Creamy Chard Pesto for the Oxbow Box Project
Before we built our raised beds for our edible garden, we subscribed to a couple different Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs. We canceled one after the produce was consistently poor and the other when we had just too much of our own produce!
So when the folks from Oxbow Farms approached me about participating in The Oxbox Box Project - I was excited to spread the word about a fantastic CSA. If you can't grow your own produce, subscribing to a CSA is great way to support local farms and have a kitchen filled with top quality fruits and vegetables. The Oxbow Box Project provides local bloggers, cooks, and writers with a box of produce and invites them to write a post sharing what they made with their produce.
After picking up my box at the ridiculously charming Melrose Market, I opted to use my fresh goodies for a variety of quick weeknight meals. In my box I received a bunch of chard, red leaf lettuce, green lettuce, spring onions, red beets, carrots, patty pan squash, zucchini, and red plums.
The carrots and spring onions along with some bok choy in some vegitarian fried rice - which is a great weeknight meal when you have some pre-cooked brown rice on hand.
The red beets and their very delicious greens were cooked up to top a dish of pasta, like the recipe I shared earlier on using our home grown beets that way.
The patty pan squash and zucchini were sliced up, sauteed, and topped with some fresh ground pepper.
The lettuce and parsley were used in a to-go salad along with a tomato, an endive, hemp seeds, and sheep milk feta for a last minute flight meal for my hubby.
Oh and those red plums were just gobbled up before anything more spectacular could be done with them.
And last but not least, let me share a recipe on how I used the chard!
Creamy Chard Pesto
Ingredients
Make
In a food processor with the blade attachment, pulse the garlic cloves until broken up into even pieces about the size of a peppercorn.
Add the chard by handful. Pulsing until sliced up and adding more as you go.
Add the pecorino romano, hemp seeds, and pepper. Pulse until incorporated.
Add the olive oil and pulse until well combined.
Serve on top of your favorite pasta or use as a pizza sauce.
Makes enough for 4 servings on top of bowls of pasta.
This post was written as a collaboration with The Oxbow Box Project. They provided me with the produce box in exchange for a blog post on my experience with using all the fresh grown goodness in my kitchen. The opinions are my own.