CSA Week 7

Now we're settling into the summer crops and there isn't as much variation in our shares from week to week. I'm still a week behind, so this bounty is actually from last Thursday. We got beans, patty pan squash, lots of beets, eggplant, carrots and a head of lettuce. The big zucchini is not technically from the share, it was on the "seconds" quality table which is take whatever you can use. I grabbed that one planning for a batch of zucchini bread.

Since it was an odd number week, we also got our cheese share, which was tailor made for Peter.

Habanero cheddar and and fresh mozzarella

One of the things we're kind of struggling with when it comes to the cheese CSA is using the goods. Not that they don't get eaten, but we've both kind of got a mental block against eating them in anything but their pure form. For instance, I suggested we use the mozzarella to make pizza since it doesn't have the shelf life to keep around like the aged cheeses have. However, we both kind of hesitated - is it a waste of the "special" cheese to mix it with other ingredients, even if the end result is delicious? On the other hand, isn't it pretty silly to buy crap mozzarella from the grocery store when we've already got good stuff in the fridge?

We got past the hangup about cooking with our cheese

Technically, we compromised with the hangup. We had a few tastes of the pure mozzarella and put the rest of it on a pizza. We made two pizzas actually (in the regular oven, not the woodburning one. That thing is awesome, but a ton of work for just 2 1/2 people). The mozzarella went on one with a basil pesto base and fresh tomatoes for a slight twist on a classic margherita, and the other was spinach and onions with some of the garlic and chive chedder from week 5. The spinach one was good, but the margherita was terrific. I always forget how much I like fresh tomato on pizza until I have it, and then I'm sad that I had forgotten and deprived myself of fresh tomato pizzas for any period of time.