As I write this, it is fully fall and I’m falling behind on sharing updates from this CSA journey. In the interest of speeding things up, this post is dedicated to August which includes not four but FIVE weeks worth of CSA (I was traveling for the last week of July and therefore had some catch-up cooking to do upon my return). 

Late summer is peak stone-fruit season; during this 5 week period we received either peaches or plums – sometimes both – every single week. And each week, it was never not exciting to open my inbox to see peaches and plums listed at the bottom of the list.

I LOVE stone-fruit and the abundance of it meant we had the opportunity to enjoy it in so many different ways. On top of that, we were still receiving the best veggies late summer has to offer: eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, and sweet corn. Not to mention, towards the end of August, we started to enter heirloom tomato season (MUCH more on this to come). 

Given the sheer volume of produce, time, and recipes, this week we’ll try a slightly different format. Instead of going meal-by-meal, I’ve instead grouped the recipes according to a few high-level categories: 

1. Multi-dish meals – often as part of an effort to use up many CSA ingredients at once, a multi-dish meal is a sit-down affair where we aren’t just making an entree, but rather a few complementary dishes. 
2. Easy week-day-or-night – think one-pot or pan and on the faster side; the majority of our meals tend to fall in this category as we try to get better at getting food on the table fast 
3. Dessert – aka everyone’s favorite category 🙂 

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Multi-dish meals

For me, a multi-dish meal is more than just n+1 dishes. It requires coordination – the dishes need to be complimentary, perhaps following a theme, taste profile, or a specific cuisine. 

Optionally, a multi-dish meal may manifest as a dinner party with friends and loved ones. It can even transform into a multi-course meal where things are served in a first, second, third fashion. But most of the time, multi-dish meals are just an excuse to clear off the dining room table and sit down to enjoy a well-curated dinner. 

In August, we had four dinners that met this definition: 

#1: A Korean-inspired menu featuring bulgogi ground beef, gochujang glazed eggplant with fried scallions, citrus glazed turnips, and of course, my homemade kimchi! 

Given my kimchi-stocked fridge, I was motivated to make a meal that would pair well with it. As soon as I saw a recipe for gochujang glazed eggplant, my mind was set on making a meal that featured Korean flavors. We had exactly one eggplant to cook up and the most beautiful purple scallions (I had NO idea they come in that color!). 

An easy main was bulgogi ground-beef – I’ve made this before, but instead of marinating steak in the marinade, I add the marinade directly to the beef as it cooks and serve it over white rice. This allowed us to use ground beef from our beef CSA add-on and sped up the cooking process. 

Last, but not least, was the citrus-glazed turnips. Roasted and then glazed in a citrus butter sauce, these are technically not a Korean dish, but the flavors paired perfectly with the sweet heat of the bulgogi and gochujang glazed eggplant. 10/10 would make these turnips again. 

#2: A rooftop dinner party with friends where we served smokey eggplant dip and CSA watermelon as starters and followed with pesto green-bean, cherry tomato, italian beef sausage pasta and a plum basil tomato salad. 

This menu featured some of my favorite Mediterranean flavors: tahini in the moutabal (smoky eggplant dip) and basil in the pasta and salad. The watermelon, while we could have turned it into a proper dish, just looked too good to not eat immediately. It made the perfect summer appetizer. 

For dinner, we took our set-up to the roof of our building, one of our amenities that we sadly don’t use often enough. I emptied off a rolling cart we usually use to store our exercise equipment and repurposed it into a chef’s trolley, loading it with plates, cutlery, and food. 

Our pasta was SO packed with mix-ins that I had to serve it in our extra-large wooden salad bowl – it reached the brim. The salad was where we see our first instance of stone fruit in this recap: plum, tomato, basil salad. Sweet, acidic, herbaceous. No notes. 

#3: A dinner featuring light and fresh summer flavors, featuring prosciutto wrapped melon with stracciatella, followed by Molly Baz’s green romesco pasta and salmon with pistachio vinaigrette 

At the CSA pickup for week 10, we had to pick out a cantaloupe from an enormous pallet-sized box. I immediately realized I have no idea how to select a cantaloupe. A quick search recommended choosing a melon with:

• A strong, sweet, and slightly musky scent – this was hard to differentiate melon-by-melon as the smell from the box was overpowering (in a good way)
• A dense melon for maximal juiciness
• One with sandy gold or cream-yellow color as this indicates ripeness (but avoid ones with soft-spots or bruises)

We did our best with this advice, and I must say, we picked a winner. The cantaloupe was so juicy, flavorful, and sweet. Paired with the salty prosciutto and creamy stracciatella, it was one of the most perfect summer bites. 

Our main dinner continued along the lines of light, fresh summer flavors with a roasted green bell pepper pasta (a Molly Baz brainchild). This was my first time roasting bell peppers over the stove and while time consuming, it really paid off flavor-wise. The result was a fresh, smoky, slightly sweet romesco pasta. We served it with pan-seared salmon topped with a pistachio, lemon and garlic vinaigrette. Delicious. 

#4: A simple weeknight dinner featuring Southeast Asian flavors: Keema shimla mirch (a Pakistani ground chicken dish with bell peppers) served with aloo masala (spiced potatoes) and flatbread. 

Of all the cuisines, we rarely (if ever) cook Southeast Asian food. While it can be time-consuming, it definitely is something I want to explore more! This menu came together fairly quickly and required minimal prep. Flavorwise, however, it was far from minimal thanks to a variety of different spices: coriander, turmeric, chile powder, garam masala, cumin, and mustard seeds. 

The last I had a difficult time sourcing – the recipe calls for black mustard seeds, but after three grocery stores, all I could find was yellow. I settled for that as a substitute, but made a mental note to buy black mustard seeds if I ever see them. 

All in all, a very tasty meal. 

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Easy week-night dinners

While I have truly loved the CSA – it’s been a creative outlet, made me a better cook, and expanded my taste in vegetables – it has been an adjustment to cook so frequently. Before the CSA, we had a tendency to order take-out more often because it was easy; at the end of a long-work day, neither one of us really wanted to go through the effort of choosing a recipe, grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning up after. 

Now, we have to cook more often during the week to get through our produce allotment. As a result, choosing recipes that are fast and simple has been a priority. This hasn’t been the easiest for me as I usually select recipes based on ingredients or flavors first, often with little regard for estimated level of effort or time-to-complete. 

Still, this has been a good growth opportunity. Not only have I started to pay more attention to the level of difficulty, but other things that might help make things more week-night friendly: how many pots and pans I’ll need to use, how many ingredients I’ll need to buy at the store, the amount of prep required. I try to plan ahead so I can buy ingredients for multiple meals at a time or make note of when there are things I can do earlier in the day, like taking meat out of the freezer to thaw or put on the rice cooker. I’m learning! 

Some of my favorite easy-week-night meals from August include: 

• Sheet pan kielbasa with cabbage and beans – a delicious way to use up cabbage (not always an easy task) and it came together in a snap  
• Burgers and corn with lettuce salad – so easy and burgers for dinner feels so summer
• Smashed beef kebab with cucumber yogurt – one of my favorite meals from this summer, period. So fast, so flavorful. The raisins make for a lovely savory-sweet taste profile, and the mint cucumber yogurt is so fresh. This recipe also introduced me to pomegranate molasses which has quickly become one of my favorite condiments. 
• Spiced eggplant and tomato with runny eggs – this made for a delicious weeknight dinner with a friend. It’s also the perfect meal when you have assorted herbs wilting in the fridge that you need to use up!
• Miso leeks with white beans and miso japanese eggplant – before this summer, I never really ate beans. I am now a bean convert! I get the hype. I also love a jammy egg, which this recipe features, but I hate peeling eggs because I’m bad at it. Another opportunity for growth identified. 

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Dessert 

Best for last! Baking is still core to Savor Tooth Snacks, but it has become more pragmatic, less experimental. In some ways, however, this is nice. I see a recipe on instagram or online that inspires me (and I happen to have the ingredients on hand for) and it goes on my recipe list. The seasonality of the CSA coincides nicely with the seasonality of published recipes as well, so the algorithm has been delivering me timely suggestions. Sometimes, too timely? (Meta… are you listening?) 

Baking is where we get to show off our CSA fruit harvest, which in August featured lots of peaches and plums. Here are some highlights: 

• Pistachio blueberry muffins – Justine Snacks published a recipe for Cherry Muffins with Salty Pistachio Sugar and my sister raved about it. While I didn’t have cherries on hand, I did have CSA blueberries, so I made the swap and it held up! 
• Easy buttermilk peach cobbler – we have a cast iron skillet that I swear, only gets used for dessert. Fortunately, there is no shortage of skillet desserts. This buttermilk peach cobbler was so tasty, everyone went back for seconds. The deconstructed approach of browning the butter in the pan, putting the batter on top of that, and then topping with fruit and letting the oven do the work was a bit nerve wracking, but I trusted the process and it paid off! 
• Brown butter peach cake – the recipe called for a 9×9 pan, but I tried to make an 8×8 pan work. It did, in the end, but it was a squeeze! It was also really tricky to figure out when this recipe was done, so I started using a thermometer instead (apparently cake is cooked when it reaches 200°F). After making it, I looked through the comments to see if there were any suggestions and many people recommended cutting down the sugar. If I made again, I’d definitely take this advice. It also made me realize that sometimes, you should read the comments! Particularly with baking, they can offer useful tips and tricks that might not be in the recipe itself. 
• Nectarine peach crisp – a staple in our household, Dev actually took the lead on making this one. I handed him Claire Saffitz’s crisp recipe and let him do the rest! It turned out perfectly. 
• Sliced plums served with vanilla ice cream, drizzled with olive oil and sea-salt – not a recipe, but one of my favorite weeknight treats. Take any fruit, cut them up and mix it with a little sugar. Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, drizzle good olive oil on top and a sprinkle of sea-salt. Always delicious. 

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Honorable Mentions 

• Cantaloupe lime agua fresca – a fun experiment! Maybe not the best way to use up prime summer cantaloupe, however. 
• Tomato cheddar toast – I ate this for lunch and dinner on multiple occasions; the perfect way to enjoy peak summer tomatoes!  
• Chinese take-out with side of homemade Chinese cucumbers – who says cooking is all or nothing? This was a great way to enjoy our CSA cucumbers on an evening that called for takeout. 
• Beef stew with celery and onions and carrots – a sneak preview of winter, but very fun that we had all the ingredients for a mirepoix in our CSA! 
• Corn cherry mint arugula pistachio salad – another Justine Snacks recipe! I ate this with a box of mac and cheese; a little high-low moment. 
• Egg rice with stir fry lettuce – my new go-to whenever I have a ton of lettuce in need of consumption. Makes for a great lunch!