A salad gift

 Our CSA season is underway. (That's "Community Supported Agriculture", not "Confederate States of America", to be clear).

Back in February we forked over (heh) a couple hundred dollars, and now every week we get to pick up a giant box of vegetables, grown locally and organically.  When we signed up, we could have chosen "small, medium, or large": we chose "medium" for historic reasons, but that turns out to be a LOT of vegetables for just two people.  And when my husband is traveling, as he often is, I truly can't eat all the veggies myself.

The organization we order from calls each week's delivery our "share", and I've been taking that term literally.  I visited a far-off friend last week and took her a head of lettuce as a hello gift. I made a huge salad (recipe below) for our condo's bi-weekly patio party.  I'll be taking veggies to my daughter tonight when we have dinner together.

The friend I visited told me that one of her friends gives salad as a birthday present to her other friends.  We all loved that idea, and spent a bunch of time chatting about that idea.  I'm definitely filing that one away in my back pocket.

At any rate, having vegetables in my fridge that are not stuff I bought in the store, but are rather the vegetables farmers happened to choose to grow for me, means that the recipes I come up with to share can be rather quirky.  My condo-mates at the patio party marveled at the salad I brought: they asked for the recipe, and said in almost-admiring tones, "I never would have thought to put those things together!". 

Yeah, me neither.  Before yesterday, I never would have suggested a bok choy/fennel/radish salad.  But you know? It turned out great.

So here's the recipe:

The base: 

• hardy vegetables, finely chopped. 
• The recipe I was riffing off used Swiss chard, but as I noted above I had bok choy, fennel, and radishes. 

The dressing: 

• oil and vinegar (I used olive oil & cider vinegar)
• salt and pepper
• garlic, minced
• a bit of paprika (or jalapeño peppers, or something tangy)
• parmesan cheese

I think it's the parmesan cheese that's the magic ingredient; it really makes the whole salad incredibly yummy.  

I still have more of the bok choy and fennel, and I still have half a jar of dressing . . . and this afternoon, we'll be picking up our next box of veggies.  So I think I'd better start looking around for a friend who needs a gift of a salad!