Broccoli, Stock, and Vodka

This evening has been very productive.  I always like to write after having bouts with great production involved.  We picked up our first meat CSA today from Chestnut Farms.  We've got to be there between five and six, and it is halfway to Riverland, so I figured I'd take the opportunity to make our pick-up days there on Thursdays rather than Saturdays.  I just found that by the time I went to the Farmers Market, picked up our Fish CSA, came home tossed the fish in the fridge, went to Riverland and selected our share, did the u-pick, and came home, I barely had enough energy to get The Boy, me and the veggies in the house, much less process it in any timely kind of way.  Granted, I have done a fair amount of strawberry freezing, but beyond that, I can hardly keep up with the greens and things from the farm.  Now, if I pick up on Thursdays, even if I'm exhausted that night, I'll have Fridays to process as I've got the day off. And then the weekend to enjoy the fruits of my labor, rather than running to try to catch up with my tail.

So this evening: I got the meat for the first time.  They had whole chickens and eggs for sale, and stock and marrow bones for the taking.  I came away with our 10 lbs of various meats (6 chicken breasts, two steaks, two lbs of hamburger, breakfast sausage, and hot Italian sausage) along with three good size soup bones.  At the veggie farm we got four fennel bulbs, three heads of broccoli, a fair amount of salad greens, a large bag of chard, several garlic scapes, a zuccini, and two pickling cukes (the latter two items were carefully selected by Mozart).  As dinner time was nearing we did not do our U-pick, but just visited the strawberry fields and had a couple berries each (tomorrow, I think I'll go back and get our 8 quarts of strawberries, and - was it 3 or 5 quarts of peas).  On arriving home, I turned Mozart over to TW and I started a beef stock, ran to the store (out of onions - very important), came home, finished setting the stock to simmer for the night, strained the strawberry vodka I started last week, and cut, blanched, and froze 6 heads of broccoli (three from last week that were left over), and collapsed onto the couch where I am now writing this and too exhausted to even get myself a tipple (though TW got to enjoy some while I was straining).  The real fruits of my labor will be served tomorrow with whipped cream - and by that I mean some very vodka-saturated strawberries!

 2C strawberries, 2C vodka (X2 as I wanted a full quart in the end) set to soak in the fridge for a week with the occasional shake, and now filtering to get every last speck of strawberry out.  Will keep, if it lasts that long, for a year in the cupboard.