Adventures in Cooking Our CSA Share: Growing Sis's Vegetable Soup

With zucchini and yellow squash from our neighbor's garden, plus cabbage and curly kale and green beans from our CSA (there would've been carrots too but we ate all those on Friday, so we just used baby carrots from the store), we made vegetable soup this week. And Sis washed every vegetable that went into the big pot, quite capable of doing it all by herself and proud to be able to help. So we called it "Sis's Vegetable Soup." Bud wasn't interested at all, until eating time rolled around, at which he excels. Sis, however, wouldn't touch the soup, ostensibly because of the tomatoes but mainly because she shies away from the majority of the vegetables she washed, even the green beans that she snapped herself. She was, however, excited to take some of the soup, plus other dishes, to a neighbor whose husband recently had emergency back surgery.

And she didn't turn away from the peach crisp we made, inhaling both juicy peaches and the crispy oatmeal part, the latter which didn't surprise me nearly as much as the former did. I'd only bought 3 peaches from our CSA's farm stand, not nearly enough to make a big crisp for everyone. I'll buy double this week. For crisp, or better yet, fresh peach ice cream.

We ended the day, as usual, with storytime before bedtime. Sis's selection? Lois Ehlert's Growing Vegetable Soup! "And we can grow it again next year . . . "

Or, in our case, next week . . . .

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Sis's Vegetable Soup

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium-size yellow onion, minced
1 celery rib, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 oz green beans, ends trimmed and cut into 1" pieces
1-15 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed (or 1 1/2 cups slow cooked)
1-14.5 oz can diced tomatoes, left undrained
1 medium-size zucchini or yellow summer squash, diced (or both)

any additional vegetables, in this case 1/4-1/2 head of cabbage and a bunch of curly kale (sauteed on stove before adding to the soup)

6 cups stock
sat and black pepper

Pour the oil in the bottom of the 4-6 quart slow cooked. Add onions, celery, carrot, and garlic, cover, and cook on High while you assemble the remaining ingredients.

After they've been prepped, add the green beans, chickpeas, tomatoes, zucchini, and stock to the slow cooker and season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook on Low for 7-8 hours.

adapted from "All-Day Minestrone" in Robin Robertson, Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker

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Our Fruit Crisp

This is the first recipe Mama and I really invented together and it is one of our favorites.

4-5 apples (or any other fruits)

lemon juice

½ cup flour

½ cup brown sugar

1 cup oatmeal

¼ teaspoon cinnamon and nutmeg to taste

¼ cup butter

salt

cranberries (optional)

chopped pecans (optional)

Mix and bake in greased pan at 375°F for approximately 30 minutes.

Alternates: We don’t even measure anymore, just make enough mixture to cover apples. Also, this can be made with other fruits, including pitted cherries, raspberries, and blackberries. Or peaches.

Mommy and Mama Hungry