Missing the Weekly CSA Share

This is the first week I don’t have a CSA share since the season ended last week and won’t start again until next June. It feels odd to not have the bounty of fresh veggies coming in from that source. I am intent on getting every bit of goodness out of what is left --- wondering how long I can go before I’ll buy veggies from my grocery store’s produce section. It won’t be this week certainly.

The refrigerator was so full that the ‘cool’ actually got a bit cooler and some of the greens froze…so I used them in soup and stir fry. I still have lettuce, spinach, radicchio, and cabbage for salads…lots of root vegetables (carrot, turnips, sweet potatoes, and radishes) for slaw. I have peppers, pac choi and tatsoi for stir fry. I’m trying to eat the most fragile veggies first.

I thought the cilantro might degrade first so I made salsa with it (using tomatoes and hot peppers from earlier in the CSA season and frozen). I love the blend of the veggies with onion, garlic, and half a lemon. I use salsa for more than just tacos; it becomes salad dressing and stir fry sauce…a drizzle on the top of soup.

There is still a butternut squash, small white potatoes, and garlic along with a lot of sweet potatoes that don’t take up any room in the refrigerator and will be edible for quite some time.

I’ve got dried thyme and parsley/carrot tops that will season foods into the winter too.

The big lesson learned from the CSA is how good vegetables can be. I am a little spoiled with getting them the same day they are picked so I choose carefully in the grocery store during the offseason. I don’t try to eat the same all during the year. During the winter I like to have warm meals so I tend to eat a lot less salad type greens and stick with the sturdy greens (kale, cabbage, pac choi) that hold up well in stir fries or soups. Sometimes my grocery store has organic greenhouse dandelion greens and that is a treat in winter!

CSA Week 14

When I returned home….the whole week 13 share was waiting. My husband had not even cut the watermelon! I managed to eat a few tomatoes, some peppers and half the watermelon before I picked up week 14! I was glad that I still had room in the freezer for the larger tomatoes.

I celebrated that sweet potato leaves were included in this share. I like the so much I traded the okra for a second bundle….and there was lettuce too. There will be lots of good salads this next week. I made tomato soup for the first meal after I picked up the week 14 share…using some of the tomatoes, peppers, sweet potato leaves, and oregano.

Another celebration in this share: honey. It was well timed to sooth my linger sore throat (along with lemon in hot tea).

CSA Week 11

It’s a good thing that some of the veggies this week do not need to go into the refrigerator (onions, garlic, potatoes) because we got both a watermelon and cantaloupe along with 3 kinds of tomatoes (3 heirloom, a pint of cherry, and 2 pounds of romas) and 2 kinds of peppers (1 bell and 4 snacking (since I traded my 2 jalapenos for snacking)). I decided to put the thyme in water on the window sill since I am using it up pretty quickly (I’ve already finished the bunch I got a few weeks ago). I had to make two trips to the car for this share since the watermelon was so heavy it had to be carried by itself; the same thing happened to me last year.

I am enjoying the herbs from the CSA (thyme, basil, chives and oregano so far) and the ones I have in my garden (basil, chives and mint). They - along with the garlic and onion - definitely add a lot of flavor to foods very quickly. Stir fry sauces are not needed when there are so many herbs readily available around the kitchen!

Am I to the point of freezing the cherry tomatoes? Maybe. I did it last year about this time and they were very easy to pop into soups - still frozen - to provide tomato flavor and color in the dead of winter. I like to just make sure they are clean then put them into a plastic container to freeze. Usual their skin does not break - or if it does the tomato is already frozen enough that the juice does not leak out. For me - it is the fastest way to save the goodness of summer tomatoes until winter.