The Joys of a Kitchen Bigger Than a Breadbox

Our CSA through Circle M Farm has started up again, and it's been amazing. Every other Thursday when we pick up our box is like a delicious, strange Christmas - after three years, Spousal Unit and I are still surprised at some of the stuff that graces our kitchen.

This year, we finally have a fridge big enough to house the fresh greens and produce. In past years, our tiny apartment fridges barely fit everything, and the tails of greenery would spill out of the sensitive crisper drawer and even hang out of the fridge door. Cramming everything in like that sometimes meant things went bad more quickly - there was no room to set a glassful of fresh herbs. 

The benefits of our house keep surprising me. I've never needed more than a stove and a sink and a handful of fresh ingredients to cook great food and enjoy doing it. But it's a little more fun when you can move the teapot to a different counter instead of a different room to avoid oil splatters. I have more room to dance while listening to music as I cook, so it feels like my joy is bigger. (I have more counters to clean too, but I'll take it.)

And who wouldn't be happy to clean counters that held such an amazing spread?

Some of the more interesting things here: new beets, horseradish root,
milkweed pods, nasturtium salad, lemon balm ... Okay, it's all interesting.

The white flowers are elderberry blossoms - wonderfully fragrant and edible! Edible flowers are so much fun. Circle M provided a recipe for elderberry blossom fritters on their website, and I couldn't wait to try them. I've had an aversion to frying things in oil ever since I burned my armpit while making tempura (I've sucked it up in the past to make egg rolls), but I was too excited about this to worry much. Medium heat proved perfect on my electric stove.

They turned out perfectly - nothing burned, nothing undercooked. With a dash of powdered sugar, they looked like a fantastic reinvention of funnel cake. The stems were excellent temporary handles.

I set out a ramekin of mixed berries (also from the farm - blackcaps, strawberries, currants, gooseberries, and mulberries) and some syrup, unsure of how I might best like these. But I didn't even touch the syrup. The berries, slightly mashed with a dash of milk, were just the right accompaniment for the floral symphony.

Meals like this are why the futuristic dinner in pill form would be an awful invention.