OK, Box #4, in its entirety:
Well, I’d never seen a purple cauliflower before. Crunchy and sweet. With such a cool cauliflower in the box I decided to use up the regular old white one in the fridge in a curry, along with all the turnip greens: to a splash of oil in a large pot add spices: about 1 Tbsp. each fresh ginger, ground coriander and cumin, 1 Tsp. each turmeric and salt, a few dried chillies, 2 bits of cinnamon, 10 cloves (about 6 too many, if you ask me); add a can of diced tomatoes and simmer a bit. Then add the cauliflower and gently cook, covered, about 5 minutes. Add all the turnip greens at the end and let the steam cook them, just 3 or 4 few minutes. It was too runny, so I drained off a lot of the liquid and drank it out of a mug (or at least, I should have used a mug and then it would have seemed more like a cup of yummy curry Bovril and less like just a weird thing to do). Lots of left-overs, which is always a good thing.
We ate the actual cauliflower from box #4 raw, mostly, but the last bits of it I steamed. I don’t recommend that. It lost its lovely purple colour and instead just looked a bit off. Tasted fine, though.
Finally did something with the lavender from box #2: banana lavender muffins! Very dainty-flavoured and elegant. Here is my much-travelled recipe for muffins, in general. I make 2 dozen at a time, and freeze them. Breakfast is 2 frozen muffins, microwaved for one minute, and a cup of hot chai. Ahhh. Maybe a spoonful of ginger jam. Seriously good for what ails you.
Basic Muffins
Yield: 24
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2 cups whole wheat flour (can sub in a little white)
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2 cups any sort of mixed grains, in any proportion: oatmeal, cornmeal, flax, chia, bran, sunflower seeds, all the remaining weird flours you bought to try a gluten-free diet for your son in the hopes of stemming his raging hyperactivity, etc.
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2 Tsp. baking soda
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2 cups soured milk, yoghurt, or regular milk (I use a can of evaporated milk mixed with about 3 Tbsp. lemon juice, and enough water to make up to 2 cups)
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2 eggs
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A very rough 1/2 – 2/3 cup sweetener: honey, maple syrup, chocolate chips (my current fave, and surprisingly low calorie), whatever you feel like using, or none at all
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A very rough 6 Tbsp. oil or melted butter. I like grape seed oil.
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About 2 cups of whatever fruit or veg you are in the mood for, or whatever is starting to get too ripe in the fruit bowl: banana, apple, crusty applesauce, dates (really good), zucchini, pineapple, etc.
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Optional walnuts or other nuts, lavender, chai spices
Mix wet and add the fruit. Mix dry. Mix together. Add nuts. 15-20 mins at 325 convection oven.
OK, full disclosure. My mom and I pre-mix the dry ingredients in a marathon session once or twice a year, bag it, and freeze the bags. Then all I need to do is mix in the wet ingredients and presto! Two dozen delicious muffins! Good for you, and taste good, too. I get a little anxious when the freezer has fewer than a dozen frozen muffins in it. Also, this recipe won first prize in a contest put on by the BC Dieticians, so my husband has now stopped teasing me about how many I eat. And how often.
Also, a very good investment: a muffin scoop.
Tonight, if I get any time to myself in the kitchen: fennel and orange salad, left-over curried cauliflower on rice, and fava bean dip with garlic, olive oil and lemon juice. And plain noodles for the kids. Sigh.
Wow. Those fava beans were a revelation for me. Creamy, delicious, easy to prepare. Want more.
I made a stunning green dip: remove beans from the pod, then steam for a minute or two in the microwave with just a wee bit of water in the bottom of the bowl, until you can barely squish one between your fingers. Shell the beans again, this time removing the tough membrane around the individual beans. Process the beans with a clove of garlic, some lemon juice and some olive oil. Splash, splash-like. And sea salt. I used whole wheat sourdough bread, toasted, to dip. It was so good I could have eaten three or four times as much as the recipe made.
The fennel was transformed into a perky little salad: finely slice root, stems and fronds of fennel. Add two or three diced, juicy oranges, one green apple cut into matchsticks, some lemon juice, olive oil and salt. A very interesting salad, though not for everyone. I think I ate the whole thing myself. Happily, not nearly as liquorice-y as I had expected. I especially liked the juice left at the bottom of the bowl.
I’m excited about finding a proper use for carrot tops. I stripped the frondy bits off the stems and chopped them well with a clove or two of garlic. It made sort of a dry-ish pesto, newly dubbed Carrot Top Pesto, which I proceeded to add to pretty much everything I cooked last week: mixed into scrambled eggs (husband enthusiastically declared it to be delicious, and even pickiest child ate it); as a topping for pizza with mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and sliced baby zucchini straight from the garden; with sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms and regular pesto on pasta; on pan-seared tofu. Kind of like parsley: looks great, doesn’t taste like much, but it’s green so it must be good for you. 
The turnips were very tasty lightly steamed with carrots, then caramelized with a lump of butter and two spoons-full of brown sugar. Neither child dared try it, even though we called it “candied carrots”, but maybe with a few more exposures….
box27 