Saturday, October 8, 2011

Our First CSA Haul - "Rainbow Spinach"

After our fun time at Terry's Berries farm with her preschool, I looked into joining their CSA. Since there were only 4 weeks left of their Summer share, I figured it wasn't too big a commitment for us to try. Plus they had a 'Sample Share' option with less food, which is totally for us! Pretty much the only fruits and veggies we eat are the ones you see photographed in my lunches! I would like to say that we eat balanced meals for breakfast and dinner too, but I'd be lying through my teeth. And my reticence to join CSAs or the things where they deliver produce to your door is that I know I'd be throwing out a ton of rotted produce. But I can see how well we do for 4 weeks worth (at a share designed for 1 to 2 people! Yikes!)
They also offered a discount if you agreed to pick your own beans, peas and berries. SOLD! Little Z would LOVE to do that, and I'd be saving a little money off the produce I'm sure will go bad before we eat.

So today was our first pick-up. We all dressed in our finest dirt-grubbing clothes (except me. I have a limited wardrobe of maternity stuff, so I wore the first shirt I could find that covered my entire belly. Why would anyone make maternity shirts that are too short? What kind of designer thought THAT was a good idea? I swear, most of the shirts from my sister are like that. I at least want my pants' stretchy panel hidden, thankyouverymuch! (And no, it's not a size issue. These shirts are all large. I'm a small to medium, normally.))
I remembered slogging through tons of mud when we went on our field trip, so we wore our boots again as well. I even brought empty plastic grocery bags to hold our loot. AND remembered our gardening gloves. Ready to go!

Turns out, the lady at the farm produce stand had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned the U-Pick discount, and said they currently didn't have any U-Pick. I just re-read the info, and I was supposed to get my U-Pick refund at our first pick-up too! Nuts! So we wore our boots and grubbies to gather up our pre-picked food in a covered area with a cement floor. Ah well.

Our take:
1 lb red potatoes (which only ended up being, like, 2 or 3.)
1 lb carrots (They had some SUPER wide ones, which I'm jazzed about, since they'll be great for using mini cookie cutters on the coins! Z chose 2 large and 2 small, and I filled up with more small ones, since she liked eating the small ones she had personally picked on our tour there last time.)
1/2 lb tomatillos
1 stalk (or bunch or whatever it's called) of broccoli
1 bundle of turnips or radishes (Z chose turnips. I was angling for radishes, since Unka Seesee will eat them, but Z voted for turnips, since "Wadishes are too spicy!")
1 bunch of lettuce (there were two kinds. I randomly chose one, and my husband said the other looked like romaine, and so I switched.)
1 purple kohlrabi (no clue. I had to look it up too.)
1 bunch of fancy lettuce (there were 3 or 4 varieties, but Z chose the rainbow chard. "I want the rainbow sticks!")
1 lb tomatoes (super fun! All lumpy and funky looking!)
3 apples (wasn't paying attention to which kind they are. Something with a stripe-y pattern with green/yellow and pink/red. Crunchy and tart.)
1 container raspberries
broccoli, romaine, tomatillos, kohlrabi, rainbow chard
Looked up recipes for rainbow chard, kohlrabi and tomatillos (forgot about the turnips... will have to figure out what to do with those as well!) Looks like the laziest best thing to do with the chard and kohlrabi is to eat them raw with salad dressing. So I'm sure you'll see some in my lunch soon... Don't know how long they keep... Tomatillos look like they'll be a total PITA, since I'd have to make salsa or chili with them, and I'm not a fan of spice. At. All. Maybe my husband will be interested...
I wonder if I can make a turnip-garbanzo hummus...

Since we were there, I grabbed a purple cauliflower bunch and two plums to buy from their produce stand, and my husband found an acorn squash and some russet potatoes. I see a purple-themed lunch in our future...

Well. The raspberries never made it home, same as last time. Z ate the whole container while there and in the car. Probably 12-ounces worth, based on the size of those tiny little grocery store clamshells. My husband suggested BLTs for lunch, since we now have some lettuce and tomatoes, but I wasn't in the mood. Maybe tomorrow.
Around dinnertime, however, Z started asking for some lettuce to eat. O-o-okay! So I squirted some Ranch and ketchup (she insisted on both) onto a plate and rinsed a stem of rainbow chard and broke off a little bit of the purple cauliflower. Omnomnom. So I got two more stalks, and a few more little cauliflower florets. Omnomnom. Another stalk, plus a lettuce leaf this time. Omnomnom. A chard and a leaf again. Omnomnom. Gosh! I guess today was her veggie day for the week! She'd pretty much avoided eating any of her veggies all week so far. But she loved the "rainbow spinach," even though she refused to eat the "stems." They were too tough for her to chew through, so I ate those.
My husband used up his russet potatoes making home-made french fries with his new deep fryer. Yum!

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