Community Supported Agriculture

This year's garden is finally in. I'm writing this on Steve's computer - my old computer - which is ridiculously slow, so no pictures of the garden yet. I'll post them when I upload them onto my Mac. But we have 3 kinds of tomatos (2 regular grape tomatos, a white cherry tomato, and a green zebra cherry tomato), jalepeno, zucchini, cucumber, peas, kale, onions, and horseradish. As for herbs, we have 2 kinds of basil, parsley, oregano, rosemary, and mint. I still want to find cinnamon basil and catnip.

You would think that all those veggies would be enough. But no. We also suscribed to a CSA this year. I read about them in "In Defense of Food," and then found one online. Basically, a local farm takes suscriptions for the season and then delivers you a box of veggies each week. We got a suscription through November, so I'm really excited about the fall vegetables, as well as about getting things I've never had before, like rudabaga and dandelion greens. The CSA winds up being less than $30/week, and we get a huge amount of stuff - enough that we'll have to consciously make an effort to eat all of them. Plus, we're getting chemical-free produce - so its more nutritious than veggies grown with the NPK fertilizers. And we're supporting a local farm that encourages diverse farming, instead of farming acre after acre of one type of plant, which decreases soil health.

Today was our first CSA pickup. As its early in the season, we got A LOT of leafy vegetables...

spinach, collards, dandelion greens, red leaf lettuce, bok choi, scallions, and parsley. We're definitely excited to have this box, but it is a little repetitive to have so many leafy greens - we'll be having salads and chicken on top of wilted greens a lot this week! Tonight I experimented with the dandelion greens. I cooked up some pasta, and then sauteed garlic and a scallion from the box, added the dandelion, and then later added sliced cherry tomatoes and mushrooms. A little salt, pepper, and parmesean to top it off, and it was a pretty decent meal. The dandelion was a little bitter, though. I wish I had had a lemon to cut the bitterness with some acidity. Next time.

-D