Saturday, August 21, 2010

CSA

A couple of years ago, I stumbled upon this blog and discovered the concept of the CSA. For anyone who doesn't already know, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It's basically local farmers (frequently organic) who pre-sell shares of their harvest to the public for the growing season and then deliver boxes of freshly picked vegetables to a central drop-off weekly.

Early last March, I received an email that an organic CSA would be dropping off at my workplace this season for anyone who wanted to buy in. I read the list of planned crops and convinced BFF(B) to split a share with me as an experiment. The boxes started arriving at the beginning of June and boy am I glad we split a share. That's a ton of veg! Good stuff all, but such large quantities.

We've made several different kinds of salads, soups, stir-fry, and tried some new veggie side dishes. Last week I made homemade salsa and I got my fresh basil to root in a cup of water, so I'm hoarding it till I can make pesto. I've even tried some new vegetables that I've never eaten before, including: kale (not bad), garlic scapes (YUM), turnips (blech), radishes (hmmm...). I have yet to figure out how to use up quite that much zucchini.

This week's box includes:

lettuce
arugula
tomatoes
sweet onions
garlic
sweet peppers
hot peppers
beets
turnips
swiss chard
eggplant
basil
kohlrabi

Since the Professor is out of town, I gave the majority of the box to BFF(B) this week, but I'll be making more salsa, some from-scratch marinara sauce, some pesto and a stir fry to start. Anybody got a good recipe for beets or zucchini (previous box)?

4 comments:

  1. I LOVE LOVE LOVE my CSA! Every Monday is like Christmas morning for me. Except we've been gone for the last 7 weeks of the CSA season, dang it! Hey, so what are you going to do with your kohlrabi? I stir fried it with some other veggies for easy dinner night.

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  2. I have an entire zucchini cookbook! Secret to dealing with zucchini - grate it. It's magic. You can put it in soooo many things (like a corn + zuc fritatta - omg).

    Yum yum yum!!!

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  3. I love beets! I like to steam them, take the skin off and chop into small bits, mix with finely chopped onion or shallots and add balsamic vinaigrette. Chill over night. Yum!

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  4. Adam and I plan on starting up with our local CSA next summer. We're going to split it with my parents. We can't wait!

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