Last week in the CSA bag

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, it's CSA season and I am going to try to keep some recipes and other food-related thoughts posted. Last week, our CSA bag included:

• Salad bag of mixed lettuces
• A head of lettuce
• Green onions
• Snow peas
• Broccoli
• Chioggia beets

We also bought Swiss chard, radishes, garlic scapes and shiitakes.

I've been making a practice of making a huge salad over the weekend then eating off of it all week. Alton Brown suggested nested tupperware containers, with holes poked in the top one, for thawing seafood in the fridge; I've found this works equally well for keeping salad fresh throughout the week. I put the green onion, snow peas, radishes and garlic scapes in the salad along with the oh-so-delectable crunchy sprout mix I recently ran across in the produce section of Earth Fare.

Much of what was left went into a massive stir-fry (recipe below).

The beets were the really notable meal, though. We ate them with baked sweet potatoes (I put Greek yogurt and cinnamon on mine - really creamy and wonderful). Heirloom varieties are Pat & Brian Bush's trademark - the Chioggia Italian heirloom beets are a reminder of why we are so lucky to have farmers like them.

I put the beets in a foil pouch with a splash of white wine vinegar and roasted the beets and the sweet potatoes in my toaster oven at 375 for an hour. (I love cooking in my toaster oven because it automatically turns off at the end of the timer - and it's energy efficient.) Once cooked, I peeled them (rub with a paper towel to remove the skin, and be sure to wear gloves if they're the traditional red beets), sliced them thickly and topped with a squeeze of lemon and a tiny drizzle of good olive oil. They're unbelievably sweet and flavorful, and they don't have the undertone of dirt that grocery store beets sometimes have.

Not only was it a delicious meal, but it took only 15-20 minutes of active prep time and an hour of unsupervised cooking time.