Josh and I decided to join a CSA this year after reading about CSA shares on other blogs. What is a CSA? It stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Read here for a good description of what a CSA is, but basically you buy a share of a farm for a season and your share translates into weekly vegetable deliveries. In addition to the vegetable share, we got a fruit share as well, though the fruit deliveries don’t start until later in the season.
The vegetable shares were supposed to start next week, but due to the freakishly hot weather recently, some of the crops have ripened sooner, so today was our first delivery. The pick up location is near our apartment, so Josh headed there straight after work, as we were both eager to see what we got. The core group of our CSA sends out the list of share contents the day of delivery, but seeing it on paper is different from seeing the bounty before your eyes.
So for Week #1, our share contents included:
Garlic Scapes – .16 lbs (or 4 scapes)
Lettuce – 2 heads
Pac Choi (bok choy) – 2 heads
Radish – .5 lbs (or 6 radishes)
Mint – .3 lbs
Greens – .75 lbs
It doesn’t sound like a lot, but believe me, we have enough vegetables to last us the week.
From left to right: Bok choy, greens, mint, lettuce, radishes, and garlic scapes in the middle
And considering that this is early in the season, I can’t even imagine what our contents will be like during the heart of the summer! I’m thrilled to bits that we decided to join a CSA, and I really hope that means we will be cooking more from here on out. We’ve already made a pesto sauce from the garlic scapes, which I’ll be posting about soon. Hopefully this will become a weekly feature from us every Wednesday when we pick up our share!
Tags: Bok Choy, Garlic Scapes, Greens, Lettuce, Mint, Radishes
I’m doing the CSA in NYC too!
It’s so much food already.. But I’m confident that I’ll make it through..
Try oven toasting your Bok Choy and Garlic scapes.. SO good..
Sean
We tried oven roasting bok choy – it was awesome!! Thanks for the tip!