All day Friday I paced anxiously about the house, counting down to 5:00, and imagining the bounty that was to come from our very first CSA allotment of locally-grown, organic veggies. Pick-up was from 5 to 8, so at 5:15 (I couldn't wait any longer) we drove over to the drop-off point in North Park. We arrived to find two stacks of boxes neatly piled on the porch of the sponsor’s home, and the Be Wise truck just pulling away. The sponsor himself was outside trimming back his bougainvillea, so we exchanged friendly hellos (I heard him tell someone else that he gets a free box for being a pick-up point). I checked the sign-off list for my name, then we set to unloading one of the boxes into the bags we had brought with us (the CSA reuses the boxes). Two other young couples were there at the same time and when I made a “ugh, not chard!” comment as I was looking at the contents of our allotment, one of the women offered to trade her tomatoes for my chard. I accepted without hesitation. One can never have too many tomatoes!
Here’s the list of what our box contained:
Red beets
Tomatoes
Carrots
Radishes
Cucumbers
Avocado
Zucchini
Green Kale
Three types of lettuce
I have never cooked fresh beets (I was brought up on those lovely pickled ones that stain your mashed potatoes to a sickly pink tinge), but my mother recently forwarded a guide to the intricacies of preparing this strange little veggie (yes, the same woman that served me those pickled ones), so I suppose it is time to deal with my beet phobia.
My only disappointment was the lack of potatoes and onions, but I’ll try to find them elsewhere this week (both are in season according the San Diego Farm Bureau’s Harvest Calendar). And while I'm at it, I’ll also pick up some limes and lemons since we’ve been using a lot of those in the last couple weeks.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
A very long Friday
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
In accordance with your purpose to discover if local organic is less expensive than the grocery store organics, what are you finding? Did you compare the cost of your recent CSA purchase with what it would have cost at your local supermarket?
Did you know can use all of the beets - leaves and all?
Put the cooked beets in a ring and place the cooked greens in the center of the ring (cooked like spinach, dressed with melted butter or grated onion, salt, mustard, and horseradish). Pretty!
I have not starting tracking our food costs yet, although I plan to begin come October 1st, the goal I've set for finding all of our major suppliers for produce, meat, and milk products. I'll be posting what I find.
I can understand your disappointment re. no potatoes, but the rest of this looks amazing!
It seems this quest requires a life change of grand proportions. I keep looking at the CSA website, but then realize that one or both of us will be gone and the fresh food would go to waste...right now, I'm depending on the local farmer's market, but organic is still a challenge!
B.
Post a Comment