CSA Week #6: Hang in There!

Any week with multiple boxes of berries is a good week.  Strawberry season in New Jersey is the bomb.  Don't bother trying to save this kind of thing for Shabbos if you're getting it on Tuesday, unless you're baking it into something that will hold up or freeze well.  Just eat the darn things. Judging by the way my pregnant self snarfed all the blueberries last summer, PM is going to enjoy tasting them when they come in.  But I was a little stupid with the strawberries, dawdled on washing them, and then some ended up wasted by the time I got to them.  Don't repeat that mistake!

• Radishes
• Swiss chard
• Chives
• Romaine lettuce
• Tomatoes
• Broccoli
• 2 boxes of strawberries
• A stevia plant

When you get a week's worth of veg like this without getting to choose the items yourself, planning meals can be a real adventure.  Alstede Farms posts the week's take a day or so before I actually get it, which helps me plan ahead a bit, but Tuesday night is when I really try to think things out and decide how to use what.

This week, for example, I'm going to use the tomatoes to make soup,

CSA Week #5: Green Vision

My apologies for the current lack of picture, BSB went off to a conference and took the camera with him.  But here's week 5!

• Butter lettuce
• Red leaf lettuce
• Bok choy
• Swiss chard
• Kohlrabi (an awesome purple one)
• Scallions
• Asparagus
• Parsley
• Strawberries

Kohlrabi was one of last year's pleasant surprises.  A friend introduced me to it in seminary - it's very common in Israeli grocery stores - but BSB had never had it, and it was fun to discover something new that he really enjoyed.  You can make slaw with it, a lot like broccoli slaw, but I actually prefer to just slice and sprinkle with a little sea salt.

At some point in the season, your enthusiasm for dark green leafy things starts to falter.

CSA Week #4: How to Eeet Beets

It's Pesach in May!  Not one but TWO heads of romaine lettuce this week.  Not to harp too much on one thing but dudes, if you think checking romaine lettuce is hard, then you're a lettuce pansy.  Red leaf is darker and curlier.  Romaine is practically flat!  But it's all green and yummy.

You know how when you were taught to check strawberries for bugs (which, FTR, was not a thing that I heard of until I was at least bat mitzvah), you were told that if you cut off the top and there's a hole down the middle, you have to cut the berry in half?  It makes your chocolate-covered ones rather less attractive.  Well, with local-grown in-season berries, that won't be a a problem:

How Crunchy is Crunchy Enough?

Sometimes being crunchy can be exhausting.  I mean mentally, not physically.  If you ever got a look at me, you'd know I was built to toil in the fields, I could use some more physical exhaustion of the crunchy sort.  But navigating the road to crunchiness (or maybe that should be the road of crunchiness?) can be a real pain in the butt.

Even when you pick your battles, or fight them one at a time, I constantly worry "is this enough?"  You saw my post about local vs. organic milk, and there are all kinds of ways of determining which foods are healthiest, but my biggest internal dilemmas seem to involve bath and body products.  I buy shampoo for my kids that's free of parabens, phthalates, and sulfates, but should I be aiming to make my own out of grass clippings and hand-rendered shmaltz*?  My deodorant is aluminum-free and naturally scented, but would I be better off scrubbing my underarms with a chunk of Himalayan rock salt?  

CSA Week 3: More Salad

In this week's box:

• Arugula
• Spinach
• Green leaf lettuce
• Boston lettuce
• Radishes
• Beets
• Scallions
• Chives
• Tomato
• A cilantro plant

Are you intimidated by all the leafy greens yet?  It definitely takes some work, but there are a bunch of reasons why it's worthwhile.

CSA Week 2: Saladocious

I've been boring lately, I know.  I'm just embarking on a new crunchy venture though, so there will be something more interesting in a few weeks.  I think.

Anyway, my second CSA arrived just hours before Shavuos, which meant I was frantically washing greens and putting things away and didn't have a chance to post.  And then I was just lazy all day Friday and didn't bother.  And then I was waiting to try something out but didn't get around to it yet.  This week was a pretty typical early-season box, with lots of yummy salad fixins.

• Arugula
• Spinach
• Red leaf lettuce
• Radishes
• Asparagus
• Chives
• Scallions
• Curly parsley
• Basil plant
• Farm fresh eggs! 

First CSA of the Year!

 'Tis the season folks!  I got my first box o' veg from Alstede Farms yesterday, and it was definitely a good start.  It's sorta hard to tell from the picture, but it contained:

• 3 enormous leeks
• 1 enormous head of red leaf lettuce
• A bunch of radishes
• A bunch of asparagus
• A bunch of scallions
• A bunch of cilantro
• A mint plant in a pot
• A greenhouse tomato

And, best of all,

• A jar of raw local honey!