Crabs

Our farmer's box showed up while we were all sprawled on our front sidewalk, playing with side walk chalk that had some sort of flint in the middle of it (yep - it SPARKS when you draw with it). I was happy to see some fresh strawberries in the box - the house I grew up in had wild strawberries growing in the yard, and during summer vacation, my brother and I would hunt them in the yard, our bowls of cereal in tow each morning.

My little ladybug is ever a berry fan. Before I could finish sorting through everything, she had gobbled up two or three of the strawberries and was trying to figure out what to do with the tops (something I usually cut off and give to our chickens before giving to her), face smeared with gory looking juices.

I merrily set to chopping some of the bounty - I had a bit of crab meat stashed away in the fridge, and between these veggies, pesto and some cavatapi noodles, I had a plan.

Step one, of course, is to ensure the proper lubrication. Since the temperature is climbing, our beer fridge (yes, we have a beer fridge) feels naked without Magic Hat's #9 - it's their "not quite pale ale," which reminds me of apricots and Cheerios. I digress.


There's really nothing like a pile of fresh veggies. This particular pile included baby carrots, the butt of a kohlrabi, some radish, leeks, summer squash and kale.

I put a bit of chicken stock (about a half cup) into the bottom of a wok and added the kohlrabi, carrots and radish, then put it on medium and added the rest of the veggies as I chopped them (kale, leeks, summer squash). Then I added two big heaping tablespoons of some killer locally-made walnut pesto and about two cloves of minced garlic, you know, just to be safe. I added a bit more chicken stock (maybe another half cup) and stirred it up, then tossed in the crab and let it all marry while the pasta finished. After draining the noodles, I tossed them together with the veggies and stock. As they all snuggled up together, I chopped up some campari tomatoes (you know, those cherry-red golf ball sized beauties that have been hanging out at the grocery store) - they're so full of flavor, you can get away with only using a few of them, so four of the little guys pulled super-duty.

I finished it with some parmesan cheese.

The best part is that the kohlrabi, which is apparently related to both the turnip and the cabbage, but tastes like broccoli, absorbed a lot of the crab flavor so it seemed like there was twice as much crab as there actually was.