can't figure out how to link to the details, but if you look at the right side of the screen there's a round purple button that says "Offers" with the info. If you add a gift box to your cart, the free "Mini Kind Heart" box is added automatically for $0. And if you add a half cup jar to your cart it'll be added as a "coupon item" for $0 as well.

Wow, some fantastic inspiration piling up here! I took @weinoo's suggestion and made carottes râpées today from David Lebovitz's recipe, which seems a very efficient way of using up carrots. (Picture was from the farm, my roots are stuffed in very unglamorous bags in the back of the fridge.) Last night we had roasted orange and purple carrots with a bit of leftover tahini sauce (along with some roasted kabocha wedges with maple and sesame oil). Next on my short list are the do chua and pickled beets, when we clear a bit of Christmas food out of the fridge. @blue_dolphin — those are some very creative picks, thank you! I honestly had never thought of using *roasted* beets in smoothies. My dislike of beet juice is mostly an indirect aversion to the flavor of raw beets, which I have never been able to get past. But I could imagine roasted beets pairing beautifully with a lot of stuff (and we have some forlorn frozen berries and always lots of yogurt on hand). The pureed beets is also a great idea with ingredients we always have — fortuitously we pick up our root veg CSA at a local vegetarian restaurant with a heavily middle eastern focus. So I may save that one for next pickup when we can get some good hummus and fresh pita to go alongside. I have actually made that dish from Indianish, liked it, and promptly forgot about it; it would go well with those two, too. Anna Jones has posted that beet pasta on Instagram and frankly yours looks way tastier! I like the addition of (what I'm assuming are) breadcrumbs. @AAQuesada that jam sounds like a lovely use of the one sugar pumpkin I have been trying to figure out how to use; I haven't wanted to bake a whole pie this year!

Thanks, some very good ideas here! @Paul Bacino — the pave would work really well given the mix of stuff we have, and I'm sure I could double the batch and freeze portions of it in foil to have an easy side later. And I should lean more into soups and stews — the ones mentioned here and others. I'm just remembering now that I saw a recipe for a Japanese curry with daikon the other day that would probably be quite adaptable to some of the other stuff we have on hand. @Anna N — I don't know why I don't always have pickled beets around; they'd last way longer than plain roasted ones, and still be ready to eat. I think we eat beets less because by the time I think to cook them, everything else is close to ready. Pickled turnips and do chua were already on my list so it's a logical addition. @heidih do you have a bagna cauda recipe you particularly like? I know what it is but I am ashamed to admit I have never actually eaten or made it. You can keep the carrot hot dog recipe 🤣 @BeeZee I probably should break down and look at the recipes for red velvet cake that involve beets. My better half loves red velvet and we have a lot of cream cheese in the fridge.

Manhattan is in many ways a special case 😀 I can only really speak to where I live, but folks in Boston grumble that Haymarket isn't what it used to be, and a lot of the "mom and pop" fruit stands I used to go to in Detroit are either long gone, or have transformed into full scale grocery stores with more of an emphasis on quality than price.

So I think we are approaching "too much of a good thing" territory — between the last few distributions of our regular CSA, and a root vegetable CSA we signed up for, we are positively drowning in roots. Carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas, daikon — you name it. (Also have a lot of potatoes, squash, cabbage, and leeks on hand, but those I have a lot more ideas for.) I feel like my repertoire for a lot of these is really limited; a few go-to dishes, mostly sides, salads, and quick pickles. I found this lovely thread on carrots which should be a help, but really, I could use some suggestions for the other stuff. How do I center these ingredients in a way that really makes them the star of a meal (and gets through them a little faster)? (The only thing I would probably rule out is juicing; we aren't vegetable juice people.) I'm particularly struggling with the beets — I love them (cooked, not raw) but I feel like I work through them really slowly. Here is a picture of roots from our root CSA farm for inspiration.

We have tried both Misfits and Imperfect since early in the pandemic, and have enjoyed both of them. Imperfect works a little better for us — the selection and method of choosing fits us better — and Misfits had some packaging issues back when we used them last. But we'd be thrilled to have either if the other weren't around, and I may start throwing in an occasional Misfits box to spice things up now that the weather is cold and our CSA haul is much smaller. I generally like the idea of cooking from constraints — it leads me to be more creative — and when I'm able to cook from what I have instead of buying for recipes, I think I end up wasting less food on my end of the equation. As for the "imperfection" or lack thereof — I think both services tell you why things are there if you dig into the item descriptions. A lot of it seems to just be sizing — we keep getting small avocados, which are perfect for us, but aren't a size I've ever seen in the store. And some things are just surplus; large buyers and processors are inflexible. I happen to fly a lot on JetBlue for work during normal times, and early in the pandemic I ordered a JetBlue-branded cheese tray for a laugh. @weinoo you're right about street carts traditionally filling a similar role. Most places I've lived have something similar; here in Boston it's Haymarket, where early on Fridays and Saturdays you can go and buy misfit produce from misfit produce sellers who'll yell at you for touching the tomatoes. And I remember my grandfather back in Detroit frequenting a lot of "fruit stands"; by that time they were standalone stores, but things turned up there that wouldn't turn up at the supermarket. But times change, and I think fewer people in aggregate use these various options — so I'm frankly glad to see these companies bringing produce to people who might never go anywhere but their supermarket to buy veggies. And of course, I'm glad not to have to go there myself until I'm vaccinated. (Strangely I think grocery shopping — *browsing* for groceries — is one of the things I miss most.) @mgaretz I do wish they'd offer an every 3 week or every 4 week subscription option. Easy enough to skip, but still. @Shelby one of the reasons we dropped Misfits and stuck with Imperfect over the summer was because Imperfect offers various sizes of fruit box — you can still add veggies to it, but they only put fruit in by default. Our CSA is vegetable-only, so it was a good match. They also have a pretty good selection of non-produce items, so I'm usually able to add a bunch of stuff I would buy elsewhere to get over the line for free shipping. As an aside, I logged in this morning to start a separate thread about using up carrots. We joined a root vegetable CSA this winter and oh my god.

If there's not a waiting list, you might want to give Imperfect a try in the meantime -- they use their own delivery drivers. Probably too late for this week but you might be able to get a box for the following week.

Improvised tostadas yesterday — had some very, very ripe plantains that needed cooking, and kind of winged it from there. Since I had the oil going already, I toasted up some local tortillas that came in our winter CSA box, and browned some slices of sweet potato that I precooked in the microwave. Started with a smear of a good jarred black bean dip at the base as a timesaver, and topped everything with a fried egg, a quick salsa of avocado, tomato, and lime, and a bit of shredded cotija. Bacon on the side, in case that wasn't obvious 🙃

The editor may well be the problem — a direct Google translation of "rajas" is "slits."

I don't think I got the turnip crispy, but I gave the potatoes a few minutes' head start so they would have a nice crust. Honestly, the pepper mostly just added color; you wouldn't miss it much. I would have been hard pressed to taste it clearly among all the other flavors.

It's hard to find full UHT shelf stable milk, but a lot of the refrigerated ultrapasteurized stuff has fairly long expiration dates. I'm seeing milk right now with dates into January.

Stumbled on a good combination for hash today: breakfast sausage, potato (pre-roasted in the CSO), purple top turnip, red pepper, and apple. Seasoned it with onion, garlic, caraway, celery salt, and TJ's umami seasoning; finished with a little maple syrup and apple cider vinegar.

@chefmd They will also happily credit you towards a future box for anything damaged in shipping. Just contact them through the website. The turnaround is sometimes a bit slow but they always come through.

Yeah, 180ml is definitely to the line, not the top of the container. That said, given you're pouring into the container (rather than dipping and sweeping) a cup that was 180ml full would get kind of messy. I don't mind reading the line so it works well for me.

Two years ago I sent some RG beans as a gift in mid December and they barely missed the Christmas shipping cutoff. This year they're already past the Christmas shipping deadline! I'm sure they're working at reduced capacity, but wow. (Thankfully I have all I need from the club!)

I'm really tired of salads trying to kill us.

Spritz cookies were always a favorite in our family — my mother had an electric press (I think the corded Super Shooter that @andiesenji mentions; the pistol grip looks familiar) and my grandmother had an anodized aluminum press that I'm almost certain was a Mirro. Both of those presses always worked well for me, but I've had no luck with the several presses I've bought as an adult. (At least one was a Wilton, and I don't think any of them has been the Kuhn Rikon). All of them were ratcheting pistol-grip presses, and they seem to be much pickier about the consistency of the dough — since the amount dispensed with every click is fixed. So I often seem to end up with partial cookies that don't stay put, or blobs that blow out the shape. With a screw type press you can finesse it a bit more. I think the technique that always worked for me with the Mirro was pressing the cookie and then turning the knob backwards about a quarter turn before lifting up to release the cookie.

I'm not adding much here that others haven't mentioned — but in normal times, the three types of rice we always have on hand and use frequently are a Thai jasmine (not always the same brand, but always one with the Thai hom mali green seal), Tamaki haiga, and a good aged Indian basmati. (For basmati I'm not sure I've settled on a favorite brand, although I've never had a bad experience with Tilda.) For those three, we use one of these containers acquired on Amazon that have rice cooker measuring cups incorporated into the lid: We generally have a bunch of other miscellaneous rice varieties on hand — arborio, bomba, Thai glutinous, and a few brown rices — most of which I don't honestly use that often. (Right now we have Tamaki Gold in place of the haiga as it was the closest I could buy the last time I went shopping.) I have never managed to fall in love with brown rice, though I adore haiga. The only exception is Lundberg's "Jubilee" blend, which I have had trouble sourcing lately. I don't entirely understand this; I prefer most *other* grains as unprocessed as possible. One interesting unusual rice is Thai "riceberry" — which is a hybrid of black jasmine rice. I've liked it more than a lot of other brown rices, though I do prefer it in a blend.

(Why do I reply to posts when I mean to edit them? Oops.) I should just make a batch of homemade bulk chorizo one of these days and freeze it off in half pounds.

Made sausage gravy with chorizo this morning for a slightly more festive breakfast. Came out really well (and I almost never make sausage gravy, so I'm fairly proud of myself). I haven't found anywhere in Boston that sells really good Mexican-style chorizo. But the fresh chorizo from Wegmans is a pretty decent sausage, even if it's not exactly what I'm looking for. The closest actually is the soy chorizo from Trader Joe's; I had a few ounces of that left. So I browned up the Wegmans pork stuff, and then added in the soy chorizo. In retrospect, I should have drained the fat out beforehand, as the soy chorizo absorbed a lot of the grease from the pork sausage. Oops. Mix of bacon fat and butter to the rescue. Microplaned in a couple of cloves of garlic for extra flavor just before adding the flour, and gave it a dash of smoked paprika since I can't quit the stuff lately. Otherwise, the standard sausage gravy process. A little apple cider vinegar at the end really helped balance it out. As the sausage was browning I went to get out the biscuits we'd ordered with our Thanksgiving bakery order and...realized we didn't actually order those. Oops. Bisquick to the rescue. Not my proudest moment, but you couldn't see 'em under the gravy. Served with some strips of roasted poblano (thank you, CSO) and some fried eggs. I am getting better at fried eggs, these days; I can usually nail the texture I want. Took long enough.

What'd you use to knock off the handles?

I don't know, honestly — I've always bought them to cook immediately, so I didn't care. But the butchers there are typically very helpful — I'm sure you could call ahead to verify both availability and provenance.

Maybe not this year, but check Whole Foods in the days after Thanksgiving. At least here, they always cut up the leftover turkeys and sell 'em cheap cheap cheap.

Once or twice a year when we're in the mood for a nice drive, we head out to visit the farm that sells apples at our farmers' market. The price there is usually about $1 or $1.50 less than at the market. Figure it's a reasonable charge for the schlep.