Farm Box

If you are keeping up, one of my New Year's resolutions was to join a CSA. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. The concept is you pay for a subscription to a farmer and share in the crop he produces.

Well, I guess this idea is so popular that third party companies have set up delivery of produce boxes from farmers (local or otherwise) to consumers. I think you can technically call this a CSA, but I'm going to call it Farm Box.

I signed up for one of these delivery services and last week I got my first box of goodies. It was packed full of yummy fruit and vegetables, all organic and all beautiful!

I got creative in my desire to use what I got, although one nice thing about the particular service I signed up for is I can customize my box. But instead of being picky I wanted to be resourceful.

Fruit is never a problem in my house. Between the five of us I think we like every fruit under the sun, at least all the ones we have tried. So it was no problem going through the tasty bananas, apples, oranges and grapefruit.

Veggies are another story. We have some picky veggie eaters, adults included, under our roof. But again, there are a zillion ways to prepare broccoli so if I keep trying maybe I will find a winner. (I personally love broccoli, so insert any random vegetable in that last sentence and you get the idea.)

Last week's box included lettuce and tomatoes, no problem there. The challenging produce was kale, eggplant and cauliflower. I did some internet searching and came up with some recipes that I wanted to try that gave new life to things my kids probably would not eat otherwise.

Hopefully, I can share some delicious new recipes with you this summer.

The first is Grilled Eggplant Sandwich:

The secret to non-bitter eggplant is this: arrange eggplant in a single layer on several layers of heavy-duty paper towels. Sprinkle both sides of eggplant with salt; cover with additional paper towels. Let stand 30 minutes, pressing down occasionally. Rinse eggplant with cold water. Drain and pat dry.

Sandwiches:
1 (1-pound) eggplant, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick slices
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon parsley
1/2 teaspoon rosemary
Cooking spray
4 (1/2-inch-thick) slices red onion
8 (1/2-inch-thick) slices Italian bread
8 (1/4-inch-thick) slices tomato
Lettuce (you could use arugula, but bibb came in my box, so we used that)
For the dressing you could use mayo or make an aioli, but we used Beano's original submarine dressing. It's comes in a bottle in the deli at our grocery store, and is a little like Italian dressing.

Prepare grill.

Combine thyme, parsley, and rosemary in a small bowl, stirring well. Lightly coat eggplant slices with cooking spray; sprinkle with herb mixture. Arrange eggplant and onion on grill rack coated with cooking spray; grill 2 minutes on each side or until vegetables are tender and lightly browned. Remove from heat, and keep warm. Arrange bread slices in a single layer on grill rack coated with cooking spray, and grill for 1 minute on each side or until toasted.

Spread about 2 teaspoons dressing over 1 side of 4 bread slices; divide eggplant and onion evenly among bread slices. Place 2 tomato slices on each sandwich; top each serving with 1/2 cup lettuce. Spread about 2 teaspoons of remaining dressing over 1 side of remaining 4 bread slices; place on top of sandwiches. (adapted from Cooking Light)

My husband ate four of theses sandwiches! Rachel and Asher liked them too. Rosie is on detox from public school cafeteria food and end of the year parties, so I think it will take a few weeks for her to like anything not identified as pizza or cupcakes.But overall, we had a winner with this one.

This is a picture of our farm box on delivery day. Do you like how I only show you the cardboard, and none of the stuff we actually ate? I'll try to take pictures of the food next time...