So here we are with the november veggies

Interesting developments on the veggie box front! here are the last couple of weeks.

Saturday November 22nd

500 g carrots, i.e. 2 (they are getting huger and huger)
half a cauliflower
500g potatoes
a huge (child's football) beetroot
half a celeriac
large bunch of celery
3 lovely apples (belle fille de salins variety?)
250 g of hideous, tough, yellowing, slug-chewed spinach (went straight to bin)

Ham and celery soup (serves 2)
This turned out to be a great little recipe : soothing to make, warming to eat, cheap and healthy. One important ingredient was the ham bone I got very cheap (1€50) from my local butcher/deli. It was about 20 cm long and still had plenty of ham on it.
First, take bone and remove nice bits of ham, i.e the pink moist bits, not the fatty/gristly or fast-stuck-to-the-bone bits. Try not to eat them all. In a dish, arrange the bone with a quartered onion and a roughly chopped carrot (tomatoes, shallots, herbs could also be added) and put in oven to bake for about 20 minutes until lovely juices have appeared and the bone has coloured a bit. When done, throw all this into a pot. Add half a dozen peppercorns, bay leaf/ves, and around three big handfuls of celery leaves. cover with cold water and leave on low heat for at least an hour. Make sure it is bubbling but not boiling.
When ready, skim of scum and remove celery leaves and all other solids (strain). Boil vigourously to reduce to correct quantity (you want about a pint per person for main course). Add half a very finely chopped carrot, ditto shallot, ditto celery stalk and some light pasta (I used alphabet, but vermicelli would be great). These should take about 5 minutes to soften. Salt, pepper. At last minute add ham.

Saturday November 29th

We were at the AMAP all morning as it was our turn to do the "permanence". We opened up shop (actually it's a restaurant*), set up the tables and so on, arranged the veg, and ticked off people's names as they picked up their stuff. At the end,we swept and tidied and washed away the mud, and took all the remaining veggies :)

500g potatoes
250 g lovely, small, shiny yellow little onions
500g carrots (one!! can they get any bigger?)
500g of the lovely apples
250 g spinach (I waded through the boxes looking for the nice fresh baby leaves)
250 g beetroot
half a celeriac
1/2 a "broccoflower" (see here for a picture as it is possibly the most beautiful thing in the veg world!). Called Romanesco cabbage in French.

* a associative restaurant that runs according to a really cool concept, maybe subject of next post.