On Fridays and Saturdays, we usually find ourselves trying to figure out what to do with whatever is left in the CSA basket. Sometimes it's easy, and sometimes it's the real "challenge" part of the week. I don't usually like to throw a bunch of stuff randomly together and call it a meal, but that's kind of what we did last night. However, unlike a lot of times in the past, it actually worked! We had baby beets with greens, some wilty leftover mizuna and de-podded but still unshelled and uncooked fava beans. We also had shrimp to make as well, so a salad seemed like it would be a good match. Thinking of previous salads with beets and cheese, and liking the texture of adding beans to salads, gave me an idea to try a "sauteed" salad. It turned out to be very nice and all the flavors and textures went well together. The cherry tomatoes we added gave it a great extra pop of flavor (literally!) and the cheese added a little salty butteriness.

So, we scrubbed and boiled the beets and washed and chopped the beet greens and mizuna. We cooked the fava beans in the same pot with the beets, since they take about 5 minutes to cook. While the beets were finishing, we took off the tough outer shell around the beans, which is kinda fun, since they just squirp out easily. As the beets were cooling, Leah peeled and deveined the shrimp and prepared all the garlic we'd be using for both dishes. We decided to add some cherry tomatoes to the sautee as well, so we started with those in pan with the garlic, then added in the greens and finished them off with some lemon juice. As Leah was sauteeing, I cut up the beets, got a plate ready and got out some crumbled feta from the fridge. We needed to use the same pan for doing the shrimp, so she put the beat greens in the middle of the plate and then quickly sauteed the beets and the beans, to warm them up a bit, and poured those on either side of the greens. Rather than spend time tossing them all together, I just sprinkled the cheese over the dish and we each served ourselves from it, family-style.

Then came the shrimp, which was sauteed with more garlic, butter, a good helping of the pepper sauce we brought back from California, and some lemon juice. It was spicy! We sopped up the extra sauce with some french bread leftover from making BLTs earlier in the week. It was really a nice dinner, totally random and last-minute, but it worked!