Posts Tagged ‘Lettuce’

CSA Week #3

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 by virginia

Yet another week has gone by and you know what that means: CSA! We’ve got veggies bursting out of our fridge but we still can’t get over how great they are. Farm fresh really does make a huge difference. Our share this week included:

LettuceĀ  – 1 large head
Garlic – 3 bulbs
Garlic scapes – 5 stalks
Radishes – 4
Onions – 4
Greens – 3/4 lb

We had a choice between romaine lettuce and red leaf lettuce so we chose the romaine, because we still had red leaf left over from last week. We also had a choice between ruby chard and kale for the greens, and we went with the kale because we had chard last week.

From left to right: onions, radishes, garlic, romaine, kale, garlic scapes

In even more exciting news, our fruit share started this week!! The email that we received regarding the contents was a bit confusing, and so we thought we were getting three pints of juice. Not exactly fruit, but we figured it was because it’s still early in the season. Turns out that we got three pints of cherries, plus a juice. There were several juices to choose from and we opted for rhubarb apple, since it seemed to be the most unusual option.

Cherries – 3 pints
Juice – one bottle

Cherries and rhubarb apple juice

The cherries are slightly tart but have a great firm, juicy texture. They’re good for snacking on their own, but I’m hoping to bake with some as well, since three pints is quite a lot of fruit.

Oodles of cherries

We’re still trying to cook more each week, and we’re getting much better about it. More recipes to come!

CSA Week #2

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 by virginia

It’s CSA time again! Can you believe that a week has already gone by? Josh picked up our second CSA share bounty and it was even bigger than the first week! For week #2, our share contents included:

Lettuce – 1 large head
Bok choy – 2 heads
Garlic – 1/4 lb
Garlic scapes – .2 lbs
Radishes – .45 lbs
Onions – .45 lbs
Greens large – .5 lb
Arugula – .2 lbs

The large greens this week had beautiful red stalks – anyone know exactly what kind of vegetable this is?

From left to right: Garlic, large greens, bok choy, radishes, red leaf lettuce, arugula, garlic scapes, onions

We are already starting to feel a bit overwhelmed with vegetables, and it’s only week #2! We still have some mint, bok choy, radishes, and greens left over from last week, and our schedules haven’t let us cook as much as we would like. But we’re making some progress, and we’re definitely enjoying every bit of our fresh veggies. More recipes to come soon!

CSA Week #1

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010 by virginia

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!