Week 2: Haloumi Salad, Roasted Potatos & Radishes

Friday night's meal was quite possibly the créme de la créme of our CSA efforts, despite the fact that it did not involve the tiny turnips. Although my work mates feared I had begun a fad diet that involved consuming only lettuce during daylight hours, we still had a small mountain of it left by Friday. Determined to find the bottom of this week's supply, we decided to make one of our all-time favorite dishes: grape and haloumi salad. If you don't know about haloumi yet, it's the kingpin of cheese. We discovered it about eight years ago on a tiny Greek island called Kefalonia. When in Greece, you feel like you've died and gone to heaven, and then they give you saganaki (fried cheese) and you are certain. As though touched by the hand of the divine, haloumi has a miraculous ability to withstand high heat, making it great for grilling, sautéing or frying. Obsessed since that first bite, we have tried our favorite fromage many ways - sautéed and eaten with lentils and rice, skewered and grilled with vegetables, and on a variety of salads. We have found that the sweetness of grapes is perfect with the naturally salty cheese and let's face it: who doesn't want an excuse to eat sweet and salty for dinner? So we stacked the remaining lettuce with purple grapes, balsamic and olive oil dressing, and the sautéed haloumi. I'm not positive, but we may have been as anticipatory of this meal as the birth of our firstborn.

Remembering my grief over last week's radishes, I drizzled this week's batch with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted them up, along with a pan of potatoes. I'm trying to keep it real with my kids. I know they are not going to start begging for salad just because their mother is slowly growing a cottontail, so in order to avoid them only eating oil-soaked cheese for dinner –– though they would have loved nothing more –– I roasted them potatoes to alleviate my guilty conscience. As for the radishes, while they did not achieve turnip status, they were definitely a pleasant surprise. Baking them really took the edge off and we ate every last morsel. Both kids willingly tried them and my daughter even dared to eat three bites, which was a stellar performance on her part. Feeling feverish with excitement that we actually had a successful radish-eating experience, I was eager, no, I was downright hyper for the next day's pick-up. I couldn't wait to continue the great radish experiment of 2011.