What the Accidental Locavore Does With Arugula, Peas, Broccoli and More

This week’s farm box for the Accidental Locavore was packed full of great stuff! There were radishes, turnips (both with their greens), green and yellow beans, peas, arugula, mesclun, perfect tiny heads of broccoli, small bunches of dill, rosemary, thyme and sage and the last of the season’s strawberries.

When the Locavore drove up to pick up my box, all the plants at the farm that had been under cover were suddenly almost a foot tall. So what to do with all this bounty? First, an arugula pesto made with some of last week’s wild arugula, tossed over homemade fettuccine. Then added: sautéed peas and broccoli with strips of prosciutto and topped all of it with Parmesan. Delicious!

The beans inspired a Salad Nicoise with some of the beautiful lettuce, a couple radishes, basil from the garden, local eggs, and lots more goodies.

Then, the rest of the broccoli, tossed in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, steamed for a few minutes and roasted to go with grilled steak. Great broccoli!

Later in the week, the peas were quickly sautéed in olive oil with toasted cumin seeds, cayenne and a splash of lemon juice to go with an Indian salmon in mustard sauce.And for a home-alone locavore, braised turnip greens were used as a bed for a pan- seared lamb chop, fragrant with the rosemary and a little garlic.

The Accidental Locavore has been feeling a little guilty about the massive amount of plastic bags used for storing all these great greens and has been trying to re-use them when possible. Recently I was checking out alternative storage solutions, which seem to be limited and still mostly plastic. Any kind of hard containers (plastic or glass) take up way to much (already limited) refrigerator space. And just dumping greens in the crisper drawer doesn’t work because they go limp way too quickly.

Any good ideas for storing produce out there?