CSA Share #16

I can't keep up! But this week's haul looks particularly promising :) I'm very excited to pick it up later today!

CSA Share 16
- 1 eggplant
- 2 bell peppers
- 2 heads garlic
- 1 bunch arugula
- 1 pint salad tomatoes
- 1 bunch assorted braising greens
- 1 bunch green onions
- 1 head romaine lettuce
- 1 bunch purple carrots
- 3/4 lb yellow wax beans
- 1 bunch young celery stalks

CWTC: purple carrots! Actually, it's a tie between the purple carrots and the yellow wax beans. I have a thing for odd-colored vegetables and fruits. I don't know. Nom nom. Did you know carrots were originally purple until the Dutch bred all the purple right out of them? Yeah, me either. Someone should invent a produce trivia section on Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit and Who Wants to be a Millionnaire,
TAV: Yellow wax beans. I'm going to try very lightly sauteeing them with a squeeze of lemon, a bit of garlic, and a dash of chili pepper flakes. That plus some nice braised greens sounds like a perfect fall weather dish to me!
WTF: Celery tops. What? Apparently, the farm's field team mistook the celery tops for parsley, and harvested them a bit early. Oops.
Oh well! I'm glad they're distributing them, instead of throwing them away. They'll make a wonderful addition to a hearty fall vegetable soup. I've been squirreling away bags of chicken stock for an occasion like this!

I think, with all the work and travel and life happenings that have been going on, that it makes more sense for me to accumulate a pile of post-season topics that I'll return to later. I'll continue to update with the weekly CSA share and interesting tidbits, but I'll save the meatier posts and the recipes for when things settle down a bit. That way, I'll have something to occupy myself with, even during the winter months when there's no fresh produce coming in.

I've been keeping a pretty decent photo log of my CSA adventures on facebook, so hopefully that will help. And I'll try to go back and retroactively post all my lovely pictures in this blog during the post-growing season as well. In the meantime...I will fight off this nasty little stomach bug and the aftereffects of my flu vaccine! Rawr!

It seems frosty weather has begun to nip at our heels. Free Bird Farm reported the first Jack Frost visitations and have wrapped up the summer vegetable patch. No more eggplant, tomatoes, or bell peppers for us. That's okay with me, I think I've eaten more eggplant and bell peppers than I ever thought I could in the past few months. I hope we get potatoes and more garlic!

I've noticed another upside of seasonal eating. Vegetables ripen just when they start to look appealing and appetizing. For example, I wouldn't want a lot of potatoes and heavy collard greens or escarole, winter squash, and chili peppers in the dead middle of a hot and humid summer. Shudder. I'd have to turn my oven on. >.<

Neither would I want light salad greens, tomatoes, and cucumbers when chilly fall evenings start to creep into the Northeast. I want something more substantial, with more depth and smoke and body. But boy, does a refreshing salad sound delicious in the summer! And on a crisp, cool autumn evening, a hearty dish of roasted sweet potatoes, sauteed beans, and sturdy bitter greens cooked with garlic and a bit of fried pork sounds like absolute heaven. Preferably eaten while wrapped up in a warm, cozy sweater or a fleece blanket. See what I mean? Yum yum.

Side note: I WANT A FRUIT SHARE T___T. This week, Maynard Farms is distributing Chardonnay grapes and the last of the summer watermelon. I die.

Apparently, these are very sweet grapes with 24% sugar content, that can be eaten right out of hand. To reiterate, T___________T.

Next year...I am going to sign up for chickens, eggs, and fruit. I can eat the light veggies and eggs during the summer and cook/freeze up the leftovers in soup for winter. The chickens come pre-frozen, so I can just store them away in the freezer until the winter, and then I can make all sorts of lovely dishes. A whole roast chicken on a cold, snowy December night sounds brilliant. I'll have to think about this a little more and check the past few growing seasons to see if this is feasible, but if I'm careful, I may be able to stretch out a full CSA share over a good portion of the year. Hmm...