It's Just Another Organic Monday

I’ve had the Bangles’ famous song playing in my head all day, although using the word “manic” really doesn’t even do my day justice. (This is where I could probably use some choice expletives in addition to manic to describe my day, but clatter is a family-friendly blog.) Despite the crap I dealt with today, I knew that there was a glimmer of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel, a diamond in the rough (ok, you get the picture) once I got home. Most people are excited to leave the office after an exhausting Monday to come home to their spouse, their kids, their dog, or maybe just their nightly programmed guilty pleasure (cough cough, Gossip Girl), but tonight, there was only one thing waiting at home for me: my Organics to You box. For two Mondays a month, that brown box full of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables, mostly local, sits outside my apartment door until I arrive home from work (and if any of the klepto hobos collecting cans in our building’s recycle bin had any sense, the box probably wouldn’t still be there). Opening that box feels like Christmas morning for an enthusiastic (synonymously obsessive) cook like myself, and today I took extra pleasure in breaking the box’s seal to peer inside for its contents. For fear of boring you with the list, I will only invite you to visit the OTY website to see the complete list of produce I received this week: http://organicstoyou.org/. The clatter kitchen receives the bin for one and is especially excited about the uncharted territory it will be embarking upon with the fava beans from this week’s box...

Anyway, I would call OTY is an affordable luxury. It’s certainly not a bargain when you break it down price per item, but the fun of receiving a box full of unknown fruits and vegetables delivered right to your door makes it totally worth the money. I’ll admit I was skeptical at first of the concept. I always thought online grocery shopping was a crock, mostly because I don’t trust anyone but myself (and a few highly skilled individuals) to pick out my produce. Produce selection is a delicate and mindful process, and I take pride and a strange amount of joy in doing it myself. Yes, I am that dawdling girl who spends 10 minutes knocking on watermelons at Fred Meyer or smelling pineapples at Costco (clatter might even have a reader who could attest to my uncanny ability to detect the best of the bunch.) I used to make fun of the annoying Inas and Marthas of the world who revel in how gorgeous or luscious the produce at some market stand is, but I find myself slowly but surely, for better or for worse, morphing into one of them. So with that in mind, you can understand why I didn’t want that certain blissful experience of picking my produce to be eliminated from my world. However, after jumping on the OTY train (thank you, sister - enjoy that free bin for the referral!) I realized that even more delight can be found in the surprise of not knowing which produce you’ll get. (I even resist the temptation of checking the weekly list online as to not ruin the fun.) In the mere three boxes I have now received, I’ve noticed that OTY does a decent job of including “normal” fruits and veggies, along with a few “weird” ones, i.e. the ones that clatter gets most excited about. Not only does it force a growing cook like myself to use new ingredients, but if you’re lucky, you dear readers might learn something too.

As great as OTY is, inevitably you’ll find yourself devouring the greatest produce right away and leaving the less desirable ones in the fridge or on the counter until you’re forced to timely get creative or be delinquently wasteful. Well, I’ll admit that two weeks later, I still have a few of the poor unfortunate souls still left in the kitchen from my last box. Despite its dull, rough skin in desperate need of a good exfoliant (or a trip to the dermatologist), the sprouting potatoes on my counter were still good for something – and I had just the future for them tonight: homemade gnocchi.

I had a couple of sources to choose from for assistance with this challenge, but I ultimately decided to consult the one and only MSCS (if you’ve forgotten what that stands for, it’s probably because I haven’t referenced it enough yet). I love how MSCS describes potato gnocchi as “one of the small triumphs of the Italian kitchen.” Luckily for me today, it won’t take much! That said, after reading the instructions, I had a mini freak out because I realized that neither the ricer or the food mill, the two tool options Martha suggests to prepare the potatoes’ future marriage with the flour and egg, have a home in the clatter kitchen. Since the book specifically forbids the use of a food processor because the potatoes “will turn into a gluey mess”, it appeared that my yet-to-be-created gnocchi was S.O.L. Not to fear though, because clatter improvised and only broke the rules a little.

Like other homemade pastas and some yeast breads, gnocchi is not necessarily difficult to make, but it's definitely a process. Tonight it was a very therapeutic one for me. I’ll skip all the steps in how I made it, and I’ll just leave you with this: clatter was quite pleased with the results.

In addition to using the old potatoes, to make room for all my new produce from today’s box, I also had some swiss chard still chillin’ in the fridge. I thought I was completely ingenious to have come up with a swiss chard pesto to eat with my homemade gnocchi, but after googling it, I found out I’m not really a brilliant innovator after all. Even so, I didn’t even look at the recipe that Google found and did it my way, so I’m still calling it my own. Take that, Veg Box (whatever/whoever the heck you are)!

AR’s swiss chard pesto – makes about 1 1/2 cups
bunch of swiss chard, stems trimmed
2 cloves of garlic
10-12 raw almonds
fresh lemon juice
generous amount of ground black pepper & kosher salt
1/4ish cup of olive oil
1/4 cup grated parmesan

There may be a better process in pesto making, but for me, I just threw everything in my food processor and ran it through with the olive oil, adding ingredients as I saw fit. You should do the same. Serve with freshly made gnocchi, topped off with more freshly ground pepper and grated parmesan. Mmmmm!

Gnocchi may be but a small triumph in the Italian kitchen, but tonight it felt much bigger than that in the clatter kitchen. And thank goodness for that - I needed this one.