Saturday, July 26, 2008

Why I love CSAs and Farmers Markets

Before we decided to go all local, Eric and I had joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group for the spring/summer. Basically, every week we pick up a box with fresh, organic fruits, veggies, and herbs. Whatever is ready for harvest is what we get. So we have tried some things that I never thought I would cook, including beets, garlic scapes, and swiss chard. Sometimes we get quite a lot of the same thing for a few weeks. Lately it's been zucchini.

Zucchini really is a marvelous vegetable that I never really appreciated before. In the last couple of weeks, I have grilled it, roasted it, sauteed it, put it in salads, and served it with pasta. I haven't pickled it yet, but that's the next thing to try. Last night I sauteed shredded zucchini with finely chopped onion and served over whole wheat pasta with toasted walnuts. I still have one zucchini left for this week, what should I do with it tonight?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am obsessively hoarding away food for the winter. It takes WAY more fresh fruits/veggies than you would think to get 6 pints of the canned good. So in addition to our CSA share, we also go to the local farmers' market in Silver Spring, and to farms in our areas (my favorite is Heyser's Farm on New Hampshire) to get massive amounts of the food that we want to pickle/preserve. Today we picked up some purple cauliflower, more nectarines, micro-greens, organic free-range local chicken, and an italian style goat cheese (the farm where the goat cheese is made is about 115 miles away in Garrett County, MD, but I didn't know that until after we bought it)

A note on goat cheese-I never liked it, but I had only tried some very sharp varieties. If you have the same problem, try Chevre; it's so light and creamy and very mellow.

So for lunch today I made a potato and onion frittata, green beans sauteed with garlic and tomatoes, and a micro-green salad with crumbled goat cheese and pecans.

The only problem so far is that I'm starting to seriously crave a Hershey's chocolate bar...

1 comment:

Emily said...

I'm jealous of your commitment to this. I have to step it up a notch!