CSA Week 2 (our first pick-up)

Last year was our first experience with a CSA, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it again. Part of the problem was that our old CSA (which I loved for many, many reasons) was about a 35 minute drive from home, and the pick-up interfered with other Wednesday night activities. After a long winter without fresh vegetables, we broke down and joined a (different) CSA this year. The pickup location for our new CSA is much closer to home (it is a 7 block walk). The prices were a little bit lower as well, but the format of the CSA is different. Last year we had a half share, which meant we got half of a box of produce every week. This year we signed up for an every other week share (which seems more typical, based on the CSAs we looked at) and we get a full box of produce every other week. Last week was the first official week of our CSA, but we're even-week EOW customers, so today was our first pick-up.

We got lettuce, green onions, chives, and radishes. I'm ready for salad!

If only I had saved a few strawberries from the farmers' market . . .

Eating my words, and good vegetables too.

In the middle of December I got an email from the farmer who runs the CSA we joined last year. I put "thinking about joining a CSA" on my list of things to get to eventually. Yesterday I let my dad pour over my Seed Savers Exchange catalog for a while. He pointed out that the huckleberries I want to plant are described as "tasteless" (unless you make them into mock blueberry pie or preserves) and he picked out a couple of varieties of peppers to plant (I don't like peppers) but other than that he seemed to approve my choices.

Nevertheless, I'm hungry for a little more than we can grow in four raised beds and a sprawling melon/squash patch. So I started thinking about CSAs again this morning. At first, I thought we'd rejoin the CSA from last summer. Sure, it's out of the way, but I could get a worker share and we could eat for free (and a little sweat and hard work). When I checked out the worker shares, though, I discovered that they won't work with my spring and fall schedule. Last summer, too many workers were high school students who could only work on the weekends during the school year, so this year all of the workers have to pick a time slot sometime between 8 and 5 Monday through Friday, and they need to stick with that slot all summer. That might be fine if I were in a different profession, but I can't ask my high school students to have English class in the evenings so I can work at a farm in May and September.

I thought about writing to the farmer to see if we could arrange a different schedule. This farmer is a great guy, he has access to amazing sweet corn, and if I could have found a few more interested buyers, he would have hooked me up with a freezer full of grass-fed beef. Oh yeah, and he sells eggs and maple syrup too. He's a good guy. So good, in fact, that last summer he recommended that my husband and I join a different CSA that is a little closer to home. Because the worker shares didn't seem to be working for me, I looked up the other farm, and sure enough, they have a pick-up on Tuesdays that is approximately five blocks from my house. Their half share is also cheaper than my old CSA's. And while I'm a little too shy (and inexperienced) to sign up for a worker share at a farm I've never been to, we can go to their farm events this summer, like we did at Forest Run Farm last summer, and get to know people. Then maybe I can get a worker share for next summer with the new CSA - Luna Circle Farm.

I have the application all filled out, but we're waiting to send a check until I find out that they do have a share available. (I think they do, or their website would say their shares are all sold out, but it seems silly to send $300 off into the void without making sure we're going to get something in return.) I know I said last summer that I didn't think we'd do a CSA again, but it turns out I just can't help myself.

Good food is all around. Yesterday my mom and I went to the indoor farmers' market and I brought home some frost-sweetened spinach (that my mom bought), some raw milk cheddar cheese, a bag of organic carrots, two bulbs of garlic, some gluten-free cookies for the teacher I share an office with, and a roast.

My dad also sent me home with part of a roast he'd been marinating for some buddies, and I have some ham thawing in the fridge for Worms, so we're going to be eating pretty well this week! (The roast I bought is in the freezer, waiting for a time when we have a little less ready-to-eat food in the house.)

Right now I need to go make a loaf of bread, and get back to school work.

Last of the Zucchini, Take Two

On Wednesday, before I picked up the last CSA of the season, I went to my parents' house. I went there for two reasons. First, I wanted to see my dad who had knee surgery last week, but is now up and walking around on crutches. Second, I wanted to do some gardening.

I left the remaining carrots in the ground, since they keep well there, and knew I was getting some from the CSA. I picked a lot of zucchini, though. And two potatoes, two butternut squash, and a pumpkin. And I brought some questionable onions home with me.

I'm not kidding about the zucchini. I picked a Lot. NINE.
The dog ate part of one, because the flower end was starting to rot.

Okay, so they weren't particularly large zucchini, like some of the ones I harvested this summer. In fact, they were downright puny:
but they're still zucchini (and that is a votive candle).

I made the rest for dinner tonight, along with an eggplant I picked up at my local Thursday Farmers' Market,
two CSA onions and one questionable onion from my garden, (The onions my dad and I grew are all spotty and slightly soft.)
a quart of homemade tomato puree from Thursday Market tomatoes,
and some garlic powder, because I don't have any real garlic at the moment.
Okay, okay, I also threw in the 16 ounce package of button mushrooms from California that I bought at the grocery store last week.
I mixed this veggie goodness with a package of curly pasta that my husband requested from the grocery store. Voila. Dinner for two, and a whole lot of leftovers.

CSA Confession

I just wasted an hour watching a new program on my favorite TV channel, TLC. I caught a few seconds of the next show while I was picking up my dinner dishes and grabbing the remote. The show - Hoarders: Buried Alive - kind of freaks me out. In the four minutes since I watched the intro and sat down at my computer, I have forgotten the exact wording of the lead-in, but it was something like "this isn't an apartment, it's a garbage dump." The words resonated with me. Even though I'm feeling under the weather and could easily veg out in front of a show that holds no interest (and a little bit of disgust) for me, I had to turn the tv off because I have bigger fish to fry tonight. Er . . . bigger vegetables to process. While my house could be tidier and my kitchen floor needs to be mopped, the phrase struck a chord because I feel like my fridge is turning into a garbage dump lately. And I don't particularly care for the feeling. So after I finish this quick blog, I'm off to do something with all of this produce.

This morning I took some moldy grapes out of the fridge from a farmers' market trip two (?) weeks ago, as well as a quarter of a tomato that I really don't think I'm going to eat - because there are still more than a half-dozen sitting on my counter getting old - there is a small bag of beets in the fridge, two tiny bags of radishes, and two large bags of green beans, plus assorted bags of greens that have been collecting for three weeks now, and a large bag of tomatillos that I really thought I'd use for salsa, but I never found the time to make it. There is celery that is one week old and wilting, which I desperately want to make chicken stock with, but my schedule is unpredictable right now and I am not sure when I am going to have the four-plus hours it will take to make it. I have three bags of potatoes, and several shallots that should be cooked as well. Don't forget the four pumpkins sitting on my kitchen counter - I can't decide if I should cook them and freeze the puree for pumpkin pie, or just let them sit here until I need pumpkin for something.

I went apple picking with a friend on Monday and brought home several pounds of windfalls that need to be made into applesauce and apple pie filling soon! (I was proud of myself on Monday night because my mom gave me some pork chops she had thawed out then realized she and my dad would not eat before going out of town on Tuesday - I served them with 12 baby red potatoes - microwaved for about 12 minutes - and apple slices (from 2 apples) sauteed in a little bit of butter with apple pie spice and maple syrup for seasoning.)

On top of the produce I already owned, I brought home another bag full of CSA produce today, including one sweet pepper, a baggie full of tiny hot peppers, a bag of peas which I actually can't wait to eat, three large turnips, a small bag of potatoes, two large bags of greens, some dill, and a few other things I can't remember right now.

At this point in the season, I am vegetabled out.

Some of these vegetables that are wasting away were free-to-me because they came from seeds/plants my dad bought for our garden. Others were very cheap. I bought my zucchini and pumpkin seeds, and am satisfied with the harvest, although one zucchini went to waste and a second one is on its way in that direction. I bought the grapes that went bad at the farmers' market - they seemed like such a good idea - and they were tasty, but my husband didn't like them and they made my mouth itchy, so they sat around for too long while we ate apples instead.

I enjoyed having the garden this year, and, as I have mentioned in previous posts, I have big plans in my head for tweaks for the garden next year. As long as someone loans me a yard, I will be happy to put in the work myself towards making a garden productive and useful.

But I don't think Michael and I will join a CSA again next year. This is a hard decision for me to make because I like our farmer a lot, I think he uses good farming practices, and at one time I had big plans for getting more out of our CSA for next year - in addition to the veggies we signed up for this year, the farm does egg shares and members have the option of "adopting" a chicken (or more likely a rooster) who will come home at some point as Sunday dinner. It is hard for me to think about telling Farmer John that we won't be coming back next year. I'll tell him the truth - it's not you, it's me.

Some of my friends have been impressed by my ability to go to the farmers' market and buy a bunch of seasonal produce, then bring it home and turn it into dinner. I don't go with a recipe in mind, I just buy what looks good and figure something out when I get home. But the thing I like about the farmers' market is that I don't have to buy things I won't use - like tomatillos and hot peppers. At our CSA I don't have the option not to bring home things I won't use. Okay, I guess I could just leave them at the farm for some other member, but I believe in giving most things a try. (I did use two or three hot peppers in the salsa I made while canning tomatoes.)

I have read (I don't remember where) that farmers' markets are actually the least profitable way for farmers to sell directly to the public. I suppose part of this is because there are costs associated with opening a stall and making sure someone is there to sell the vegetables. Also, there is no guarantee that food will sell at the market. A farmer may grow a bumper crop of zucchini and bring the most beautiful specimens to the market, only to discover that it won't sell - for whatever reason (no one in the whole city likes zucchini; other farmers have a superior product; other farmers have a cheaper product; all the home gardeners grew too much, etc.). Likewise, the farmer may lose business because she did not grow carrots and everyone wants to try the new carrot cake recipe they read about in Midwest Living.

The beauty of the CSA, from the farmers' perspective (and Farmer John mentioned this in our weekly newsletter recently), is that the buyers/shareholders/members take the risk about what the farm produces, right along with the farmer. I signed up for a CSA that gave me a list of fruits and veggies they might produce. I paid a flat fee in January for produce that would be delivered over the spring-summer-fall. There were no guarantees involved. The farm could have flooded in April and never recovered. The tomato blight my farmer was afraid of could have ruined the tomato crop - but it didn't. I know for a fact that our CSA's bell pepper crop did very poorly this year. To make up for this fact Farmer John planted more radishes and greens, to make sure he could fill our box each week - although there were certainly some weeks that our boxes were only half full in spite of his planting quick-growing crops to make up for the slower-developing crops that did not work out.

This risk does not always work out poorly for the CSA member. This year, our CSA's crop of zucchini also did poorly. This may actually have been a source for some rejoicing in my household, as we were sort of overwhelmed with zucchini from my own garden. And for the consumer who loves salad greens, our CSA has certainly had plenty of those this year!

I think you begin to see my point. At the farmers' market, while I don't always know what they are going to have, I never have to bring something home that I know I don't want to eat. At the CSA, sometimes I'm thrilled with my haul, sometimes I get sick of a particular type of vegetable, sometimes I don't have any idea what to do with something in my box (although my CSA does provide recipes) and sometimes I just plain don't like whatever it is I find when I lift the lid of the box. Whatever I get on Wednesday afternoons, the money has already passed on to Farmer John. He admits he has not made much (if any) of a profit off of the farm since he started a CSA two (or three?) years ago, but he hopes the venture will become more productive as more and more members join. He gets money up front to invest in hoop houses, seeds, and organic certification. We get the hope of tomatoes in August. For many, it works out to be a good deal. Sometimes it doesn't. That's the risk we took.

I know other bloggers who are members of CSAs have posted about bringing home veggies they just don't like. I suggested a red velvet cupcake recipe for someone struggling with beets. I actually like beets - the reason mine are sitting in the fridge is that they are not big enough (and I have too few) to serve as a side dish for two people, let alone the main course of a meal. It seems silly to do all the work of preparing beets only to have about 3/4 of a cup of beets to share between two people. I guess I've held onto them because I was waiting for more . . .

So sometimes I end up with produce I just don't eat before it goes bad. And then I have a really tough situation because my only realistic option for dealing with vegetable scraps and rotten veggies right now is putting them in the garbage. I have not figured out a way to make a worm composting system work in my current house, and my garbage disposal does not work. (I have read that garbage disposals are better for dealing with vegetable waste, so I am operating under that assumption.) Instead of composting or using the garbage disposal, I throw scraps in my trash can, in a plastic bag that will eventually be hauled to a landfill. While the scraps decompose in a landfill they will emit toxic gasses that are bad for the environment. I obviously don't feel good about this! One way to avoid sending these vegetables from the farm to the landfill, after an extended layover in my refrigerator, is to skip the CSA next year and stick with food I will gladly eat and can grow in the garden, supplemented with treats (like fruit and sweet corn) from the farmers' market.

I feel like I'm making excuses for myself. Maybe I am. But I don't think I'm really making a positive difference in the world by throwing away the better part of $18 worth of vegetables every week. (That is approximately what our CSA half-share costs per weeks, over 20 weeks.) Sometimes I think a whole share would be better - there would be more beets so I could make a whole dish out of them - but then I think of the potatoes that are still sitting on my counter, the tomatillos I couldn't find a use for, and the peppers I really don't want - and I realize that it would be unwise to experiment with a larger share next summer.

Not doing a CSA next year does not mean I will be less committed to eating local foods. But I'm feeling guilty because I understand the reasoning behind the CSA so well. The farmer gets a break by spreading the risk. The consumer has a box of fresh produce waiting once a week. I guess I'm not cut out to be that consumer right now, and it makes me feel like a little bit of a failure.

Maybe when I have a family full of mouths to feed I will feel differently, and will relish the adventure present in figuring out what to do with a bunch of random produce. I'm going to stick with that thought and try to relish the adventure of figuring out what to do with the produce currently in my house . . . wish me luck!

(Soon to come - a post about the apples I picked, and whatever becomes of them. It did not occur to me to take my camera to the apple orchard, but there will probably be pictures of the finished products.)

Pesto, Pickles, and Mock Apple Cobbler

**My apologies in advance. This post is ridiculously out of order. I don't really know how to put it into a better order without deleting the whole thing and starting from scratch, but it is 12:16 a.m. and, as I do not have a tiny infant to keep me up whether I'm blogging or not, I have better things to do, like sleep.

After a long week of doing things mostly outside of the kitchen, I got back in the swing of things today. Here's my kitchen, with mock apple cobbler to the left of the stove, sauteed zucchini on the stove, tomato pie to the right of the stove, and pickles-in-process in the front.
Earlier this week I signed up for a "Pesto Party" with our CSA. I wasn't sure whether I should plan to go or not. I had a job interview on Wednesday for a job that would have started tomorrow. I had a second interview on Thursday. I started to regret having signed up for the Pesto Party on my last day of summer vacation, but then on Friday evening I got a voicemail from the Principal saying they'd chosen a different candidate who was "more what they were looking for in a candidate." They always pick that person. Some day I will be that person, right? Not getting the job was both good and bad. I wasn't sure how I'd handle the 90 minute commute each way (without air conditioning. In Summer. Driving into the sun both ways), I didn't want to leave our current house, or our current neighbors, or my little job at the museum. I didn't want to have to find a new grocery store. Seriously. That thought crossed my mind. I don't even like shopping at the grocery store anymore.

I did find myself at the grocery store this morning, though. (First I stopped at the farm stand, which did not have any large yellow onions. The vendor said the truck would be coming by in half an hour, so I stopped again on my way home and bought two. And a cantaloupe. Because you know what happens when I look for cantaloupe at the farmers' market.) I needed flour, sugar, Parmesan cheese, and milk. I did not need eggs, nor do I prefer to buy them at the grocery store (although I will buy their organic eggs when necessary) but I was relieved (?) to see that the eggs that this particular grocery store sells are from a DIFFERENT farm (CAFO) in Iowa, and are thus not affected by the egg-normous recall currently affecting the Midwest.

While I was home from the store by a little after 10 (and I'd even already taken Oliver for a walk), I didn't really have time to do any of my major projects for the day before heading out to the Pesto Party. So I ate breakfast, read a little bit of my newest book club book - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - and started a loaf of bread in the bread machine.

Michael decided to go to the Pesto Party with me, so we headed out to the CSA together, working on a New York Times crossword puzzle on the way. While they have had "come hang out at the farm" events in the past, we have not been able to make any of them. So it was the first time we saw the actual farm, rather than the shed where we pick up our share each week. We picked two ice cream pails full of pesto on the farm, with one of their "worker share" employees. (You can work four hours a week on the farm and get paid with a full-sized share, plus all the extras you want. I may do it next year, depending on what life looks like then.) Then we proceeded to make pesto with a bunch of other members of our CSA. We were instructed to bring a recipe, and all the ingredients we would need, except basil and garlic. They provided the food processors.

I brought a recipe that I discovered and enjoyed last year. At first I could not remember where I had found it, but then I checked Diary of a Locavore because it seemed like the kind of thing she'd write about. Elspeth posted this recipe last summer. (Let's just ignore the fact that I was probably interested in particular recipe, as opposed to so many of the others she posts, because I was excited to see her talking about her upcoming wedding - since I also had wedding on the brain last summer.) I think I made pesto mostly because I had extra basil from the farmers' market and wasn't sure what to do with it. I made a small batch, half of which I froze and enjoyed sometime last winter. Today Michael and I made three batches of her recipe. I froze two containers, and we dug into the third for dinner.


Washing the basil and picking the leaves off the stems.
Freshest Pesto Ever! (We did all of the work outside, so the pesto was literally warm to the touch when I packed it into the containers.)

When we got home, the bread was almost done and the house smelled delicious.
I had taken chicken legs out of the big freezer for dinner (thereby destroying any sort of order that was in the freezer, since they were the first thing I put in it when we got it and I have been haphazardly layering things on top of the package of legs since then) but realized they would still be frozen at dinner time, so I rearranged our dinner menu again. (The original plan was grass-fed beef stew with carrots, onions, and potatoes from our CSA but this plan occurred to me on Saturday morning at work. After I invited my parents to dinner and asked Michael to take the roast out of the freezer I realized it was already Saturday morning - not Friday, as I must have been thinking - and there was no way the roast would be ready to put in the crock pot this morning.)

We ended up having tomato pie for dinner, and the last zucchini in the fridge.
(We had our first tomato pie of the summer earlier this week:
I didn't have much cheese, but there were a few tomatoes that really wanted to be eaten. I'd planned to make tomato pie the week before, but never got around to it - because I stopped by the farmers' market in search of a cantaloupe.)

My tomato pie recipe is my own unique creation, so I'll share:
(Some day I am really going to make a real pie crust, since I am the proud owner of a rolling pin and all. But I must have had a hunch, on my way to buy a cantaloupe at the farmers' market last week, that I would really appreciate having a Pillsbury pie crust in my fridge, so I bought a box. Then I bought canning tomatoes and you know the rest of the story. I could have made my own crust this week, but the rectangular red box was still in my fridge, making me feel guilty for caving to the processed food empire. It was easiest to just get rid of the darn things.)

Bake a pie crust, according to your directions. (I baked mine at 425 for 12 minutes according to the package.)
While your crust is in the oven, slice some tomatoes. I used six Roma tomatoes today. Earlier this week I used four random tomatoes that were sitting on my counter. One was a canner that wasn't quite ripe last week. Two were Romas, and I honestly don't even know what the other was. You can blanch them and peel the skins off if you want, but it's not necessary, and I think it makes them much harder to slice. Sprinkle them with salt and let them drain while the crust is in the oven. (Draining them longer is always a good thing, if you have time.)
Shred some cheese. I usually use between one and three cups. The original recipe my mom used called for Gruyere cheese - which is yummy but pricey. I have used Swiss, mozzarella, muenster (pictured), and Farmer cheese (also pictured). Using a blend is best. If you have some good Parmesan cheese, sprinkle a little on top. (I used all of ours making pesto earlier.)

I didn't take pictures, but I also sliced up a small onion and minced two small cloves of garlic. If you have fresh basil, that is always a yummy addition. Today I used our freshly-made pesto. I spread a thin layer over the bottom of the pie crust after I took it out of the oven and let it cool a little bit.

Then I put a layer of veggies, followed by a layer of cheese. Repeat the layers until you run out of ingredients. When I was short on cheese earlier in the week, I only used one layer and it was fine. I like to put the cheese on top. But if you are in a rush and can't drain the tomatoes before putting them in the pie crust, put them on top of the cheese so some of the moisture can evaporate. Sprinkle a little bit of freshly ground pepper on top.

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes or until brown and bubbly on top. Let cool for at least 5 minutes before serving. Seriously. If you can keep it around long enough, it is also good served at room temperature.
While I have definitely been enjoying my zucchini harvest, it does take up a lot of space in the fridge, and I'm not sure we need another loaf of frozen zucchini bread. Fortunately, Michael and I both really like sauteed zucchini. Usually we eat it as our whole meal, but tonight it was a side dish. I like feta on mine, but didn't have any, so I copied Michael and covered it in farmers' cheese. Okay, so I might have gone overboard with cheese on this dish - I got a little carried away while shredding the cheese for the pie.
My last raw zucchini. (For a few hours, anyway.)
Yum.

Oliver loves to stand near me while I am chopping/shredding zucchini. I think it is his favorite vegetable, and I always drop some on the floor - usually accidentally. Today I also dropped a piece of cucumber on the floor around the same time, while I was getting the pickles ready, but he was completely uninterested.

Here he is waiting for me to drop some of my dinner:
While Oliver was discovering that he's not interested in cucumbers, the other two zucchinis that had been occupying the bottom shelf of my fridge were happily bubbling away in the oven, as Mock Apple Cobbler. I got the recipe from our CSA and had to try it. I admit, I was a little bit nervous at first. But I decided to go for it. The worst thing that could happen would be the loss of some flour and sugar. I couldn't really count the zucchini as a loss, as there is plenty more in the garden.
As it turns out, we really like mock apple cobbler. If you didn't know it was made with zucchini, I think you'd believe that the filling was apple. I passed the recipe along to my next door neighbor.

While dinner and dessert were in the works, I was also working on another batch of pickles - this time I actually canned them. I had gotten a recipe off of the internet, but it worried me because it called for six large cucumbers and two large onions. I have to be honest, folks: I really dislike pickle recipes that call for a number of vegetables. Who's to say that my idea of a "large" cucumber is the same as the author's? A lot of the pickle recipes I've looked at call for numbers of cucumbers, and many of them don't even give a ballpark figure as to how many pints/quarts the recipe will make. Very annoying. Consequently, since I had the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving that my mom bought for my dad and me sitting in my kitchen (my dad brought it up when we canned the tomato sauce), I looked for their recipe for Bread and Butter pickles. It called for four pounds of cucumbers and two pounds of onions - and estimated the yield at 7 pints. Now we're talking.

I only had six usable pint jars, but I wasn't too worried.
I sliced the cucumbers and onions, layered them with salt, and let them sit for an hour and a half, covered with ice.
I got my canning supplies in order, and started cooking the vinegar, sugar, and spices.
When the liquid boiled, I added the cucumbers and onions and waited for the fun to begin:
I actually did the whole canning thing myself, except Michael took a few pictures, and he got me a cloth to wipe off the jars.

The picture that I have of the six finished jars shows one jar not sealed, but since I started writing this blog, the lid popped. So apparently my first attempt at canning on my own was successful. But the recipe says to wait 4 to 6 weeks to try the pickles, so they can attain their optimum flavor.

I'd say it was a good day in the kitchen.
Oliver wants to know when he gets more zucchini.