CSA Farm Share 2011: Week 1!!

[surrealestate]

Farm share started last week! Yay! This year we are back with only Parker. I think it's a much better value than Red Fire. RF sometimes has a little more variety, but the amounts are often too small to be useful, plus it's cheaper for me to just buy that stuff at the farmers market if I want it.

• 2 bunches Beets (with greens)
• 2 bunches Cilantro
• 2 bunches Swiss Chard
• 2 bunches Kohlrabi (with greens)
• 2 heads Red Leaf Lettuce
• 2 heads Romaine Lettuce
• 2 bunches (4 heads) Broccoli
• 2 bunches Collards
  = 25 lbs(!)

For some items, it's great to have enough to really do a proper dish with it, but for other items, even a little bit can be too much. (*cough*cilantro*cough*) Anyone want cilantro? Either these or in the future?

Did a nummy saute using the beet and kohlrabi greens, along with some Chinese fake-meat and barbecue sauce and it was so good. Then last night, thanks to M. being over to hold J. so that I could cook while DD finished work, we had stuffed shells! It was my first time making them and I put together a plan based on a mix of recipes I'd seen. I used all the chard, plus a quart of the roasted tomato sauce I made last season (best f'in sauce ever!), as well as basil from the porch. It was SO GOOD!

Right now we're aiming to use up everything in the freezer and get a fresh start, so have been eating a fair bit of tomato sauce since I froze it rather than canning to both avoid having to adulterate its awesomeness by acidulation as well as skip boiling any flavor out. I finally canned the strawberry mash I'd prepared last year from almost two gallons of fruit, yielding a whole bunch of Strawberry Balsamic Black Pepper Jam, plus some extra mash that I'm thinking may come to Baitcon. Also canned a big batch of whole berry cranberry sauce. The ton of blackberries will be getting blended to oblivion (cuz damn, I hate those seeds) for use in something frozen at Baitcon and also roll-ups.

Other preserved items that we've used lately have included arugula walnut pesto on pizza along with rehydrated dried tomatoes and eggplant, frozen peppers in various dishes, frozen squash in greens-peanut stew, and various powders and herbs to flavor dishes.

Urban homesteading FTW!

Comments

[ceelove.livejournal.com]

Definitely. Is Wednesday (without Sylvana) or Thursday (with Sylvana) of this week good, or would you rather wait until after Baitcon?

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Good point. I have some things on Wednesday and I'm not sure yet of our end-of-week schedule in terms of getting out to Baitcon, so it might be best to wait until next week.