The quality of the potatoes from our farm share this year has been outstanding, especially the waxy, creamy red potatoes. Perfect for potato salads. We prefer vinegar based salads vs. mayonnaise, so I generally use a combination of mustard, vinegar, oil, dill, etc. Yesterday I had a beauty of an anaheim chile on hand and some fresh parsley, so I decided to try tossing the potatoes with a chimichurri sauce, which is a kind of Argentinian green sauce usually served with grilled meat. It was simply the best potato salad I’ve ever eaten.

It’s taken me awhile to warm up to kohlrabi. I’ve cooked it a few times in the past year, always because it’s been part of the farm share. If there is such a thing as a mental “image” of what something tastes like, I still don’t really have one for kohlrabi, but I now have a favorite way to prepare it.

Picked up our Chestnut Farms cooler last week. It’s like being in a meat-of-the-month club. This months share included:

• 1 rack of lamb
• 4 pork chops
• 4 beef short ribs
• 1 lb lamb sausage
• 1 lb lamb stew meat
• 2 lbs ground beef
• 4 lbs chicken breasts

Update: one more item I forgot — 1 1b. bacon

This is a really simple recipe that’s help me recently get over the intimidation factor of working with whole chickens. I’ve done this twice now; once with a kosher bird from Empire and more recently with a whole chicken from my January Meat CSA share. I’ll let you guess which one was tastier.

What you need:

• 2 T butter
• 3-4 garlic cloves, peeled
• 1 whole lemon
• 1 sprig fresh rosemary
• 1 whole chicken, 3-4 lbs.
• 1 cup chicken broth, white wine, water or combination of any

Preheat the oven to 375.

Rub the bird inside and out with some salt & pepper. Cut the lemon into eighths. Stuff the lemon, garlic and rosemary into the cavity. Use a couple of toothpicks to secure the skin flaps over the cavity; this serves to keep the stuff from falling out when you turn the bird later.

Set the bird breast-side down in a well-oiled v-rack inside a roasting pan. Brush the top with 1 tablespoon of melted butter.
Roast for 40 minutes. Take the bird out and flip it so it’s breast-side up (I use wads of paper towels in either hand to grab it). Add the broth/wine/water to the roasting pan. Back in the oven and roast “until done”, about 45-50 minutes.

Note that the roasting time is going to depend on several things: size of the bird, your oven, etc. I’ve got a convection roast setting that probably reduces the time for me. When in doubt use a meat thermometer.

You can make a sauce with the pan drippings but I’ve been saving mine to make a chicken soup later in the week.

Bonus: here’s a video showing how to carve your yummy, roasted chicken.

We picked up our 1st Chestnut Farm CSA meat share yesterday. 10 lbs of neatly wrapped yummy in a little red Playmate cooler. The share contained:

• 1 whole chicken
• 2 lamb shoulder chops
• 4 country-style pork ribs
• 1 lb lamb stew meat
• 2 lbs ground beef
• 2 beef rib steaks

We’re on the 2nd winter share from our new CSA. As you might imagine, it’s been lots of potatoes, turnips, squash, carrots and parsnips. Excellent dishes made from this include:

• Braised turnips & greens
• Veggie Shepherd’s Pie
• Roasted Potato & Squash Enchiladas
• Carrot Slaw
• Beef Stew & Chicken Stew (in the crockpot)
• Veggie Stir-fry

The greens in the first distribution were awesome–chard, kale, collards–and were all cooked and consumed within the first week. The 2nd distribution only had bok choy (delicious bok choy). We ended up giving away some rutabegas and parsnips. Because seriously you can only eat so many rutabegas.Keeping the bin in the garage where the average temp is around 45 degrees seems to make for a serviceable “root cellar”.