CSA Share Week 11

Hmmm... It looks to me like I better start writing about some things other than the CSA each week! The blog isn't just about what we eat (or don't) every week. Oh well. We've been keeping pretty busy with lots of projects.

Week 11 brought us quite a colorful share! This week we received eggs (3 extra!) plums, tomatoes, zucchini, yellow cauliflower, the tiniest head of lettuce I have ever seen, summer squash, green beans, and potatoes (we ate them before I took their picture). I think that we will be able to use up everything in this week's share, it looks pretty good!

As I mentioned in the post about last week's share, it was pretty pitiful. Since it was so small there wasn't much to be done with it. We have been snacking on the berries, which are always yummy and the eggs have all been hardboiled. I still can't get over how good these eggs taste when made into egg salad. The zucchini and squash haven't been touched by me, and they won't, but we might be giving our squash to the neighbors. Apparently their chickens destroy their squash plants. It seems to be their favorites. The tomatoes have gone unused as well because we just haven't had any dinners with red sauce this week. Oh well. Who knows though, Glenn may be eating them plain (gross!) for all I know.

There you have it. I hope that everyone finds themselves doing well and enjoying life just like we are. Summer seems to finally have come around here. We've been seeing a handful of days around 70-80 degrees and I honestly cannot remember the last time it rained.

CSA Share Week 10

Well I really don't feel like writing today, but I should anyway. I have been having a very bad day. I will explain in another post, but I'm still a bit too upset about it to explain. I will however explain that it is nothing big or important or cause for anyone to worry. I'm just neurotic and really stupid things have the power to ruin my day sometimes.

Back to the CSA. Week 10 didn't really bring us much, but there is a reason for that. The Sunday before Glenn picked up the share the newsletter came in our emails. We were not really pleased with the contents of the share for this week so we decided it would be best to just pick up what we would eat and leave the rest for other people to have. That way we wouldn't be wasting. So that leaves us with this kind of pitiful looking share.

This week we have raspberries, blueberries, eggs, squash, zucchini, and tomatoes. All the other stuff that was offered was stuff we didn't like so we just went without. We'll probably just snack on berries, the eggs will get hardboiled, and Glenn will eat the squash and zucchini. I don't know about the tomatoes. We might try and put them in a sauce or something.

Last week's share was really great. The green beans and broccoli were wonderful. I wish we could get those every single week. Those are two of my favorite veggies. The lettuce was great and the berries were delicious. I didn't have any of the carrots, but surprisingly enough, Glenn did and he loved them. In case you weren't aware, Glenn doesn't really like carrots. I'm not sure what happened to the fennel though, I don't see it in the fridge anymore. Oh well.

That's all for this week, but you can expect another post probably later tonight about the share we are picking up today. After I get that posted I have a handful of other things to update everyone on.

CSA Share Week 9

Ok, well I am a little more ahead of it this week than I was last week, so that is good I suppose. Glenn was kind and thoughtful enough to take the picture of all of our produce while I was gone at work. I love all the thoughtful things he does, even if he thinks they don't mean anything.

This week's haul looks pretty awesome to me. We have the usual unidentified "lettuce" and "greens", along with carrots, summer squash, green beans, broccoli, fennel, raspberries, blueberries, and eggs. Everything looks pretty yummy this week. I'm not really keen on the squash, but I will give it another try. After all, it is a slightly different color than the last squash I tried. The carrots are about 3 times the size of the first batch of carrots we got a few weeks ago. I am really excited for green beans and broccoli. Those are two veggies that I will never get tired of, especially when they are super fresh.

Because last week's share was a little on the small side and we have been super busy over the past week/weekend we haven't really been able to eat much of it. The delicious raspberries have served us well as a quick snack. The eggs have not had their usual hard boiled treatment yet. We had some salad the other night and the lettuce was very delicious and had a great texture but the "greens" I did not like. They tasted too bitter and dirty. I don't understand the fascination some people have with "greens" because I find that most of them just taste downright nasty. The fava beans, shelling peas, squash, and cauliflower have all remained untouched. I really like cauliflower but we are hesitant to cook it because of how gross it smells when you do! Maybe we can try roasting it in the oven and see if that works. I guess we will find out!

That's it for this week's CSA share post. I hope that everyone is doing well and enjoying their summer. We finally seem to be having one here. We've had practically a whole week of 70's to 80's temperature now! Love to all!

CSA Share Week 8

Well this is going to be short post because I don't feel like writing it. Also, I don't really have much to say.

This week's share contains lettuce, greens, eggs (even though I forgot to put them in the picture), raspberries, cauliflower, squash, fava beans, and shelling peas. The lettuce and greens look a little sad in the picture because I didn't get a chance to take a photo until tonight. We have been pretty busy.

Last week our share was pretty good. I actually ate a little bit of everything! Since I don't typically like squash, Glenn decided to try a different way of preparing it and he threw it on the grill. It tasted pretty good, but I really don't seem to like the texture of squash so I ate a few bites and gave the rest to Glenn. We haven't done anything yet with the cauliflower so maybe we will combine it with this week's and do something with them. The fava beans were interesting. Neither of us have had them before so I had no idea how to cook them. I did a quick Google search and decided to saute them with some olive oil and salt and pepper (after we removed the beans from the pods of course). They were very large beans similar in appearance to lima beans but they taste much better. I actually liked them very much so I am looking forward to cooking them again this week. The cherries and raspberries were very good. I ate a carton of raspberries and put the second two cartons in a batch of muffins. The eggs all got hard boiled as usual and were either eaten whole or in egg salad. The lettuce and chard were both good but the chard got a little wilty and bland.

Obviously I am very late on this post, as well as last week's so hopefully I can get on track again soon. We have had a lot going on around here and this Friday we will have even more going on! I will report back soon. Stay tuned for a few posts on some interesting changes around the house. Love to all!

CSA Share Week 7

It's been pretty hot here. So much so that I figured I would preface my post by letting you know how warm it has been. Glenn was just telling me the other day that we have only had 78 minutes of summer so far this year. "Summer" is being defined as temperature at or above 80 degrees. I have no problem with that and have found our incredibly mild and cool summer to be absolutely dreamy. Imagine my dismay when it hit around 85 degrees. Normally this wouldn't really be that much of a deal, but when you do not have air conditioning and chose this particular day to do housework, things don't look so pretty. In any event, it was hot today but it should cool down for the rest of the week. Yay!

Our produce this week is very similar to what we got last week. Some things we got more of (raspberries, YAY) and other things we got less of (shell peas, boo). Our entire haul this week included eggs, chard, cauliflower, summer squash, rainier cherries, raspberries (notice how I had already eaten half a carton by the time I took the picture), fava beans, lettuce, and some more shell peas. At the time I write this I have finished off a carton of raspberries and hoarded the rest with the intent to make muffins with them.

The items we got in last week's share garnered mostly positive reviews. The cherries were great, as were the raspberries. I cannot get over how deliciously sweet and tart these raspberries are! I've just been eating them all by themselves. The eggs went the route of hard boiling, like they usually do. It's nice to just be able to grab an egg for a snack or smash a couple into egg salad for a yummy sandwich. As a side note, our next door neighbors brought us a few eggs from their chickens the other day. I thought that was so nice of them. Glenn and I (mostly Glenn) chatted with them for a little while. They're pretty cool people and laughed a lot at whatever Glenn said - it was pretty funny.
Anyway, I forgot we even had beets until now. Then I remembered when Glenn started slicing them up for his salad and I was astonished at how beautiful they were inside! They had these gorgeous pink and white stripes. They were so pretty I just HAD to taste it. I immediately wished I hadn't. Glenn thought they were great. I thought they tasted like dirt with an awful aftertaste that seemed to affect the taste of everything else I ate afterwards. I haven't eaten anymore of them. They are actually an heirloom beet from Italy called Chioggia Beets (the things you learn from Google.)
The shell peas were my favorite item in the share. I really enjoyed shelling the peas for some reason. We added them to some pasta a couple nights and they were just so firm, sweet, and delicious. I hope we continue getting them. Glenn has been enjoying the zucchini, but I have not. I don't like zucchini unless it is fried and covered in cheese like this restaurant in Puyallup makes them. The greens we got were hit and miss this week. The red leaf lettuce was okay, the cabbage was pretty good, but the unidentified bunch of greens that was like 3 feet long was just gross. Neither of us liked it and tried to eat around it in our salads. Live and learn I guess. The onion is still by its lonesome in the fridge. I don't really know what its future holds.

Strangely enough, after my mini rant about the lack of email newsletters from the farm in last week's post I got an email just minutes after my post. I guess they read my blog (or not.) They still are not regular with the newsletters, as we got one for week 5 and week 7, but not week 6. We'll see about the upcoming week.

Hope all is well with all of our friends and family. Love to all!!!

CSA Share Week 6

I have to admit, I am getting more and more irritated over the increasing ambiguity in terms of labeling produce with our CSA share. Every week Glenn brings home our bounty and I inevitably hold up a bunch of greens banded together and I ask what it is. Every week the answer is the same, "I don't know. It just said greens." You can understand my frustration when I am trying to learn about new foods and I don't even know what I have! Then, to top it off we began the share with a weekly email at the beginning of every week that documented what we could expect to get that week along with a selection of recipes that correspond with our produce and a few other random notices about farm related things. It was nice. The last email was June 24. Not much I can do now.

Unfortunately this week my descriptions of the food we received are going to be pretty vague and/or my best guess derived from extensive (the first page of google images) research. This week's share contained another lovely batch of rainier cherries which are decidedly brighter and tastier looking than last week's. We also have eggs, raspberries (of which I already ate half), beets, and onion, shell peas, zucchini, red leaf lettuce, some other kind of lettuce, and some kind of greens. My preliminary review of the raspberries is that they are amazing and I cannot wait to grow my own if they will taste this delicious.

As for last week's share, we didn't do so hot. The curly kale was a disaster. We both truly hated it. Glenn usually eats anything and isn't nearly as picky as I am, but he flat our refused to eat any more of this stuff. It was disgusting in both flavor and texture. It also had a very dirty taste to it, and it wasn't from actual dirt. We use a salad spinner to give all of our greens a good thorough washing before we eat them. I actually didn't eat any of the cherries or strawberries from last week. Glenn enjoyed them. He finished off the rest of the strawberries tonight with his salad and they were so intensely red on the inside! They must have been awfully sweet. It was nice having snow peas around. I prefer snap peas, but snow peas are good too. We have these chinese meals that we make and it was a nice addition to put in a big handful of the snow peas. They were very crisp and yummy. The spinach and romaine were great as always. I would be happy if those were the only greens we got for the rest of the share! As for the kohlrabi, summer squash, chives. and turnips... we have yet to do anything with those. I found a recipe for a type of cole slaw using kohlrabi and apples so I think I might try to do that when I have time. The squash took a tumble or something because they look awfully pitiful and bruised up but I'm sure they taste just fine. We still need to grill those, but that will have to wait until Glenn fires up the grill for some chicken or something. Who knows if we will ever use the chives. I don't care for them, but if Glenn disguises them really well, I may not even notice! I'm still clueless on the turnips. Anyone have any ideas on what to do with turnips? Anyone??? Oh well.

So there you have it. Hopefully by this time next week we will have used up the remainder of both shares. We're starting to fall behind and the food is building up pretty quickly. I am normally a night owl and I feel like I have a ton of things to do right now, but I am way too exhausted so I am going to bed. I hope that everyone is doing well and that monsoon season is treating our Arizona friends and family nicely. Love to all!!!

CSA Share Week 5

This week has been a little crazy for me, and that explains why all the blog posts are being lumped together today. I've been working the past three nights, so I haven't been able to keep up like I normally do. Anyway, as you can see, this photo is a little bit different because I was working and wasn't able to do my normal staged photo. Glenn of course was thoughtful and took the picture with his phone :o)

This week we have RAINIER CHERRIES!!!! We're so excited about that! We also have strawberries, eggs, a purple kohlrabi, summer squash, curly kale, spinach, snow peas, romaine, chives, and turnips. It's really nice to be seeing a more interesting grouping of our veggies and fruits now. So far the only plans we have for our stuff is to grill the summer squash. I haven't liked any kind of squash prepared any way so I am hoping that maybe grilling is the way to go. We've already had some of the kale and it was disgusting, but more on that next week.

Last week's share was pretty great. The eggs haven't been used yet, but Glenn and I enjoy having them hard boiled so that will probably happen with those. Besides, it is better to wait until they are older so they're easier to peel. I am getting really good at hard boiling eggs, almost to the point of perfection. The strawberries were good of course. The carrots are pretty sweet, much sweeter than carrots I have had before. I read somewhere that when carrots are grown in smaller quantities and in really good soil, they get quite sweet. I shredded a bunch of them last week, and a little bit of my finger as well. I'll probably eat the rest of them plain. All of the greens last week were really delicious. Nothing was too bitter, in fact everything was pretty mild. The snow peas were really yummy. We have these frozen Chinese dinners that are pretty short on veggies so we threw all of those in there and it definitely made it way better. We haven't tried the kohlrabi yet, but now that we have two of them I think I might try and make some sort of mash out of them. I've seen quite a few recipes for it that look good.

Hopefully we continue to have shares that are as yummy as last week's. We're still enjoying having a weekly grouping of farm fresh food, even if it does get a little overwhelming at times. It's always great to support your local economy and your local farmers!

CSA Share Week 4

This week is much more my speed. We have such a lovely, colorful grouping of food this week! I hope the rest of the shares start looking like this.

We have Green Leaf Lettuce, Eggs, Strawberries, Spinach, Carrots, Snow Peas, Kohlrabi, and some green that was not labeled. We have a pretty hefty portion of spinach this week, so that means extra salads! Good thing we picked up more salad dressing at WinCo. If you've never been to a WinCo, I am sad for you because I just went for the first time ever this weekend and it was awesome! I had so much fun there. Anyway, the strawberries were really fragrant this week, I smelled them as soon as I opened the bag so they must be good. We're excited to eat everything this week, we've been dying for some peas of some sort. We didn't know what kohlrabi was so I googled it and found out that it is similar in taste to the stalk of broccoli. I guess we'll steam it like broccoli and see how that goes.

I was excited about the carrots because I really like them in my salad so I started shredding a handful of them with my Microplane grater. Stupid thing is so sharp that I cut my finger without even realizing it. Unfortunately I took a chunk out of the middle of my fingernail and even got down to the skin. It's finally stopped bleeding, but now it actually hurts. Ugh.

Last week's share was pretty small, but I'm actually kind of glad it was. We've been a little overwhelmed with how much there is and we don't actually use everything before it goes bad. Bok Choy unfortunately went to waste. We just never got around to using it for a stir fry. It's hard when you're trying to use up everything else in the mean time! All of the greens were put to good use. Thankfully we can manage to use all of those. The chard was pretty good, but I'm not sure what the big deal is about it. I see lots of people rave about it on food blogs, but it just tasted like a slightly bitter spinach to me. The spinach was good as always, and I liked the baby lettuce. It had a very velvety texture almost like butter lettuce. Although last night when I was washing it to eat I found two snails! We didn't eat the parts they were on. The turnips haven't been used yet and neither have the chives. I'm not a chive person so we'll see. What do you do with turnips? I know that Billy Currington says you eat the greens in one of his songs. The eggs got used in waffles this week and then I think I will hard boil the rest. Lastly is the strawberries. Delicious. Apparently strawberries grown here are much softer than the ones grown in California so they don't last as long, but they sure do taste much sweeter than their CA counterparts. They got eaten very quickly, long before they had a chance to spoil.

So that is it for this week's CSA post. Tomorrow Glenn is taking me to the Britney Spears concert and I am super excited (he is not, however.) I won't have any pictures from it because apparently cameras are not allowed. Oh well. I hope everyone is having an enjoyable summer and that the Arizona heat isn't too bad for our Arizona friends and family. Love to all!

CSA Share Week 3

This week's CSA share was a bit on the small side. Glenn picks up our share on his way home from work so he gets to make all the judgement calls as to what comes home or not and I definitely think he made a good call this week. Apparently the majority of the share involved extra portions of the greens we were already getting so he chose not to take more than one portion each. There is no way we would be able to go through that many greens with just the two of us. At least we got double the strawberries this time. Yum.

In the share this week we got spinach, turnips, chives, romaine, bok choy (we've got to stop bringing this one - we already have more than we know what to do with!) strawberries, eggs, and another type of green that I am unsure of (they weren't labeled but I'm guessing chard of some type - I will update if I find out for sure).

We enjoyed last week's share for the most part. The spinach was much better this week. There was no wilting going on and it had a great flavor. The asparagus was really delicious, especially because Glenn grilled it on his new BBQ. The stalks were like three times the size of the week before though, it was weird.
I finally turned all the rhubarb into a compote. It's really yummy and I got it to the consistency of jam so I think I might try it on some toast tomorrow. The eggs were so delicious in the egg salad I made, although one egg did go into making brownies. I'll be making the egg salad again this week because it is just so good for lunch. As I mentioned last week, the strawberries were delicious and I gobbled them all up immediately. The baby lettuce was pretty good and fairly mild tasting but it did have a little bit of a bitter aftertaste on the dark colored leaves. I didn't eat the arugula because I despise it, so Glenn bit the bullet and ate that in his salads. He doesn't mind it. The pea vines did not get used. They dried up before we could figure out what to do with them. Same goes for the radishes. Bummer. The apples were the same as the week before, maybe a bit larger. The bok choy is still sitting in the refrigerator, waiting to go in a stir fry. That's all I can think of to do with it! Finally, the baby garlic is still a favorite in our house. We just love it.

That's all for this week's CSA blog post. If anyone has any ideas about preparations for anything, please feel free to share.

Love to all!

CSA Share Week 2

Here is a look at this week's share. Like last week, our share included apples, asparagus, rhubarb, spinach, baby garlic, eggs, and bok choy. Our new additions for this week were pea vines, arugula, baby lettuce, and strawberries. We did not get the romaine, mustard greens or radishes from the previous week. I have to be honest... when Glenn brought home all the goodies and he set the strawberries on the counter I immediately washed them and ate pretty much the entire basket. I think I may have left him a few. They were soooooo good! There is nothing quite like a juicy ripe strawberry picked fresh off the vine just hours previously.

Doesn't it all look so pretty? It's really fun to get a surprise every week in terms of produce.

Now to my review of last week's share. We both really enjoyed having such a large amount of greens in the house. We actually had a salad with dinner a couple nights! We even purchased a salad spinner from Macy's (Martha Stewart of course) and it has been totally worth every penny!
Glenn really loved the mustard greens, but I was not such a fan. They are slightly bitter and have a very spicy bite at the end. The spinach was good, but a little wilty. The romaine was absolutely delicious! I was disappointed it wasn't in this week's share.

The rhubarb has remained untouched because I was saving it in hopes that we would get it again in this week's share and I would have enough to make a compote. The eggs have not been used yet because we had a surplus but I will be turning them into egg salad tomorrow. Glenn said that the apples were pretty good but a little small for his taste. We haven't touched the radishes. They scare me, but I will figure out a way to try them. The asparagus we just had with dinner tonight and they were really really good. Such a big flavor compared to the stuff we normally get. Then there is the bok choy. I believe that I like bok choy (I've had it in quite a few Asian dishes) but I am not sure what we can do with it here. We have double the amount now so I guess we better try to stir fry it or something. Our very favorite thing has been the baby garlic. Instead of having to peel the clove like normal garlic and then dice up the insides, all you do with this stuff is give it a good whack and it breaks open to reveal tiny bits of garlic already broken up for you! It has a great flavor and it breaks down a little better when cooked so it doesn't have that harsh flavor when you bite into a piece. Great stuff.

So far, we are really loving having a guarantee of fresh produce every Tuesday. It's great to get a little more healthy foods into our diet and it is also great to be supporting our local farmers.

Our CSA Spoils

Today was a fun day. One reason it was so fun was because Rob and his landscape crew came out and tamed our jungle of a yard. I'll post some fun before and after pictures tomorrow. The second part was today was the day we got to pick up our very first CSA share from the farm!

In case you aren't familiar with the term CSA, I will explain. For starters, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. What this means is that members of the community choose to purchase "shares" of the farm and in turn they get weekly shares of what is growing on the farm. It's very similar to the stock market in the way that you are assuming any risks that are associated with your particular stock (in this case drought, too much rain, too cold, too hot, etc.) but you are also able to reap the benefits when things are going good. In the case of a CSA when the crops aren't doing so well we won't get as much in our share for that week, or maybe the variety isn't so great. When things are going well though we might get more than expected or get lots of variety. By purchasing a CSA share you are supporting the farm and helping them to continue doing their thing.

As soon as we knew we had the house, I bought into one of the local farms. This particular one is called Terry's Berries and the farm is just sooooo cute. The people are very friendly and our produce is beautiful. You can see in the picture above that I have labeled everything we got. If it is too hard to see you should be able to click on it and see it bigger. This week we got to pick up mustard greens, spinach, romaine lettuce, rhubarb, radishes, asparagus, baby garlic, bok choy, apples, and eggs. We even got to go and pick some fresh herbs, courtesy of the farm. We grabbed a little bit of parsley, a little bit of chives, and a whole lot of oregano. The car was verrrry fragrant with all of our yummy stuff.

I'll be posting a picture every week of what we get, along with a short review of what we thought of the previous week's share. We're hoping that we might find some interesting new things to eat in the process. Plus, it's just really cool bringing home produce that was picked that same day.