Our CSA Haul, Week 3: Ruta-whata?

Only one week left now on our CSA! Other than being totally overwhelmed with veggie bounty, making the drive down to Tacoma each week hasn't been a hardship. And since they've had raspberries each time (although I doubt we'll see any next week,) Z was happy to go. And she enjoyed perusing the selection and choosing some of the foods. I will probably try this again when their Summer share starts up again in 2012. If I'm actually cooking once in a while regularly by then...

left to right, top-to-bottom-ish: raspberries, rutabaga (peachy turnip-y thing,)
kohlrabi (purple alien baby,) pumpkin peppers (red lumpy freaks,) cabbage,
random freebie mini squash (yellow,) delicata squash (striped,) corn,
beets (purpley-red lumps,) onion, cauliflower, green tomatoes (lower left corner,)
potatoes, more beets, tomatillos (with papery 'wrappers')

For this week's share we got:
1lb potatoes (ie: 2)
1lb beets (they were kinda mushy, and my husband was allergic to beets as a kid, so I only took half.)
0.6lb tomatillos [groan]
0.6lb green tomatoes
1 rutabaga
1 onion
2 sweet pumpkin peppers
1 cabbage
1 kohlrabi
1 bunch greens (chose rainbow chard again, not pictured)
2 ears corn
1 bunch cauliflower (chose orange this time. Still have white and purple.)
1 container raspberries (on their last legs. Found a few moldy ones after we got them home.)
1 Delicata squash
3 seckle (or seckel, depending where you look on Google) pears (not pictured. SUPER tiny. Like, fig-sized.)

Still have from week 1:
1lb red potatoes (apparently they aren't good for fries, since I know he's made fries, and they're still here!)
some carrots
broccoli
some romaine (maybe it's no longer good)
kohlrabi
some rainbow chard (might not be good anymore)
purple cauliflower (purchased, not part of CSA share)

Still have from week 2:
most, if not all, of the carrots
green beans
1lb potato
pears. Although my husband may have eaten one/them. There's just too much stuff in our 'fruit bowl' to bother digging through to double check.
zucchini
jalapeno pepper (started out dark green, turned orangey-red over the weekend!)
radishes
purple bell pepper
eggplant
green tomato (turned orange over the weekend)
cauliflower (white)
mystery head of lettuce
mystery greens bunch

The carrots, broccoli, and potatoes should be good for a while, although I found a recipe for mashed rutabaga and potato that I think I'll try. I'm going to try and make radish chips for Unka Seesee before they go bad, and eggplant fries look easy and yummy. There's a baked kohlrabi recipe that looks doable, and will also use up some more of our prepared-for-Armageddon potato stash (if I try the altered recipe in the comments.)

I've never been a huge fan of cauliflower, and prefer raw to cooked (for most veggies, actually,) but I might try this recipe and use all 3 colors. Z loves when I get the noodles that are 3 colors (regular, tomato-reddish and spinach greenish) and calls them 'rainbow noodles. So she might go for trying some 'rainbow cauliflower.'

I was at a loss for using the beets, since I know nothing about them or how they even taste, really. But I found a beet-blueberry muffin recipe that might be fun to try. Most of the recipes I found were either just beets as a side, or recipes fancier than I'm interested in trying.

Cookery-blogger-friend Morgana suggested fried green tomatoes when I got my tomatillos that first week, so I think I'll give them a shot with the actual green tomatoes I have now. Maybe also the tomatillos we just got, but maybe hubby can make chili again, and use up that jalapeno too!


And I found a simple-looking recipe for the delicata squash that I think I can do. We keep buying various squashes (squashi?) and not cooking them, so maybe it's time. Z loves sweet potato stuff and pumpkin stuff, so she'll probably enjoy most squash items as well. I have a Pavlovian aversion to them, since for some reason as a child, whenever I would have sweet potato, yam or squash (especially spaghetti squash,) the very last mouthful would kick in my gag reflex and I'd sit there and have a couple of dry heaves before I could finish the last bite. I'm okay now with sweet potato chips and fries, and when Seesee cooks them up into thick coins, but haven't really eaten any squash lately. Mostly not interested in finding out if I'll still react the same way. Now that I'm all growed up, I understand that it's probably a sensory issue, and probably was related to the slimy/mushy texture or something. But as a child, squash and yams were my arch-nemesis. And that last gagful bite was the only barrier between me and my dessert.

I know these recipes are all mostly sides, since I chose recipes based on laziness ease and lowest number of fancy ingredients. So now I'll have to figure out what to do about making DINNER too... maybe I'll just take baby steps and order a pizza to go with our eggplant fries, or whatever. The thought of trying to cram in just these recipes in the upcoming week has me reaching for my current book and crawling under the covers. [Just finished the Hunger Games trilogy (which I started on Saturday. Finished by Tuesday. Seriously. They're THAT good!) and The Help, and now on a random book pulled out of my Half-Price Books $1-section emergency stash. Yeah. I read a lot.] I can't even picture trying to coordinate an entire meal all at once. I think my brain would just clock out.
On the 'plus' side, I just found out at my 28-week appointment that my iron levels are lower than they were at the beginning of my pregnancy, when they put me on an iron supplement (I get the generic time-release one. Seriously, SO much better, if iron makes you nauseous.) So even while taking a supplement my levels went down. Which explains my constant state of fatigue. Now I'm on twice a day. But I can now use not only the general facts that I am being drained of nutrients to create a new life and that normal everyday activities are harder to do than before, but also that I have a specific mineral deficiency that explains my lack of willingness/ability to do anything around the house the past several years 6 months. But I've been feeling bad, knowing that I really should be doing something - clean something, blog something, make a fancy lunch, whatever - and still turning around and staring blankly at my computer, or curling up with a book and shutting out the world (once my hubby's home. I still pay attention to the Podling until then. Most days.)