Oh what to do with the agretti?

We absolutely love our CSA box which we have now been getting for 3 weeks. They provide an excellent variety of fresh produce that really encourages me to cook more vegetables. Sometimes it also forces me to get a bit creative. The 1 pound of Agretti (pictured above) was one of the offerings that was particularly hard to find a place for because it is not often used in American cooking (I hear it is an Italian green). Epicurious doesn't even recognize the word and there are minimal recipes available other places online. 

We have now received 2 batches of agretti in our farm boxes. The first batch we used in two ways. I snipped up some of it and sprinkled it in a green salad where it promptly got lost amidst the lettuce leaves. Also, that salad really didn't use up very much of the big batch we had received. A couple of days later our friends Patty and Edo came over for dinner and Patty helped whip the agretti into shape using one of the recipes that came with our CSA newsletter. She caramelized some onions for about 10 minutes in a big skillet and then added the cleaned agretti along with some salt and pepper. I usually don't like onions, but that dish turned out very well and went perfectly with the chicken we shared for dinner. 

Last week we received our second pound of agretti but this time I had a different idea about how to use it. I had read that you can use agretti in the place of spinach so I decided to test out that idea. I first envisioned mixing up an agretti quiche but when I started searching for spinach recipes on epicurious I instead found one for a Spinach and Matzoh Pie which was highly reviewed and looked quite good. So I decided to make Agretti and Matzoh Pie. :) 

It turned out quite well and Woodley and I both really liked it. It tastes something like spanakopita but lasagna sized spanakopita. 

The recipe can be found online at: Spinach and Matzoh Pie

I substituted 1 pound of cleaned agretti for most of the spinach and added in enough extra frozen chopped spinach to get up to 20 oz. total. (Sometimes our little kitchen scale is so useful!)

I think it would be a fairly quick recipe to throw together if you were using frozen chopped spinach. Most of my prep time went into cleaning and chopping the agretti but I did use all of it up and I know it will all get eaten!

Below are some pictures of this latest adventure in cooking:

Cooking the onion until golden (~15 minutes).

Adding the chopped agretti, spinach, dill, salt, and pepper and sautéing a little longer. 

Adding in the pureed mix of cottage cheese, milk, eggs, nutmeg, salt, and pepper as well as the feta. 

Once that mixture is ready to go you layer it with matzoh in a 13x9 inch pan and bake it for 30 - 35 minutes. I had a little trouble finding matzoh but I finally located them in a special 50% off cart. I guess it's almost not matzoh season any longer. I bought 3 boxes so I can make this recipe again later in the year. 

After it came out of the oven, I sprinkled it with a little extra dill.

It was supposed to serve 8. We ate it for 2 dinners in a row, gave a section away to friends, and I froze two other sections that we can use for dinner later in the month. I probably would have halved the recipe except that I wanted to be sure to use up all the agretti because I was afraid I wouldn't get to it if I didn't use it for this dish. 

Overall, I'd say it was a big success! The texture and flavor of the agretti worked perfectly and might even have been a little better than spinach. :) If you've got a bunch of agretti on your hands, I would definitely recommend testing out this recipe. 

Back Again! (How in the world did the last 2 weeks go so quickly?!?)

Wow! It has been a crazy 2 weeks since I last posted. I really didn't mean for there to be such a long break, but I guess life just gets busy sometimes. 

Below are some pictures of what we've been up to - and it's a lot! 

At the Alameda Flea Market in early April we discovered this adorable pink dress. It was just $35! I held it up and it seemed like it would probably fit. When I got home, I was thrilled to discover that it fits me perfectly! I really enjoyed wearing it for Easter. 

I baked 2 loaves of Buttermilk Bread. I think they were my best loaves yet! 

I couldn't help taking more pictures of the beautiful ranunculus around the house. :) 

In a fit of productivity, I organized my recipe binder and used clear plastic page protectors to cover all my recipes. When I splash water on pages that have been printed on our home printer the text immediately runs everywhere. I think the page protectors will help a lot! 

I also devised a system to organize all of our receipts! Normally they just lay around in boxes or bags or piles until I get fed up and throw them out. I probably keep them longer than is strictly necessary, but sometimes its nice to go back and find one easily. 

At Office Max, I picked up 2 expandable file folders, labeled the tabs with the months of the year, and designated one as 2008 and one as 2009. I then went through my desk and filed away all the receipts I could find. They are so orderly now! I love it!!

That project, combined with some other general filing allowed me to really get a handle on my messy desk. It is looking much less scary now! Yay!

Next came Easter and the Easter bunny! We awoke to find chicks, bunnies eggs, and chocolate all over the house! 

After church on Easter morning we had Woodley's parents as well as his aunt and cousin over for a late Easter lunch. I baked a leg of lamb which turned out wonderfully! (if you've never baked a lamb leg before, it's really quite easy. I used this recipe: Leg of Lamb with Garlic and Rosemary)

Woodley decided that it just wasn't safe to do astronomy from up top of the nearby hill that is also in the sheep's pen so he went to retrieve his telescope. In all the excitement, the sheep escaped. It almost made it down to the road, but Woodley fashioned a leash out of some rope and led it (much like Mary) back to its pasture. 

We signed up for a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program where we buy a share in a local farm and they supply us with a portion of the harvest. We joined Two Small Farms and picked up our first basket of veggies last week. There were lots of delicious items that were all extremely fresh.

One of the more interesting vegetables was Agretti which is an Italian herb. It has a slightly salty flavor that reminds me of the sea. I'm still trying to figure out how to use it up. There's a picture of it below. 

There was also a box of the most delicious strawberries! Some were very tiny but they were all juicy and sweet! Yum!

In the midst of all that other stuff we continued to work on the "Poplar House" up in Bellingham. We found out about 2 weeks ago that another person had made an offer on the house. That pushed us into high gear and we quickly put together an offer of our own. We found out a week ago last Friday that our offer had been accepted.

The following week was spent hurriedly trying to complete a variety of inspections on the property. The most important being the inspection of a buried oil tank (to make sure it hadn't leaked and contaminated the ground), we also had an electrician look at the wiring and did a survey. Finally, the following Tuesday we were able to confirm that the oil tank hadn't caused any contamination and we were ready to finish the sale. Following a brief mishap with the bank, we completed the sale and were home owners by the next afternoon! (Wednesday, April 15th)

Thursday evening we packed up the car and hit the road for Bellingham to spend the weekend at our new house! The 15 hour drive felt so long! We couldn't wait to get up there. My mom had picked up the keys and she handed them off to us as soon as we reached town. It was a beautiful weekend and the house was even more adorable than we had remembered! 

We love the view down the lake! We don't have a bed at the house yet so we camped out on the floor. It was so fun! 

After church on Sunday we stopped by Yeager's and purchased a canoe and 2 kayaks along with some paddles and life jackets. We figured as long as we have a house on the lake we better start using the lake. The boats were delivered within a couple of hours and we dragged them down to the boat house. 

And then we set out for our first boating adventure. My mom and I went in the canoe and Woodley took a kayak. It turns out we can boat over to the road near my mom's house in about 20 minutes which we think would be faster than walking!

Below is the view of our house from the lake with Woodley and his kayak in the foreground. 

We don't have a "real dock" but there is a small floating one that came with the property. It looked so nice in the misty morning!

Before we left yesterday I ran around the house and took pictures of some of my favorite things. 

One was a metal wall hanging of flowers that was left behind by the previous owners. It's sort of hideous but I kind of love it. :) 

Another one of my favorite things that I think will disappear when we remodel is the very pink bathroom. There's actually quite a lot of pink in the house. 

Before we knew it, it was time to hit the road again. We said our sad goodbyes to the little house and headed back to California. We're now dreaming of our next trip north! 

~ElizabethRose