Farmer's Market #3

Happy 4th of July! The East Nashville Farmer's Market is closed today due to celebrations. But check out my haul from last week!

Are you enjoying the heat Nashville? I know I've been staying inside and running from car to air conditioned building. But even the heat wasn't enough to stop me from going to the East Nashville Farmer's Market last week.

I made another trip back to Alfresco pasta. I really wanted some fettuccine, but they only come in freezable packets of 12 individual servings. In the past this was a turn off for me. I never need that much fresh-frozen pasta. But the spinach fettuccine looked so good that I had to splurge.

And I got this tray of 12 pasta servings for $12. They fit into ziplock bags easy, so to plan for future meals I put two handfulls of pasta in a freezer bag. I should get four pasta dishes out of this tray. It's not bad when you plan ahead- something I'm trying to do better. The cooking instructions that come with the pasta are easy to follow and they came out delicious. I made a fresh tomato sauce with goodies from the CSA to put on the pasta. Now I just have to think of four more recipes.

Amy at Devlin Farms let me try one of their CSAs this week and I was blown away. The amount, variety and the quality could not be beat. The box was overflowing with goodness and so heavy that I had to stop every few minutes to readjust it on my way to the car.

The standouts in this basket were the kale, fresh yellow and red tomatoes, tiny potatoes and one fat eggplant. The Kale was boiled immediately for use in a couscous dish. The tomatoes were used as sauce for the spinach fettuccine above. I tried something new with the eggplant and cooked it under the broiler for 30 minutes, rotating occasionally. I scooped out the flesh and made eggplant curry.  Fingers crossed that more eggplants are in my future.

Below is my regular CSA from Flying S Farms. This time we had more root veggies! The standouts were the purple potatoes, beets and string beans. We also got a full share this time because the market is closed on the 4th of July holiday.




The purple potatoes roasted up nicely and didn't have that gray tone that I was expecting. The insides and skin remained purple. When mixed with regular old potatoes, the color contrast was brilliant. Beets are one of my favorite foods right now. I love them pickled, roasted, boiled, and pan fried. I'm trying to eat healthy so I just boiled the beets in water for 45 minutes. The skin peeled off easily after the boil. I just cut them up and dumped them on a salad (Kale!).

There will be no CSAs for the next couple of weeks due to holiday schedules. But after that I look forward to showing you my produce bounty!