In this week's box:

• strawberries (2 baskets), 1 lb. 12 oz.
• fennel, 15 oz.
• asparagus, 11 oz.
• baby artichokes, 12 oz.
• sugar snap peas, 12 oz.
• kale, 11 oz.
• lettuce (2 heads), 12 oz.

Full Belly's strawberry season got off to a bang with this double portion. I just washed these and served them plain as dessert.

Normally I cut the stem out of kale, but this was so young I just made a chiffonade and threw it into a pot of soup that had otherwise finished cooking. Prepared that way, the kale took only a few minutes simmering to cook through.

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In this week's box:

• asparagus, 11 oz.
  
• salad mix, 9 oz.
• green garlic, 8 oz.
• tokyo turnips (first of the season), 15 oz.
• chard, 10 oz.
• spinach, 8 oz.
• sugar snap peas, 8 oz.
• radishes, 12 oz.

The huge radishes we just washed and ate with salt as an hors d'oeuvre. For variety, I also put out some smoked salt, which was pretty good.

I chopped the white parts of the green garlic, sauteed them in olive oil with chile flakes, toasted and ground fennel seed, and salt, added some tomato sauce, and simmered it for a while. Then I stirred in some shredded leftover halibut and simmered just long enough to heat the fish. Oddly, given the ingredients, the flavor was reminiscent of Thai catfish salad.

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In this week's box:

• fresh onion, 6 oz.
  
• asparagus, 11 oz.
• fennel, 11 oz.
• lemons, 12 oz.
• red chard, 10 oz.
  
• spinach, 8 oz.
• salad mix, 8 oz.
• mibuna, 12 oz.
• sugar snap peas, 7 oz.

I used the fennel leaves to make baked halibut using the recipe I posted last week (above, before baking; below, after), and served the baby fennel bulbs with salt as an appetizer, along with some chorizo, Marcona almonds, and anchovy-stuffed olives.

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In this week's box:

• grapefruit, 1 lb. 3 oz.
  
• salad mix, 8 oz.
• asparagus, 12 oz.
• fennel, 1 lb.
• red chard, 10 oz.
• green garlic, 8 oz.
• walnuts, 8 oz.

I'll use the fennel leaves and green parts of the garlic in a baked fish dish adapted from a recipe in Richard Olney's 1994 book Lulu's Provencal Table.

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In this week's box (pictured above in the pile at the pickup site):

• endive, 10 oz.
• dried apricots, 4 oz.
• leeks, 3 lbs. 14 oz.
• salad mix, 7.5 oz.
• red chard, 9 oz.
• asparagus, 14 oz.
• radishes, 7 oz.
  

As usual, we ate the radishes as an appetizer while making dinner. Full Belly often includes greens that don't keep very well, so we ate the salad immediately, too.

This time of year the farm is a little short on variety, so the previous summer and fall they dry some items to bring out in the spring, like these apricots. I poached them in red wine and served them with the crème fraiche I got the other day at Gourmet Corner.

Full Belly also occasionally supplements its own produce with items from other local farms, such as this organic California Pearl endive from California Vegetable Specialties of Rio Vista. CVS has a great library of endive recipes on its Web site, endive.com--though it's hard to beat this simple salad:

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In this week's box (I accidentally deleted the usual photo in the course of switching to a new camera):

• asparagus, 14 oz.
• carrots, 1 lb. 4 oz.
• chard, 11 oz.
• 1 head green lettuce, 8 oz.
• 1 head red lettuce, 10 oz.
• fresh oregano, 3/4 oz.
• rutabagas, 1 lb. 13 oz.
• radishes, 9 0z.
• fresh onions, 11 oz.

The first-of-the-season radishes were devoured almost immediately as an hors d'oeuvres (French-style, with butter and salt) while I cooked the chard with the onions (recipe below) and poached the asparagus in garlic butter, both to go with a lamb rib roast almost exactly like the one I blogged about in January. I gave the oregano to one of my dinner guests since we have a big, healthy plant (shown above).

The next night we ate most of the lettuce and carrots in a big salad. So that was most of the box gone within 48 hours. We're getting a little backed up on rutabagas, but they keep in the fridge for months.

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In this week's box:

• carrots, 1 lb. 3 oz.
  
• spinach, 8 oz.
  
• rutabagas, 1 lb. 3 oz.
  
• broccoli, 14 oz.
• asparagus, 15 oz.
• leeks, 1 lb.
  
• kale, 13 oz.

The kale, leeks, spinach, and rutabagas went into a soup with sausages and beans. I used a simple, old-fashioned recipe for gingered carrots to go with brisket, potatoes, and cabbage.

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In this week's box:

• asparagus, 12 oz.
• broccoli, 1 lb.
• salad mix, 7 oz.
• green garlic, 5 oz.
• yellow chard, 12 oz.
• potatoes, 1 lb 7 oz.
• carrots, 1 lb 6 oz.

More signs of spring: salad mix, green garlic, asparagus, and fatter carrots. The green garlic went to season the spinach and dino kale from last week's box. Here's a recipe:

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In Friday''s box:

• 1 bag walnuts, 1/4 lb.
• 1 celery root, 1 lb. 6 oz.
• 1 bunch carrots, 1 lb. 1 oz.
• 3 fresh onions, 1 lb. 2 oz.
• 1 cabbage, 1 lb. 5 oz.
• 1 bunch dino kale, 1 lb.
• 1 bag spinach, 8 oz.

Most of the cabbage and carrots went into a batch of the Gujarati-style warm salad I posted the recipe for a few weeks back.

The celery root I'm saving for a batch of celeri remoulade, a classic French appetizer salad. There are two basic kinds of remoulade, one made with crème fraîche, the other with mayonnaise. I prefer the latter (and we can't get real, French, raw-milk crème fraîche around here any more anyway). It's almost too simple to bother with a recipe, but here goes:

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In last Friday's box:

• 1 bag potatoes (1.5 lbs.)
• 2 rutabagas (2 lbs.)
• 2 leeks (2 lbs.)
• 1 bunch baby broccoli 1 lb.)
• 2 small bulbs fennel (10 oz.)
• 1 bunch small carrots (1 lb.)
• 1 bunch wild mustard greens (1.25 lbs.)

The fennel didn't look like it would hold up too well in the refrigerator, so we sliced it up and ate it raw as an appetizer with pinzimonio (olive oil and salt dip). It tasted like the first hint of spring.

I'd never used wild mustard greens (top center, above) before, but they looked a lot like their cousin, broccoli rabe, so I cooked them the same way: diced and sautéed a few strips of bacon with hot pepper flakes, minced the white part of a leek and cooked it with the bacon until translucent, added some leftover wine and boiled off the alcohol, and then steamed the washed and coarsely chopped greens. Bad guess: the greens were still tough and green-tasting. I chopped up the leftovers and simmered them with sliced carrots in some leftover puree of butternut squash and daikon (from last week's box) with white beans and they were good.