Cooking Local Seasonal Foods – Week 2

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What my farmer brought me in my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share this week.

Follow along as I show you what I made with these local, seasonal foods I received from my farmer this week:

  • Radish
  • Tomatoes
  • Small green onions
  • Radish
  • Cucumber
  • Kohlrabi
  • Lettuce
  • Sugar snap peas

Radish Mouse

RADISH MOUSE

  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print

 

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Directions

 

These little creatures are a whimsical way to eat radishes. Cut the tip off the stem end and you have a white nose. Cut a very thin slice from the bottom to help stabilize the mice; proceed to cut the slice in half for the ears. Make a small notch in the radishes near the nose and insert the ears.

TIP: The ears can fall off rather easily. I placed a spoon in the dip so any displaced ears ended up on plates instead of in the dip bowl. Added benefit: People can double-dip from their plate!

 

 

Source: Recipe developed by Alice Henneman, MS, RND

 

Relishes with Onion Yogurt Dip

Make a quick dip by mixing 1 part mayonnaise to 3 parts Greek-style yogurt (for example, I used 1/3 cup mayonnaise and 1 cup yogurt). Mix in some finely sliced green onion. Since the onions were small, I added two of them. A bit of the stem served as a garnish for the dip.

I like using yogurt in dips as it adds extra calcium and protein to snacks. Let the dip refrigerate at least one hour so the flavors can blend. This dip was mixed the night before I used it and made the perfect accompaniment to the kohlrabicucumbers and radishes.

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Tuna and Lettuce Salad

I tossed lettucetomatoesradishcucumbers and kohlrabi with an oil and vinegar salad dressing. Tuna mixed with mayonnaise and chopped green onion topped the salad.

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Egg Salad Sandwiches

For the perfect hard-boiled eggs for my sandwiches, I used these directions for Classic Hard-Boiled Eggs from the American Egg Board. Since there are just two of us in our household, I usually buy only a 6-pack of eggs at a time. If you’re wondering how long to keep eggs, check out Cracking the Date Code on Egg Cartons.

I chopped the eggs, mixed them with some mayonnaise and thinly sliced one of the green onions into the mixture. Served on toasted whole grain bread with a bit of the lettuce, this was the perfect light sandwich for a noon meal.

TIP: Hard-boil extra eggs when cooking eggs for this recipe. Hard-boiled eggs in the shell can be refrigerated up to one week; store in a clean container, not the original carton.

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Tomato Topped with Egg Salad

Remember those extra eggs I recommended hard-boiling? I made some more egg salad and served a scoop of it on a tomato on a plate lined with lettuce. Tuna salad also makes a good topper for tomatoes.

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Pasta Salad with Fresh Veggies and Eggs

Here’s another way I used some of the eggs I hard-boiled earlier during the week. Cook pasta according to package directions. Use about 2 ounces of dry pasta per person, which equals about 1 cup cooked pasta. The amount need not be exact … if you don’t have a kitchen scale, check the total ounces of pasta in the package and and use proportionally an amount equal to two ounces. For example, if there are 16 ounces of dry pasta, you would need 4 ounces for two people or about 4/16 or 1/4 of the total amount of pasta in the box.

Run cooked pasta under cold water to stop the cooking process.

Next, I mixed the pasta with all the remaining veggies from my CSA share (radishkohlrabi and cucumber) and some cubed cheese together with an oil and vinegar type salad dressing. I chopped two eggs for my husband and me into wedges, saving the best-looking wedges to place on top of the salad. The rest were mixed in with the salad.

Refrigerating the salad (covered with some plastic wrap) for about an hour before serving helped meld the flavors.

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Foods in my CSA share are courtesy of Pekarek’s Produce.

ABOUT ALICE HENNEMAN

My husband and I enjoy eating healthy foods, but they must taste good and be quick to prepare.

My goal with Cook It Quick is: Making you hungry for healthy food!

Follow along as I share recipes and kitchen tricks that help you enjoy the same types of foods. And though I am a registered dietitian and University of Nebraska-Lincoln extension educator, all my recipes must pass inspection by my toughest critic … my husband!

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