One of the many things I love about Red Wagon Organic Farm (and we’re only one month in!) is that they are really on top of things.  In addition to keeping their website updated with new recipes,  they send out a nice little email the day before our pick-up to A) remind us about it and B) tell us exactly what we’ll be receiving.  The Sunday before we made our second pick-up, I woke up to an email saying we’d be getting garlic scapes, my favorite, odd-looking, short-seasoned, best kept produce secret.

CSA Pick-Up #2 included:

• Strawberries
• Snap Peas
• Arugula
• Spinach
• Radishes
• Mustard Greens
• Garlic Scapes

What We Cooked:

You know, sometimes fresh produce is best in its most basic form, which was certainly true for the strawberries and snap peas, which we just ate raw.  I was particularly stoked about the strawbs (my all time favorite fruit).  I can honestly saw both of these were the best I’d ever tasted.  The berries were perfectly sweet and the peas were so crisp.  Pure perfection.

I bought a bunch of radishes at the grocery the week before we got our CSA so I was interested to see how the farm fresh bunch compared.  They were definitely bigger, crisper and prettier.  The purple-y ones were so cool looking!  We threw them into some simple wraps with roasted red pepper hummus, English cucumber slices and lettuce, which I wasn’t expecting much from but was pleasantly surprised by how tasty they were.

When we got the mustard greens home, we tore off pieces to taste raw, then looked at each other and said “WHOA!”  Mustard greens have definitely got a great kick to them.  Raw, it had a real horseradish taste to it.  We used it in place of kale in this recipe, which we make all the time because A) it takes 15 minutes and B) it involves pasta and cheese.  This time around we added a couple tablespoons of butter to the noodles.  Butter + mustard greens made this recipe about 10x better.

I hope this is a safe space to admit I do not like farm fresh spinach.  It’s a little too…sturdy(?) for my taste.  Nothing like the soft baby spinach I get at the store (imagine that!), so I wasn’t all that excited to see it on the list.  But!  I figured sautéing it and hiding it inside a delicious calzone would fix everything.  I was really proud of myself when these turned out to be absolutely tasty.  And I even made the dough all by myself!

Both the garlic scapes and the arugula went into this dish.  I’m not Julia Child or anything (I’m reading a book about her so I’ve got Julia on the brain lately), but I love this original recipe of mine.  And it was combined with another recipe of mine for garlic scape pesto, which is hands down the best pesto I’ve ever tasted.  It took this already delicious recipe up to a whole new level.

P.S. This meal was made even more delicious by the fact that I didn’t lift a finger to make it.  Hooray for nights when Joey does all the cooking 🙂

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Have you ever heard of a garlic scape?

What is your favorite fruit?

Pizza or calzones?