I’ll be documenting my Summer 2024 Medium Produce Box from Lancaster Farms that I pick up from the Greenbelt site. When I first joined a CSA, I started laying out the vegetables to assess the week’s bounty and to prepare for proper storage. This has evolved into a collection of tips and recipes. If I link the recipe, I have not necessarily used that recipe and cannot vouch for it, but at a glance it looks useful. This is not really a cooking blog, it’s a more of a diary of vegetables plus a springboard for diving into your own vegetable adventures.

Contents

• Arugula
• Baby Red Beets
• Green Garlic
• Jerusalem Artichokes
• Mint
• Red Radishes
• Red Scallions
• Rhubarb

Storage

I store the scallions, green garlic, and the mint in tall glasses with water, like flower bouquets. The whole glass can be stored in the fridge, with everything else in this week’s box, or on the countertop if you’d like to visually enjoy your produce. I recommend removing the arugula from its bag and storing it in a container.

Ideas

Kentucky Derby is this upcoming weekend so how could I not share the classic Mint Julep recipe?

Rhubarb + mint: Make a rhubarb simple syrup and add to juleps, mojitos, lemonades, sodas. Save the strained solids for eating on toast while writing a vegetable blog. Or add mint to your rhubarb mint jam and galettes and cobblers.

The arugula from LFFC is potent and delicious and makes an excellent simple salad where the arugula can shine. I often slice red radishes raw for salads but not for arugula salads as that’s bite on bite. If you’re not a fan of raw radish, try quick pickling red radish to temper some of the bite and the crunch.

Farro salad with beets and arugula and citrus dressing is a great dish. I was looking for an actual linkable recipe when I found this particular Farro Beet Salad recipe, which calls for beets, arugula, mint, and scallion!

Green garlic looks like leek but is not leek (allium ampeloprasum): it’s the immature garlic plant (allium sativum). Tasty when sautéed or sprinkled on things. Grind it up into green garlic pesto. Like potato leek soup? Try creamy green garlic soup. I’d be tempted to substitute the sunchokes for potatoes, but sunchokes are not starchy and probably wouldn’t work. Tried and true would be replacing roasted potatoes with roasted sunchokes.