Wednesday is the day we pick up the weekly CSA veggie bag. I’m always excited because there’s always something unexpected. It’s like a little contest where you get a basket of unknown ingredients and have to make something of it.
We are fortunate because the CSA we belong to includes more than just the produce grown on the PA farm. There is truly whole-grain bread from the Kimberton Bakery, there is yogurt from a biodynamic dairy farm, and free range eggs. There is also grains and citrus imported from other organic farms.
I learned a while ago to fight my New England impulse to save everything, “for best” as my mom would say. Next week I would get another bag of veggies so I don’t feel guilty about diving into the best items. There was a beautiful pile of baby arugula. That would be great with olive oil and lemon juice. There were also new redskin potatoes and baby turnips. I decided to peel both the potatoes and turnips (though it was unnecessary in both cases) and I cut them into quarter-inch semi-circular slices. The turnips I left raw, and the potatoes I boiled until just done. This gave it a variety of textures as well as flavors.
I tossed the arugula, turnips, and potatoes with olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper. When the olive oil hits the warm potato slices it gives off the most beautiful floral fragrance! I topped it off with some crumbled feta cheese.
I also had some center cut pork chops which I cut to half the thickness and seasoned them with two store-bought seasonings, lemon pepper and garlic salt.
You will notice in the picture that we got some really nice looking cremini mushrooms today so I sliced about half of them with some shallots and sauteed them in olive oil with lots of lemon juice at the end. Again, just salt and pepper for seasoning, so that all the vegetables supplied most of the flavor.
I seared the pork chops on both sides, nice and brown and finished them in the oven.
The result was a pan-roasted pork chop topped with sauteed mushrooms with an early spring potato salad!
It was a hit, and sadly there will be none left for tomorrow’s lunch!
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ToneManblog 
What a refreshing dinner! I feel like that is a meal that I could eat and feel fully satisfied, but not guilty in any way. That pork chop had beautiful color and, being a mushroom feign, I could have had those all on their own for dinner 🙂
Cremini cricket! Arugula is not an ingredient commonly found in a college students fridge. Can’t wait to get home to eat like this again!