On a very wintry day is the first Winter season pick up. Every week, I take a picture of my Produce share, partly for fun, inspection, and documentation. Collection of thoughts, recipes (both tried and new, some are bookmarks for later), and ideas follows.

• Baby Fennel
• Chioggia Beets
• Garnet Sweet Potatoes
• Green Cabbage
• Green Kale
• Jerusalem Artichokes
• Orange Carrots
• White Scallions

Storage

My white scallions happen to have a fair bit of dirt on them and have shorter greens than usual. This is one reason why I like to unbox, arrange, and assess. I’ll rinse those off and pop them in a glass of water to thrive. The garnet sweet potatoes go in the sweet potato pantry bin. Everything else goes in the fridge. It’s a fairly long lived box this week. I’ll lightly prioritize the green kale.

Meal prep

With the particularly frigid weather this week, I’ll be roasting a lot of the carrots, sweet potatoes, and Jerusalem artichokes to add to various meals, side dishes, and salads throughout the week.

Recipe ideas

Chioggia beets can be roasted like red beets but the fantastic color patterns shine when raw. I like using a vegetable peeler or mandolin to shave raw slices of beet into salads for a crunchy sweet aspect. This shaved beet and carrot salad with citrus-scallion dressing calls for scallions, arugula which you could sub in green kale, orange carrots, beets, and radishes (if you have radishes left over from Fall 2024).

A vegetable peeler or mandolin is also a good tool for green cabbage for salads, like this “light and refreshing, an antidote to the heft of holiday fare” chicken and cabbage salad.

Jerusalem artichokes are root vegetables commonly cooked like a potato (roasted, boiled, mashed, etc.) but is a member of the sunflower family. It has a tendency to cause flatulence in some people, so proceed with caution until you know how it affects you and people in your vicinity.