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I alluded that we get a lot of greens in our CSA pickup each week, especially at the beginning of the season. And yes, being that I’m in New England, mid-July is still considered early season. Over the next few weeks, the composition of our basket will become less green, and more red and yellow.

And although I love greens, even the bitter ones, it does become tiresome eating them the same old way, which around here is sauteed in either olive oil and garlic, or bacon and onions. So Sunday night I flipped through one of my favorite recent cookbook acquisitions, Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food, and settled on a kale and potato soup. It was perfect because it also happened to use up some pantry items. My walk-in pantry and chest freezer are heaving with food and I really must empty both out this summer to make room for the winter.

Have I mentioned how much I love Alice Waters? I know it’s fashionable in some quarters to make fun of her. Like, “Oh, who do you think you are, Miss Fresh, Local & In Season … Alice Waters?” Screw those folks. Alice rocks. Her recipes are simple, and as long as you use fabulous ingredients — not hard to do in the summer — you’ll be rewarded with a dish that’s flavorful, good, nourishing, and totally non-pretentious, so I don’t know where these anti-Alice people get their ideas.

Alice’s kale and potato soup is one of those recipes. It’s so hearty, a meat lover would enjoy it, and although it contains few ingredients, its taste is complex — definitely more than a sum of its parts. I happened to have two quarts of fantastic homemade chicken stock in my freezer, which elevated the soup flavorwise. It would be just as tasty with a homemade vegetable stock — barring homemade, a good quality packaged chicken or vegetable stock would make a decent base. The other winning flavor component is the real Parmesan Reggiano cheese garnishing the soup. It has a nutty, salty flavor that lacks in domestically produced Parmesans. Were I not to have the $15/lb. cheese on hand, I’d probably skip it and garnish with bread chunks fried in garlic oil.

This soup makes the perfect Sunday night supper, even in July.

Kale and Potato Soup
Adapted from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 onions, sliced thin
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 bunch of kale, tough center stem removed and leaves sliced into thin shreds
1 lb. Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/4″ rounds
2 quarts homemade chicken broth
Kosher salt, to taste
Fresh nutmeg, to taste (optional)
Shaved Parmesan Reggiano cheese, for garnish

1. In a heavy soup pot or enamel cast iron Dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions, stir to coat with oil, and cook for 10 to 12 minutes, until soft and just starting to caramelize. Stir in garlic and cook for another minute. Add kale and potatoes, and stir to coat with oil. Cook for a couple minutes, then add broth. Bring broth to a simmer, reduce heat and cook for 30 minutes, or until potatoes are cooked through.

2. Taste the broth. Does it need salt? I don’t salt my homemade broths, so here I add a teaspoon or two of salt, tasting as I go. Store-bought broths tend to contain lots of salt, so taste first! Serve soup in large bowls, scrape some fresh nutmeg over each dish, and top with shavings of Parmesan cheese.

Friday is our pickup day at Bear Hill Farm. We’ve been CSA members for three or four years … can’t remember the exact number of years. But I can’t imagine not being members.

The first few weeks are a little slow, which I actually appreciate. It gently acclimates me (and my refrigerator) to the preparation and storage of vegetables. Tender lettuces must be quickly washed and chilled, lest they wilt — not to mention that having washed greens ready to go for my lunchtime salads makes life pleasant. By mid July, harvest time hits and I appreciate having a system in place for all the greens, squash, beets, kohlrabi, beans, tomatoes, corn, and more … so much more.

So this week our share started to look substantial. In my basket there’s a pound of beets (plus their greens), a head of lettuce, a bunch each of rainbow chard and curly kale, 4 summer squash, 3 kohlrabi, and 2 bok choi. Something else, too, but I forget. (ETA: collard greens! How could I forget my beloved collards?)

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After I finished filling our basket, we noticed a beautiful bird making a loud racket in the field. Anne, who owns the farm with her husband Mike, told us it was a Guinea Hen, a native of Africa. They’re feral and roam the farm at will. This hen had chicks with her. Can you see the one by her leg? “They’re terrible mothers,” Anne said. I guess the mothers kind of wander off, letting their chicks fend for themselves. Already this mother has lost one of her babies. I felt kind of sympathetic toward this hen, because not five minutes earlier, I’d lost track of the Oyster, who’d been sitting quietly at the picnic bench while I dithered about buying some local cheeses available from a local cheesemonger.

On Fridays we clean out our fridge and bring past-due foodstuffs to feed to the pigs, chickens, and goats. This week we didn’t have anything for them. When the animals figured this out, they refused to pose for photos. However this ameraucana hen did deign to pose for us. Ameraucanas are the hens that lay the lovely blue-green eggs I call “Martha Stewart eggs.” I once heard someone at a farmer’s market ask a vendor if the yolks were green. When I spoke to the vendor later, he said he got the question at least once at every market.

When I get home, I sketch a rough plan for our week’s supply of veggies as I wash and bag them. The beet greens were sauteed with garlic for our Friday side dish, and I made a marinated beet salad, which I’ll eat throughout the week. The bunch of kale was earmarked for a kale and potato soup for Sunday night supper. The lettuce — a no-brainer. That’s for my lunch salads. The squash I’d julienne and toss with warm garlic- and rosemary-infused olive oil, a recipe I’d tested from Carol Field’s Italy in Small Bites. The kohlrabi would be shredded and mixed with shredded Yukon gold potatoes for a latke dinner. Still haven’t figured out the swiss chard or bok choi. Any suggestions?

The Boston Globe ran a story on my CSA in last week’s food section. Check it out!

Indeed, our CSA newsletter prints many recipes of Mike’s, and they’re all damn good.

I was reading the Boston Globe this a.m. and did a double-take while reading the food section. My CSA’s eggs were featured in a short piece about buying eggs at farmers markets.

Indeed, they are delicious eggs, and they come in all these wonderful pastel colors. And once you start cooking and baking with farm-fresh eggs, you can’t go back to Stop & Shop.

This week we got a lot of beets in our CSA share. Beets are one of those vegetables that stump me. I like them, don’t get me wrong … but the only way I like them is roasted. And there’s only so much roasted beetroot you can eat in one sitting. Sauteed beet greens, however, different story.

I decided to try a borscht this a.m. I figured it was a good way to use up half the beets in the share, and if there was too much borscht left over, I could just freeze it. My research shows that borscht is traditionally made with beef and/or beef broth. I wanted something lighter, more vegetal, so I went with a recipe I found in a cookbook on my shelf, 500 Treasured Country Recipes by Martha Storey. Storey Publishing does a lot of country-style cookbooks … yeah, love those books.

This recipe is called Bubba’s Borscht. Trim the beets so that 2 inches of stem remains, and scrub them well. Put into a soup pot with 3 cups water, 2 chopped onions, and 2 whole carrots (obviously scrubbed and peeled, although the recipe doesn’t tell you that). Bring to a boil, then turn down heat so veggies simmer for 20 minutes. I kept poking my head in there, turning the beets with a spoon so they’d cook evenly. After 20 minutes, take beets out and let cool until you can handle them and squeeze the skins off. Do this over a sink: if you’re not familiar with beet root, it can leave stains. Put peeled whole beets back into pot, and add 2 cups vegetable broth, a bay leaf, and 1 cup shredded cabbage. Cook for another 20 minutes. Puree everything in a blender. My puree ended up a bit lumpy, so I put it through a strainer to get the chunky bits out. Now chill the soup until it’s very cold.

Before serving season with salt and pepper. You’ll also want to add some fresh lemon juice. The recipe says 2 tablespoons, but I like to season by the bowlful.

At any rate, I had a bowl of this for my lunch. It wasn’t quite cooled off — it was the bit that wouldn’t fit into my chilling bowl — but it was delicious. Very light and subtle, just a whisper of earthiness so that I think if you hated beets, you could probably manage this soup, even enjoy it. The true test will be tomorrow, when I’ll be bringing this to a family reunion picnic at my parents’ house. My father loathes — even cringes — at the thought of beets, so I’ll be curious what he thinks. I’ll post a picture later as I don’t have any creme fraiche on hand (borscht is tradtionally served with sour cream, but I prefer creme fraiche).