The box: week two

New produce box!


This week's haul:

• 14 oz. sugar snap peas
• 2 lb. Napa cabbage
• ½ lb. kale
• ½ lb. Swiss chard
• 1¼ lb. mixed greens

The highlight today was definitely the snap peas. "How many can I eat?" asked The Boy. I rinsed them, pulled off the strings, and stuck them in the fridge for snacking.

The kale is destined for a pasta dish, the cabbage for a slaw and--depending on how ambitious I feel--spring rolls. I'm still mulling over what to do with the chard that the kids will deign to eat.  

The box: week one

Today marked the first produce delivery!


This week's haul:

• ½ lb. kale
• ½ lb. Swiss chard
• 1+ lb. mixed salad greens
• 1 flat strawberries (about 10.5 lbs.)

I chopped up the kale and chard to use in recipes over the next couple of days. One pound of the berries turned into a a few pints of freezer jam; the rest were hulled and divided between the freezer and the fridge. A few disappeared into tiny mouths hovering around the kitchen.

This is the point in the CSA share in which I think, "What the French toast did we sign up for?" Not because the produce is too overwhelming--just the opposite. The summer bounty doesn't really start until next month and really kicks into high gear in August. Right now the boxes are sparse and heavy on the greens. But this year I know what goodness lies ahead. So we will push through the green weeks and enjoy those red ripe strawberries.

The challenge begins: the 2010 produce list

The email I've been waiting for arrived this week: this year's breakdown of what the CSA farm is growing for our produce box this summer!

One of the features that attracted us to the CSA we use is the ability to tailor our boxes a bit to our family's tastes. At this point in before the season, we can say we want less or none at all of any of the items. Why have something delivered that we know we won't use? We can also pick up to five items that we would like more of. I learned my lesson last year--when we were overrun with cucumbers and watermelons--to only ask for more of items that can easily be preserved. Because when you tell the farm you want more, it gives you MORE.

The list doesn't show three full flats of berries we'll get or the 50 pounds of tomatoes and peppers we go to the farm to pick, all of which are also included in the share.

So what are we getting this year?

• ¼ lb basil x 8 deliveries (I asked for more)
• 1 bunch parsley x 3
• 1 bunch celery x 3
• 2 lb. green beans x 8 (I asked for more)
• 1 bunch beet greens w/small beets attached x 3
• 2½ lbs. beets x 4 (I asked for less--no one in our house is that fond of beets)
• 1 lb. broccoli x 4
• 2 cantaloupes x 4
• 2 lbs. carrots x 4
• 1 bunch cilantro x 4
• 12 ears corn x 5 (I asked for more)
• 5 slicing cucumbers x 10
• 1 lb. lemon cucumbers x 8
• 1 small head cabbage x 4
• 1 head Napa cabbage x 2
• 1 head cauliflower x 2
• 5 oriental eggplants x 7 (I asked for less--also not fond of eggplant)
• 1 lb. elephant garlic
• ¾ lb. ground cherries x 6
• 1 honeydew melon x 1
• 1 Mai Quing (Bok) Choi plant x 4
• ½ lb. kale x 5
• ½ lb. Swiss chard x 4
• 2 kohlrabi x 2 (I asked for less. One kohlrabi is challenge enough for me.)
• 1 lb. leaf lettuce blend x 17
• ¼ lb. arugula x 3
• 1 large bunch green onions x 4
• 4 leeks x 2
• 1 lb. sweet onions x 5
• 5 lb. keeping onions x 1
• 2 lb. sugar snap peas x 5
• 2 Anaheim peppers x 7
• 2 Ancho (Pablano) peppers x 6
• 2 bell peppers x 6
• 6 jalapeno peppers x 3
• 5 lbs. potatoes x 4
• 2 pumpkins x 1
• 1 bulb fennel x 2 (I asked for less. I can't stand the taste of fennel.)
• combination of summer squash (green zucchini, yellow zucchini, pattypans) x 9
• 2 each winter squash (butternut, acorn, spaghetti, sweet dumpling, Delicata) x 1
• 1 lb. tomatillos x 6 (I asked for more. I love me some tomatillos.)
• 5 lbs. tomatoes x 9 (I asked for more.)
• 2 lbs. cherry tomatoes x 7
• 1 watermelon x 5

How to find a CSA

Word-of-mouth is the best way to find a local CSA, hands down. Ask around to see what other people's experiences have been with the CSAs in your area. What did they like? What disappointed them? Did they go back the next year? You'll get an honest idea of the quality and variety of the produce.

Local Harvest is a fantastic online resource. It has a searchable database of CSAs, farms, farmers' markets and more. It will give you a good look at what is available in your area. It also has a concise overview of Community Supported Agriculture in general, with helpful tips for choosing a CSA.

Is a CSA right for me?

Joining in a CSA isn't for everyone. There's no shame in that! It's usually a pretty hefty financial commitment and a fair amount of work. We receive far more produce than we could possibly eat each week and it can be a challenge to figure out how to use or preserve it all.

Here are some questions to ask yourselves when deciding whether or not to take the produce box plunge:

Do we eat veggies now? Lots of folks, including our family, sign up for a CSA as motivation to up our veggie intake or introduce us to new veggies. But if you rarely eat fresh produce--or only eat a few favorites--a weekly produce box is probably going to be pretty overwhelming. Trust me: it's a lot of food. It might be better to ease into it by spending a summer shopping the farmer's market first.

Do we have time in our schedule? You'll need extra time each week for cooking, digging up recipes (what in the world do you do with kohlrabi?), and preserving the extra produce while its still fresh. If you can barely find time to cook dinner during the summer, you likely won't have time to handle the demands of the produce box.

Do we like to cook? You don't need to be foodies (heaven knows we're not), but you should at least not mind cooking from scratch. You can only eat so many raw veggies, and some veggies aren't that tasty unless cooked into a dish. There's also not much point in preserving food if you're not going to cook with it during the year.

Do we have a sense of adventure? I'm sure there are some folks out there who can (a) identify and (b) effortlessly use everything that comes in their produce box. We are not those people. We were introduced to lots of new fruits and veggies last year. We mis-identified items all the time (oh, the sad little rhubarb cobbler that wasn't rhubarb after all) and wasted others while we dithered about how to use them. But we also discovered some new favorites (hooray for ground cherries!) and had fun trying new things. A sense of humor and a willingness to try the unusual will serve you well.

And so it begins

In late January we signed up for our 2010 share of our preferred CSA. Whoo hoo! Even though most CSAs in the area don't start up until the summer, shares of the favorite ones are snapped up months ahead of time, before the seeds are even planted.

Beginning the week of June 21 and going through mid-October, a big box of organically grown produce will appear on our doorstep once a week. It's magic! Or one very dedicated local farm. I'll let you know when I figure it out.

Seventeen weeks. Four hundred pounds of produce.

Bring. It. On.