LOCAL BOX, Sausage and Greens Pasta

This is part of my new LOCAL FARM BOX section of the blog.

This is some of what I cooked from the Greenling Local Farm Box I received today.

Sausage, greens, garlic and roast beets with Egg Noodles

There's probably not going to be formal measurement recipes in this section.  There will be play by plays of what I did with the food that got delivered to me that day.  

I WILL write a formal recipe upon request.

From today's basket: Mustard greens, beets

Skin your favorite sort of sausage.  These are medium Italian sausages.  Use your favorite
    

Ahh, here's the naked sausages the their casings... toss the casing. Heat a little bacon fat in your large fry pan, yeah, I'm a bacon fat sort of girl.  Break up the sausage as you drop it into the hot pan... shush it around and try to break it up even more as it cooks.

   

wow,s 5 sausages broken up makes a lot of sausage!  Fry it until it's beautiful, brown and with little crispy bits. yeah, you love this!
  
When it's cooked through and yummy looking, drop your handful of chopped greens on top. This is a mixture of mustard greens and beet greens.  Washed and dropped straight in, the water helps steam everything.  I just lifted it with fingers out of the water and straight onto the sausage.  Add a little salt and LOADS of fresh cracked pepper. I also grated some fresh nutmeg over it.  Greens love Nutmeg.
  
Fry it a moment and toss it around, look how fast it shrinks!!  Slice 2 large cloves of garlic into it, using my new favorite kitchen toy the Garlic Slicer from Pampered Chef.  Keep tossing over a few times. Then cover it.
   
After a minute or so, LOOK!  it's cooked down to nothing, the garlic, since it's paper thin is cooked and the liquid has made a VERY light broth/sauce.  Drop your cooked noodles onto the mixture and toss around.
 
After a few tosses, the pasta soaks up the liquid and becomes infused with the sausage and greens and garlic.  Seriously, how tasty does THIS look??
 
Serve it in BIG bowls, it's light and tasty and a lovely change from thick tomato or cream based sauces.  I sliced the roasted beets over it.  Then I grated some good, sharp, nutty, Parmesan over that!  OH, lovely!!
  
Here's just a couple, oooh la la shots

 
Box 1, meal 1, YES!

/get fresh veggies... make this... 

Local Farm Box Day

NEW SEGMENT IN THE BLOG:  

LOCAL FARM BOX (GREENLING) COOKING

I signed up with Greenling (www.greenling.com)  to get local boxes of farm fresh, seasonal, goodies delivered to my house.  Oh HECK yes!

On an aside, I'm not affiliated with this company at all, they don't perk to me or give me free stuff (yet) and I don't work for them.  I just love this idea and want to promote it and since some people don't always know what to do with that they find in a box, this will just offer up what *I* do with it.

I have been looking around for a while for a way to hook into the local scene and get fresh food without having to spend an arm and a leg, without having to commit to a weekly/daily schedule.  I'm pretty organized here with the chickens giving me eggs.  We all already know I make all my own pasta and bread, sell a lot of the bread never buy meat already cut up or ground; so I can save a fortune and know what the heck we're eating.

I know people who use this service and they seem happy enough.  I made the leap.

I got my first box today.  oh JOY!  The delivery guy was super nice, we had a nice chat about the process and he answered all my questions knowledgeably, happily and I was so excited I shook his hand off and squealed with delight about my blog and how I was going to do this blog posting regularly with recipes and ideas for the box.  He was supportive and interested.  I've had a gruesome customer service week with Cuisinart as EVERYONE who knows me knows about so dealing with such a delightful soul was just the pill I needed.

I'm a pretty confident cook so I am delighted at the prospect of cooking whatever I'm sent without knowing ahead of time, yeah, that's geek cook nirvana.  Sort of like my own, no pressure, version of chopped HAHA

I am going to blog about my Greenling box, which I think I'll get every two weeks.  I'll post recipes for what I cook from the box.  I see they have a link for a recipe plan and pictures of the items, that's helpful for people who need ideas...  I'll go peek over and check their ideas out but I already have plans for all the contents of the box this week.

Now, as we ALL know, I'm no vegan, vegetarian, gluten free fan or health nut at all... I'm an old fashioned, full fat, full meat, hippie dippie cook.  I'll share MY version of the healthy, sustainable, beautiful (so far) food that appears on my doorstep in the neon green box.

Today I got:

Tatsoi (Bok Choi)
lemons
beets
avocado
broccoli
cabbage
brussel sprouts (my FAV!)
mustard greens
lettuce mix
grapefruit
an energy bar
granola
Kombucha (yeah, I sure did have to look that up, I'm giving it to my very pregnant friend who loves it)

This is how the box will be used up:

DINNER TONIGHT

Lettuce mix with avocado, lemon/olive oil dressing

Grilled sausages
brown rice
wilted mustard and beet greens with garlic and onion (bacon fat to start it off)
roasted beets (roasted in foil with oil, salt and pepper)

Greek yogurt with strawberries and granola for dessert

OTHER:

We'll just eat the grapefruit and lemons will be used in whatever I need lemons for.

I'll play with the granola, some on yogurt, some eating straight up and some might be in the topping in the next batch of my internationally famous and most delicious of all date squares 

I am going to pressure cook the brussel sprouts to have to use in other things and will blog that as a separate pressure cooker recipe post.

Broccoli, it's small, will be stir fried with fried (brown) rice i'm making Monday

Cabbage will become slaw with pulled pork on the weekend.

Bok Choi  half will be included(or will be a side dish) in my fried rice and half will be infused in my chicken stock and I'll add frozen pork (mini) dumplings I have to make a soup.

I'll blog the "recipes" as I go as well as the processes and put the link here.

I'm DELIGHTED already and have placed my order for another local box in 2 weeks.  No, I won't go peek to see what it will contain, the fun is in the opening of the neon green box!!

So far, so good.