Camacho Watcho

I simply love our new CSA. The thrill of opening the box and finding out what’s inside is something that I have come to enjoy week to week. Of course, this time of year has brought mainly greens – lettuce, kale, chard, spinach, etc. But we also have had zucchini, sugar snap peas and beautiful bunches of basil (yes, technically “green” but more enjoyable than just greens).

I was pleased this week to find in our share some spring turnips. Small, milky white bulbs that are a little spicy when nibbled on raw and turn deliciously sweet when roasted. Admittedly, I didn’t do anything fancy with these little guys, just quartered them and tossed them into a foil packet alongside my usual new potatoes and yellow onion for the grill, but the result was perfect. We even sauteed their greens, which turned out to be tasty but a bit bitter for my liking. I preferred them once I paired the sweetness of the onion with the bitter greens.

I never tire of a simple lettuce salad with a little lemon or balsamic vinegar and olive oil, but I am running out of ideas for the kale and chard. I still love to find them in my share for the week, but I’m really looking forward to the veggies that we’ll receive in the height of summer.

Okay, so having a CSA isn’t exactly “gearing up for veggies” but there is something I haven’t yet shared. We have a garden, too. At the end of May, we planted a garden with some friends in their yard. This was a first for both couples, so we decided to go in together.

Small plants of tomatoes, squash, cabbage, brussel sprouts, watermelon, peppers, cucumbers went into the ground, testing my patience for when we could reap the benefits. With the traveling I’ve been doing, I haven’t been over to visit it in a bit, but when I did a couple weeks ago, they were growing strong (except for a sad little cucumber plant that didn’t make it).

Needless to say, once our CSA peaks and the garden starts producing, we will be up to our ears in veggies. I can’t wait to pickle, jam, can and cook it all!

Tags: CSA, garden, vegetables

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 7:28 am and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.