Monday, June 20, 2011

CSA Update

For the second year, E & I are doing a CSA (community-supported agriculture). You pay $300 something upfront, and you get fresh fruit, organic vegetables, and cheese (extra) for twenty-something weeks. We were unhappy with how the first one was run, so we switched to the Grand St CSA. We were on the wait list for Grand St. last year, which so far has had more produce, and is closer and more convenient to our apartment. Not only do we have fruits this time, we also have CHEESE. Cheese! They also do one off things, too, so we recently came into a couple quarts of maple syrup that is seriously delicious.

This year we're actually getting vegetables every week (not every other week), which will help with the waste. E was on a business trip in Houston a couple weeks ago, leaving me to cook a head of swiss chard (I made stuffed shells) and eat more lettuce than I ever have in one week in my life--we got two heads of lettuce plus a bag of mixed greens. I hate most bottled salad dressings now that I've started making my own, so I've been making small batches of dressing (so easy, I swear). That way you can have a couple salads with one dressing then move one. I've made a couple viniagrettes, throwing in some fresh herbs, and I am a huge fan of my creamy greek dressing, which I will try to post here soon.

Other things we've done with our vegetables
1. Radishes "the French way, with butter and salt." Meh. I added a Ritz cracker to the mix, but I'm still not a huge radish person.
2. Radishes in fish tacos. Yum! The way radishes were meant to be: In small quantities
3. Swiss chard with caramelized onions in a calzone. So loved! We even figured out a way to cook the stems this time!
4. Salads with fruit, cheese, and nuts. These are the best.


5.Garlic Scape Dip. I actually kind of screwed up this recipe this time, after two times with great success last year. I used WAY more scapes than I should have (they were bigger than the ones from last year, and I just plain added more.) I'm going to buy some more white beans to try to save it from its aggressive garlickiness.
6. Rhubarb compote. We kind of roughly used this recipe, adding some frozen strawberries, mango nectar instead of orange juice, and just a tablespoon of sugar (we had less rhubarb). So yum.

E is flying to LA today for ANOTHER last-minute business trip. I like that he's all important at work and all, but I'm going to be so lonely!! And I'm going to have to eat all the vegetables!! My plan is for him to accrue enough frequent flyer miles to takes us somewhere awesome.

No comments: