CSA week one, day four

Bahh bahh black sheep have you any wool? No? Okay, I'll take your MEAT! BUWAHAHAHAHA! Okay, I love lamb. Lamb is one of the reasons why I could never live on a farm. Sheep are so cute and fuzzy...but so tasty too. I appease my flinching inner child by buying as much local humanely raised and slaughtered meat as possible. I routinely beat my inner vegetarian into submission with the wonderful scent of bacon... mmmm bacon! Lamb is something that no soy product could ever mimic. The farmer's market has a man who sells lamb kabobs for $8 a pound, which is pretty affordable. Tonight, we have lamb!

Super Simple Lamb

1 pound lamb kabobs (which is just lamb meat cut into chunks)

flat leaf parsley, chopped

rosemary, chopped

1 teaspoon olive oil

salt and pepper

Toss the lamb in a bowl with the oil, salt, pepper, rosemary, and parsley and grill over high heat turning the meat so each chunk gets brown on all sides until medium.

My CSA people send out an email every week with what we can expect in our boxes and also a recipe or two. I decided to give one of their recipes a try this week.

Kale with garlic and dried cranberries

1 bunch kale

3 cloves garlic

1/2 cup dried cranberries (their recipe called for dried cherries, which I am sure would be good too but I had dried cranberries on hand. I'm sure any dried berry would be good.)

1 tablespoon olive oil

salt and pepper

Put a large pot of water on to boil. Remove the ribs from the kale and chop. Dunk kale in boiling water for 30 seconds to 1.5 minutes. Remove kale from water, drain, and pat dry. Heat oil in a medium large to large skillet over medium high heat and add garlic. Allow the garlic to saute for about 2 minutes and add the kale and the berries, salt and pepper and toss to combine. It looks like Christmas, so pretty dark red and green! Saute for 5-10 minutes until desired level of doneness.

The Results: You can serve the lamb with pitas, feta cheese, red onion slices, and a yogurt sauce if you wish, or you can just serve as is. We ate it as is. The lamb and the kale were very good together. The lamb was nice with the sweetness of the berries with the bitterness of the kale. I give myself an A for this meal.

The breakdown: The kale was out of the CSA. The lamb was from the farmer's market. Everything else was either from the pantry or my herb garden. A+!