We’re trying something different this year when it comes to produce.
Last March, we received a flyer in our mailbox. A local farm was beginning a CSA…and would we like to join? Why yes, yes we would.
In case you are unfamiliar with CSAs (as I was until fairly recently), here’s how a typical CSA works. You purchase a “share” in a farm’s yield for the season. You pay the farm up-front, in exchange for the promise of a weekly (more or less) supply of produce throughout the upcoming season. Then you sit back and wait for the fruits and vegetables to start rolling in. And also hope for enough rain and favorable weather to create a bountiful harvest.
We signed up in April with our local CSA and today — finally! — I picked up our first box of fresh produce.
I’m not the kind of person to get overly-excited about vegetables. I generally save that kind of exuberance for foods of the chocolate variety. But, still, I couldn’t wait to get home to see what awaited me in the white box of farm-fresh goodies.
Here’s what I found:
My first thought was: How in the world are we going to eat this much produce every week? We are going to have to get very serious about consuming our veggies.
My second thought was: What in the world are some of those things?
For example, in my apparently sheltered 30-some years of life, I’d never purchased or eaten things that looked like this:
Turns out they are Patty Pan Squash (I think…if my internet skills were reliable), and I can treat them pretty much like zucchini. UFO-shaped, thicker-skinned zucchini, that is.
My third thought was: What am I supposed to do with all those chiles?
I foresee salsa in our near future.
My fourth thought was: 12 ears of corn?? Good thing L.(5) is a huge fan of buttered corn-on-the-cob.
My fifth thought was — wait, I’ll stop there. I’ll spare you the play-by-play of my produce-ridden thoughts.
We really are looking forward to this adventure in vegetables. To be honest, we’re very good fruit-eaters, but tend to be boring and half-hearted vegetable-eaters, so this will stretch us, introduce us to new vegetable types and dishes, and in the process, help us to eat more healthily.
All without having to weed a garden. I’d say that’s a win.
What farm are you using? I might looking for something like that for next year. We can plant anything here because the deer eat everything!
Your patty pans look delicious! Our first exposure to them was a few years ago at a farmer’s market. We had no idea what they were, but decided to give them a try. Yum. Enjoy!
That’s so exciting! It’d be fun to come up with all the different recipes you can use those veggies in every week. Color me jealous!
You will have to let me know how this goes! Steve is contmplating pursuing this next year…only we’re the suppliers! Enjoy. The garden definitely helped us meet our veggie quotas and then some!
I do think it’s awesome to have an incentive (rotting veggies) to eat more of them. I remember my mom joined a co-op one year and we got all sorts of things that we were unfamiliar with.
Enjoy!!
We have been part of a CSA for 4 years now. We really enjoy it and definitely have to get creative with some of the veggies.
The green chiles look like cubanelles. If they are, they are not hot like a chiles used in salsa. We slice them up and throw them in salad, but I recently saw a recipe for stuffed cubanelles.
Thanks, Tami! I thought they might be cubanelles at first too, but they seem to have a little kick to them…so maybe Anaheim or something else? I have no idea. But I combined one with a jalapeno to make some pico de gallo tonight and it came out great, so I’m sure we’ll find something to do with them.
Katrina,
Don’t forget with sweet corn, you can cut the corn off the cob next day, and make Corn Fritters.
Mom
That was one of the first things I thought of when I saw all that corn, Mom!
Are those Hungarian hot peppers? They are yummy in sandwiches if you like the heat. Add a little bit to any cooking where you’d like a bit of bite. They are awesome in scrambled eggs. You can chop them into portion sized freezer bags, freeze them and use them all winter.
Wow, that’s awesome. What does CSA stand for? How’d you find one local to you?