CSA Share #1

Our CSA share pickup times are 5pm to 8pm, but I obviously need to be at work during that time. However, I figured I would plan out my CSA rendezvous so that I could grab my share, drop it off, and be back at work in about 30 minutes. A good plan - a great plan.

Of course, life doesn't go according to plan. For starters, it was raining.

Remember a few posts ago, how I waxed poetic about the rain? Yeah. All well and good in theory, but slogging through puddles was a bit less than fun. Especially since I was slogging and hopping awkwardly over puddles in heels. I'm just glad I managed to not sprain anything vital. Graceful, I am most definitely...not.

Once I made it to the pickup building, I took an elevator to the 5th floor, where the distribution was supposed to be taking place. I ended up on a floor with rows of numbered rooms. I walked down one hall, then another, looking for the "conference room," only to realize halfway down the third hall that I was wandering through a hotel. Wrong building.

I went back to the elevators and waited patiently for the elevator to bring me back down to earth so I could continue my CSA quest. I say patiently because the elevators (there were two!) took about 5 minutes to reach my floor. If I wasn't sure before, I was sure now: this was an old, decrepit building, and I was probably safer walking up and down the stairs than risking the elevator. But I'm lazy, so I just waited for the elevator.

Once I was safely on the ground, I went through a pair of double doors and asked the nice gentlemen at the front desk where the conference room was. They pointed right and said through those doors. I went right. I climbed a flight of stairs, only to realize it led straght to a locked door on the second floor. I went back to the nice gentlemen and inquired politely where the conference room was. This time, they pointed left. I thanked them and went on my way.

Once I went through the door on the left, there were two hallways and multiple doors. I went right. Nothing. I backtracked and went left. Eureka! Elevators! And the people coming out of the elevators were holding plastic bags full of green leaves. I was getting close. I could feel it!

This time, the elevators were slightly faster, but I was surrounded by sweaty people in a hot, dank elevator. We also stopped at every floor. My offended nose informed me that this was rather unpleasant, and this CSA share had better be worth it...

Upon reaching the fifth floor, I went left and for the first time all day, I had guessed right the first time. The conference room was straight ahead! (Okay, I cheated. I went left because that's where all the other people with bags of vegetables were coming from. But I still went the right direction the first time, which I think is remarkable regardless of the circumstances surrounding the decision. Plus, it shows my strong deductive skills.)

CSA Share #1

I walked in, initialed my name on the sign-in sheet, and went down the row picking out my vegetable allotment for the week:

- 1 bunch frisee

- 1 head romaine lettuce

- 1 bunch Easter Egg radishes

- 6.5 oz mixed baby salad greens

- 1 bunch red spring onions

- 1 bunch arugula

- 1 bunch kale

- 1 bunch cilantro

It all looked so good and so fresh, I wanted to start munching away at the table. But that would have earned me some odd stares and possibly an escort out of the building (plus a mouthful of dirt), so I restrained myself and packed away my shares into my plastic bags.

Halfway through my perusal of the red spring onions (such a pretty color!), the woman next to me found a large bug in the pile of frisee I had just been sorting through.

Lady: Oh hello! What are you doing here?

Other lady: Is that a bug?

Lady: Yeah, let me just take him outside. Come here little fella! I'm not gonna hurt you. Come here!
Other lady: Wow, he's a big one!
Lady: Aww come here, little guy! Aww he's scared!

Me (in my head): UHHHHHHHHHH.

Fortunately, I'm not the squeamish type except when it comes to cockroaches and millipedes/centipedes. Earwigs freak me out too, but those I can deal with. I used to play with potato bugs and collect earthworms. And I caught scorpions and released them outside in the name of humane-bug-treatment. So I wasn't completely unsympathetic to the lady. But at the same time, I think 5+ years of living in super-urban environments has made me a bit less capable of mentally dealing with bugs, so I decided to speed through the CSA pickup line and pray that the bug would remain terrified long enough for me to escape into the elevator before the bug-savior managed to catch him. I wasn't exactly keen on the idea of sharing a cramped, dank, humid SLOW elevator with our lovely bug-savior, the bug, and a couple of sweaty strangers who might not take kindly to the ongoing bug-rescue.

I grabbed my spoils and fled out the door, willing the elevator doors to shut before bug-savior came barreling through. Fortunately, my prayers were answered and I was on my merry way down to the ground floor sans bug.

Walking home was a trial, as I tried to balance my umbrella, bag and vegetables while hopping around puddles in my heels without crushing my delicate salad greens and arugula. Fortunately, I'd had the foresight to pack away my delicate greens in my purse, so they were somewhat more protected than the plastic bags banging away at my knees as I jumped and skipped my way home.

I dumped the vegetables into individual plastic bags after admiring them for a few minutes, shoved them in my fridge, and ran back to my office. Total adventure time? 45 minutes. Not bad, but next time I'm hoping to shave that down to half an hour.

After seeing this week's share, I'm thinking a salad spinner would be really handy. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with everything just yet, but I've got a few ideas. The radishes will make a nice snack or salad addition, and I can use the spring onions and cilantro in spam fried rice. I've invited one of my friends to come eat salad with me on Friday night and she happily accepted. Since she just moved to the city, all she has in her pantry is spam. Ergo, spam fried rice. I can't use all the cilantro though (and my roommate hates it), so I'm not sure what to do with it. We'll see...

I'm really excited about the kale though! Lovely, gorgeous kale leaves that will make beautiful kale chips. Woo!

  

KALE CHIPS?!

And I'm thinking that sauteed radish greens and frisee would make lovely additions to our salad/spam fried rice dinner. We'll see!

Frisee: wilted?

 Anyways, it's late, I'm out. I think I'll hold off on washing anything until Friday and cross my fingers that the cilantro and greens stay fresh. Not worried about the radishes or kale, but a little concerned about the baby salad greens. I always feel like Friday is so far from Monday (or Tuesday, or Wednesday...), but this Friday in particular feels like it can't come fast enough.

More pictures of this week's haul:



Radishes! So cheerful and bright :)



So happy :)

Good things come to those who wait

Yay! First share to be distributed today :) I have to figure out how to sneak out from work to pick up my share and drop it off before heading back, but I'm sure I'll find a way. Shares are distributed from 5pm to 8pm, so maybe I can step out around 7:30pm. I'm already super excited!

Countdown

One week until the first share gets distributed! Eep!

Crazy work weeks

If I have more weeks like this at work, I have no clue how I'm going to balance picking up a CSA share and dealing with washing/chopping/cooking my portion. Every day, I've been getting home past 3am. The only respite I had was the weekend, where I managed to at least sleep in until 11am on Saturday and noon on Sunday. Still stuck at work until the wee hours though.

Don't get me wrong - I knew it would be like this before I started my job. And I don't mind, most of the time. But it's making me a bit worried about the summer/fall with regards to the CSA program.

When work gets really crazy, not only do I not have time to handle even basic daily responsibilities like laundry, I don't even have the appetite to ingest anything beyond caffeine, sugar, caffeine, and more sugar. Stress and lack of sleep wreak havoc on my body and I become unable to eat anything that's not a simple carb. Even the type of simple carb degenerates from fructose to glucose as my stress levels mount. I have a stash of perfectly decent apples, bananas and pears at my desk, but they go untouched in favor of cookies and chocolate.

When things calm down a bit, I'm going to take some time to think of things I can do in advance to keep myself from feeling pressured by joining a CSA. Buying tupperware en masse might be a good start.

Also, I'm planning on moving out from my current apartment mid-July. Trying to figure out if this will be an issue. I don't think so, because I'm always at work during CSA pick up times anyways and the pick up location is close to my office. If I pick up my share during work and bring it to the office, I imagine I can hold onto my share and just take it home with me later. I'm glad I picked a CSA close to work so that relocating doesn't have as big of an impact on my ability to pick up my shares.

I wonder what people do if they sign up for a CSA share and then have to move halfway through the season?

Also, how do people manage to hold down a job AND feed a family / deal with kids? I can't even take care of myself properly. -__________-

Rainy days

April showers bring May flowers. But what do May showers bring?

The weather has been reflecting my mood. Or perhaps my mood has been reflecting the weather. Chickens and eggs.

I don't dislike it though.

Even after four years in Chicago and a year in New York, I still like watching the rain fall. Any kind of rain. There are different kinds, you know. Warm summer rains, drizzly autumn rains, misty spring rains... I've even cultivated a mild appreciation for those bitter winter rain-sleet-hybrids that always search you out on that one day you happen to leave your scarf or umbrella at home. Snow, of course, is another matter entirely. Excepting the magic of the first snowfall, I find snow tolerable, and only just.

Embrace the rain, shy away from the cold. I guess that's what happens when you grow up in a desert. But as much as I like the rain, I usually prefer to observe quietly from the drier side of the windowpane, preferably with a latte or cappuccino.

I don't know why I find rain so fascinating, but I do.

One of my first memories is (of all things) watching the rain fall on the sidewalk leading to our front door. I remember hearing the thunder rumbling, the dark clouds gathering and blotting out the sun, and I climbed up onto the couch, waiting, patiently, for the first big fat drops to splatter against the cement in quarter size circles. Faster and faster, until the concrete turned a dark, wet grey, and the drops on the windowpane skiied down the glass in crazy zigzags, eating up the smaller droplets like demented snowballs rolling down a vertical hill. Summer monsoons, predictable as clockwork. A first memory, but only the first of many. Why did I collect these particular memories and store them away? I don't know.

Maybe it's because living in a desert is a perpetual reminder of how precarious life is. There is no material possession more prized than water, but you won't remember this until it's not there. In a desert, of course, you remember almost daily. The creosote bushes, the lizards and the rabbits, even those seemingly invincible cacti with their precious treasure locked away in a thick vault of wax, defended by cleverly vicious spines, are always living paycheck to paycheck. Doing without, saving, scrimping, planning, urgently waiting to ease their thirst. The threat of drought looms heavy. Always.

And when it finally rains, it means something. Perhaps that's why people take the time to describe the smell of desert rain. They often call the smell intoxicating or sweet or even tantalizing, when a gust of wind carries the scent of far-off rain for miles, yet not a single drop touches the ground. When it rains, you can smell the desert turning green. Overnight, the ocotillo stalks transform from grey, prickly caterpillars into vibrant green butterflies, their red antennae floating gently in the sky. A single rainstorm can paint the desert overnight in jewel tones that shine almost garishly after such a prolonged, dusty absence of color. A day, and the eyes adjust to the brighter palette and it no longer seems remarkable. A week, and the color fades away gradually. A month, and it is a distant memory and the mountains and the washes wait patiently to bloom again.

Rain brings death to the desert as well. Torrential streams and violent flash floods wreak havoc every year, but when the summer heat becomes unbearable and our postage-stamp size lawns wither into sad, half yellow patches of dried grass, we firmly align rain with life. We danced silly little rain dances on our way home from the bus stop after school and we sang made-up songs to the (non-existent) clouds as we skipped along the asphalt road, the summer sun melting the tar into sticky black pools. If it rained, we would congratulate ourselves on our skills of persuasion and celebrate having coaxed the skies into breathing some life back into the wash behind our houses where we would build forts and play after school until dinnertime. By the time we convinced the summer monsoons to make an appearance, it was usually too late for our sad little lawns, but we never played there, so we didn't care much. In any case, we spared hardly a single thought of the damage rain could bring. The unrelenting, grim scepter of drought loomed much more threateningly than the occasional freak flash flood.

Maybe that's why I was so startled last fall when I was browsing through the Free Bird Farm blog and found a post begging for the rain to stop. Too much rain? What an embarrassment of riches. But as I read further, I realized rain could be just as indisious and destructive as drought. While Arizona burned up in flames last summer, as usual, upstate New York dissolved away under the unrelenting rains.

Hurricane Irene stripped away the topsoil on several farms, leaving bare rock and no hope for summer or fall crops. Though other farms survived the hurricane, the topsoil grew waterlogged from the drizzle that persisted through the whole season and crops succumbed before the farmers could bring them to their CSA members' boxes or farmer's market stalls.

I was here that summer. I holed up in my apartment for Hurricane Irene, armed with two boxes of pasta, a plastic carton of salad greens, a bottle of cheap wine, and my stranded parents. I can't tell to this day whether they were more horrified by the hurricane or by the state of my pantry. In any case, I don't recall feeling particularly worried about anything at all. Even the next day, when reports of the damage filtered through, I scoffed and brushed it off. After all, it had only sprinkled in Manhattan and all the sand bags and preparation seemed silly in the post-storm daylight. It wasn't until I read the Free Bird Farm blog post that the impact hit home.

When you live in a city, you don't really feel the urgency of the weather the same way you do when you're not in the city. Everything can be controlled, mostly. Thermostats and windows, sand bags and plywood boards, supermarkets and 24-hour delis. You forget that life normally depends on forces that are completely out of your control. The sun, the rain, hail, sleet, frost, insects and fungus are just a few stumbling blocks for the farmer and his or her crops.

Yet for us, the consumers, the threats register only faintly, if at all. I can't recall the last time I paid close attention to the day-to-day weather. Most of the time, my thoughts revolve around the need for a coat or umbrella. When I eat, I rarely think about how many potential disasters were overcome for that vegetable to land successfully on my plate. Sometimes, I even get upset because there's a bug-size hole or a sneaky aphid stowaway hidden in one leaf of lettuce. But if I think about it, it's really a miracle that an entire head of lettuce even made it to my fridge with just one insect-size meal missing or with just a lone stray passenger clinging to one leaf.

All this made me think about how the average consumer might react to their first CSA box. Perhaps the novelty coats the first box in a friendly rose-hued tint. But the second? Third? I wonder how many people react positively when a natural disaster hits or when a host of insects decides to snack on a crop of kale intended for the next CSA share box. How many people have romanticized the concept of a CSA, only to grow disillusioned and angry when they receive a CSA share that doesn't live up to their supermarket-cultivated aesthetics or their hipster conception of "local-food"? Or when they just don't receive a share at all or when a season is cut short (as was the case with the farmers whose topsoil was completely washed away)? The whole premise of a CSA is that we're all in this together. This is why I think it's such a great idea for CSA's or their farm partners to have a blog, if only to bring the reality home to us.

I think anyone considering joining a CSA should take the time to read through an entire season's worth of blog posts from a CSA. Any CSA. It's worth doing, if only to get a sense of the vagaries of Mother Nature that are a part and parcel of the CSA experience. So maybe you didn't get heirloom tomatoes this year. Maybe you recieved more garlic scapes than you think you'll ever eat in a lifetime. So? Take it in stride and think of it as an exercise in creativity. (And remind me of my own advice later this summer, please. I may need it or risk hypocrisy. Ha.)

I guess it does help that I grew up in a desert and lived in snowy Chicago for several years before ending up in the concrete jungle. I don't take good weather for advantage and I know how hard it is for things to grow according to plan. After all, nature intrinsically has no plan. And that's the beauty and the fun of it. But if we have another season like last year (knock on wood), I may have to rebalance my affection for the rain. Frosty weather, of course, is still out.

Eat Seasonally, Save a Taste Bud!

I thought this was quite clever. So what's a girl to do? Share it, of course!

Adorable Eat Seasonably Calendar*

Why is knowing what fruits and vegetables are in season important anyways? Don't we have bigger things to worry about? Well, yes, I agree. #firstworldproblems...but only because in the "first world," we have the option to eat things out of season. Strawberries in December? Kale in July? Tomatoes year round? Sure, no problem, sounds great. Globalization has saved us...as long as you were born without taste buds. Didn't take me long to discover this.

When I was a young girl, May was positively the best time of the year. May meant the last day of school, beautiful weather...and cherries. All the cherries I could eat. And eat them I did. By the 3lb bag. As soon as cherry season hit, my mom would buy two bags. One for me and one for the rest of my family. I usually ended up eating both bags...


My devotion to cherries was unmatched and probably stemmed from the fact that I knew the cherries would be gone soon. Like a camel at an oasis in a desert, I gorged myself, knowing that in a few short weeks, I'd have no more cherries and one more year standing between me and my next 3lb bag. When I was 5 years old, I didn't know much, but I did know that one year = eternity. It's like 20% of my life!

My parents were poor assistant profs working hard to provide for the family, so while we were comfortable, my parents didn't splurge on unnecessary items when I was a little girl. But as my parents became more established (read: promoted to real profs!), my mom would surprise me occasionally with my favorite treats or a cheery bunch of jonquils or tulips. One late autumn day, I came home from school, peeked in the fridge, and to my surprise, I found a bag of cherries! I knew they were inordinately expensive when they were out of season, which is probably why my mom only bought one bag. With all the instinctive self-confidence that only young children possess, I just knew it was mine. But just in case...

Me: For me Mom? Really?

Mom: Yes, for you. For working so hard in school.

Me: *briefly overwhelmed by eternal gratitude and love, distracted quickly by cherries* (I prefer to remember myself not as being bratty, but rather very excitable with a tendency towards intense concentration on achieving my goals. In this instance, eating my cherries.)

Words can't describe my glee. One year of waiting had magically halved itself. I washed the cherries and squirreled away a bowl to my room, planning to enjoy my spoils in peace and quiet.

The first cherry was a disappointment. It was bland. I chalked it up as an outlier. After all, in a 3lb bag, there were always going to be some reject cherries that were too pulpy, sour, or ugly to be eaten. I tried another. And another. I may not have been the sweetest or cutest child, but I was fairly bright. After three cherries, I realized something was horribly wrong. These were not cherries. These were not even reject cherries. These were imposter cherries. Not only were they not sweet and juicy, they weren't even tart or pulpy. They were just bland and altogether unappealing.

A picture is worth a thousand words. So, The Incident, in picture form:

Picture Re-cap of Cherry Disaster #1



And because I <3 JGL and because 500 Days of Summer is the story of my life right about now, but mostly because I <3 JGL...

Picture Re-cap of Cherry Disaster #2


I looked at the bowl sadly and determinedly forced myself to finish every last, tasteless cherry. My mom made the effort to treat me to one of my favorite fruits and I wasn't about to throw it back in her face. (See? Not a brat. Just very focused.)

This encounter with out of season cherries was traumatic enough to convince me never to touch another bag of cherries until it was cherry season. I learned, through trial and error and induction, that the same rule applies to pretty much every other fruit or vegetable I can think of. The only exception are hothouse cucumbers, because hothouses don't have seasons. Duh.

When I went away to college and had to start buying my own groceries with my own dollars, I realized that finding in-season produce had yet another benefit beyond taste and quality. It's usually cheaper! Double winning :D

Each year that has passed since that fateful cherry incident has not necessarily made me any wiser, but it certainly has made me older. :( But fortunately, I don't think I've gotten (much) stupider. At least I haven't forgotten the In-Season-Produce-Wins lesson. Honestly, buying in-season produce is almost always the best option in a grocery store and it's getting easier to do every year. If you have a smartphone, it's super easy to look up growing seasons for a particular item. Alternatively, just look for whatever's cheaper and looks decent. That's usually a solid indicator of in-season produce. Careful not to buy produce that's on sale for being ugly, bruised and overripe though! Common sense is your friend.

If, tragically, you lack common sense...no fear! The absolute easiest and most foolproof way to get seasonal fruit and veg is...yup. You guessed it. By signing up for a CSA (or by visiting a farmer's market)! The very nature of a CSA/farmer's market means that you should end up with seasonal and super fresh produce. Since these are the two biggest contributors to the taste and quality of produce, I think it's safe to say that if you are lucky enough to find a good CSA with a reputable farm partner, you'll find it hard to go back to the flavorless, grainy, mealy produce aisles of your grocery store. As a final benefit, CSA's are local as well, which means you might be eating greener for the planet too. Whether this is true is up for debate, but hey, at the very least, you're supporting the local economy and helping build a community!

All this talk about seasonal produce and CSA's is getting me super excited. CANNOT WAIT...............here's to hoping the mild weather continues and that our farmers don't get hit by crazy rainstorms or freak frosts. :)

*Caveat: This calendar, though cute, is for the lovely residents in the UK. Which is not where I am. So...I'm using this as a broad guideline with a generous helping of common sense and my trusty phone internetz. At least until my CSA shares start arriving.

social musings

Time and time again, I realize how central food is to the formation of community. Eating is such a social act, with food singlehandedly defining entire cultures and communities. Even the act of eating family meals together has been shown to be correlated with healther, better behaved children (which probably leads to happier parents too). I can't think of any other single act that brings people together so effectively (except maybe drinking haha).

I was reading an article on the importance of family meals, and one section in particular stuck out to me:

“But something precious was lost, anthropologist Fox argues, when cooking came to be cast as drudgery and meals as discretionary. "Making food is a sacred event," he says. "It's so absolutely central--far more central than sex. You can keep a population going by having sex once a year, but you have to eat three times a day." Food comes so easily to us now, he says, that we have lost a sense of its significance. When we had to grow the corn and fight off predators, meals included a serving of gratitude. "It's like the American Indians. When they killed a deer, they said a prayer over it," says Fox. "That is civilization. It is an act of politeness over food. Fast food has killed this. We have reduced eating to sitting alone and shoveling it in. There is no ceremony in it."

First of all, this is funny. But second of all, it’s so true. Food has gotten too easy. You don’t value what is easily available. Why do you think girls (and guys!) play hard to get all the time? Haha.

But seriously. Think about it. The food you cook at home is probably less tasty than what you could get from a restaurant, unless you are Jamie Oliver. But the pride you feel after cooking a meal makes it taste a lot better than it probably should. Why is that? It’s because you worked hard, dammit, and you’re going to be excited and eat every last piece of rubbery, undercooked chicken that you made (and so will everyone else) because you made it. All by yourself. It’s like when a child makes a macaroni painting of questionable aesthetic appeal and the child’s parents can’t stop talking about how beautiful it is. You almost feel like you're looking at a Picasso masterpiece, though your eyes are clearly telling you otherwise.

I think one of the biggest reasons I was drawn to the idea of a CSA was because it brings back some of the significance to food that I feel like I’ve lost. When I eat literally every weekday meal at my desk at work, it becomes unimportant. Unshared. I’m not about to get all depressed over this, but I definitely miss sharing those moments at the cafeteria, dining hall, or family dinner table.

Even in college, when I was fairly busy and ended up eating on the run half the time, most of my social activities revolved around meeting up with people to eat. Even on nights out, my friends and I always end up bonding over late night munchies. Now that I've graduated, this continues to be true, but with one major difference. In college, we ate out a lot, but we would also get together and make dinner, experiment with new recipes, or bake random goodies to get us through another rough midterm-laden week on a fairly regular basis.

Now?

I can't remember the last time I cooked with anyone. I still try to cook occasionally, but I haven't met up with a group of friends to cook in a long, long time. I miss that.

One big side benefit of joining a CSA could be that it will force me to cook more often. And if I'm cooking more often, I will probably bring some friends over to cook dinner or brunch with me at some point. And that would be really nice.


Goal for the summer:

Haha just kidding, I only wish my apartment looked like that :D
But the sangria is not just kidding. That's definitely happening.