The Joys of a CSA Veggie Box

Here's a report from a reader about their experience of opening up their first CSA box of the season. Note that they live in Sacramento area, so they have more in their box than you would find in a Spokane area CSA.

We're joining you in spirit today(if even just a little bit).  We picked up our first box from our local CSA.  You can find their fancy info at www.naturaltradingco.com.  It was nice to see the farm they are located at is more what you would expect a working farm to be and not so sanitized and picture-perfect as the flyer.  We brought our big box home (ordered big Fruit box, regular veggies and tomatoe share) and it was like opening a present.  I think the kids were surprised to see lettuce that didn't come in a plastic bag and I was surprised to cut up garlic that was moist and fresh. (You mean you don't have to peel off the hard, stale part before you chop it up?)  In our box we got a few varieties of garlic and onions, small yellow tomatoes, basil, spinach, kale, pea shoots (the farm likes pea shoots so will see alot of these-they taste kind of like peas), bib lettuce, red lady apples, oranges, satsumas and the tastiest little honeydew melons.  Made a salad and pasta with lots of veggies and honeydew.  All very, very tasty!!  It's fun to have to find recipes to use the veggies in.  Does anyone have a good Kale recipe?  The farm is two miles from our house.  I can't wait to see what we get next week.

See "Putting the Farmer's Face on the Food" for our take on CSA's and options for Spokane, and other regions of the country.

Comments

[Karen]

Wow -- CSA boxes in California could incite a little envy. Honeydew? In May? Wow.

Good thing we were able to have garden lettuce on our burgers this evening (ground beef from a local rancher; we're still eating off the whole cow we buy in the fall. Lots of volunteer parsley snipped onto new potatoes (OK, not local). And one son and I discovered, quite by accident, that several dozen sunflowers (some planted, some volunteer) are up already.

So maybe summer's on its way here in Spokane, and maybe we're not quite so far from honeydew as it has seemed.