This Week's CSA Share Included Strawberries, Collards, Kale, Beets, and Carrots

I've cooked the Collards into a soup using Better Than Bouillon for flavour, though there are also "bubble" onions (they resemble green onions but are much more bulbous, thus, the name) and several cloves of garlic that I sliced and sautéed in grapeseed oil prior to adding the thinly-sliced greens.  I boiled them, then brought out the wand blender.  I blended only some of it, for I thought it might be nice to have some strips of the greens in the soup.

I really only made the soup for tonight, because the last soup I'd made (leek, potato, and cauliflower) ended up growing after being left out for a day after it was made.  It's really too bad, because it was a very nice, creamy, tasty soup.  I can make it again sometime, when the price of leeks is again palatable.

The carrots will likely be turned into a cream soup (or at least a blended soup), and the beets will taste really good roasted.  We've gotten into the habit of roasting beets and fennel when we get them in our share.  Roasting is a simple and delicious way to serve a lot of veggies.  Might even roast a few of the carrots, too.

I asked Kat if I should cook the strawberries (we received two dry pints), or whether she thinks we can just eat them without turning them into something.  She suggested strawberry-lemon curd ice cream, but since Liz and Chris still have plenty of their portion of the lemon curd ice cream we'd made last week, it's unlikely that we'll be making ice cream again soon enough to use these strawberries.  I'm considering making lemon curd tarts topped with strawberries.  That might work.  I'll let you know if I decide on that option.

Peter made a puff pastry the other evening.  He intends to make pasties, not unlike filled croissants, I imagine.  The exciting part will be learning what he will use to fill them.  We bought a few pastries from the Vietnamese market in Little Saigon this weekend and froze most of them (we ate one of each kind, chicken and pork).  It was a pleasant drive up and visit with My Tran, the organizer for the Meetup (Asian Foodies).  Peter reiterated that he likes My Tran because she's so straightforward.  I agreed, saying that I like how practical and therefore straightforward she is.  Something she and her father, who came with her, ate but we did not try, were fertilized eggs.  I don't know whether they were duck eggs or chicken eggs.  Peter said that the embryos were developed enough to be recognizable as animals as opposed to the more sterile-looking ova.  He wondered if My Tran ate it on purpose because she knew he'd be watching her eat it.  I hadn't noticed, so obviously it was something that meant something to him, even if it didn't disgust him outright...