Winter CSA - March

Here's the March share that we picked up a few days ago. Notice anything... unusual?


That's right! GREENS!!! That's a bag of fresh baby spinach in the top left. Thank goodness for greenhouses (the ground's still frozen here). There's also a bag of alfalfa-radish sprouts, which have a slightly spicy bite. Other than that, we've got the winter usual - potatoes, carrots, daikon, celeriac, beets, and rutabagas. A few of the potatoes are huge, so I'm thinking they are good candidates for baking. Maybe we'll top them with some veggie chili.

Does anyone have any rutabaga recipes to share? I'd like to try something a bit different with these. I'll use most of the carrots, celeriac, and beets to make more of that amazing shredded salad, and I'm toying with a few different options for the daikon.

Winter CSA - February

No pretty produce shots this time. I haven't had time yet to scrub and sort the veggies, and I wanted to take a picture before we start using it up (in fact, I grabbed a beet and a carrot for tonight's salad immediately after taking this pic). Plus, a more rustic view might be good for a change. After all, this is how we receive it: tumbled together and covered with dirt. The summer deliveries are usually cleaner but the winter veggies are stored in dirt-filled bins at the farm.


I mentioned recently that it's time to sign up for 2009 CSAs. This goes for most winter CSAs as well. While we are certainly signing up for another summer share, we've decided to pass on the winter share. The first month was amazing, but the rest of them have been like this (only with cabbage). We haven't made the best use of our share and have thrown out more gone-by produce than I care to admit. The sad fact is, I just can't handle so many root vegetables. (My Scandinavian and Irish ancestors are now rolling over in their graves.)

Where we live, nothing else is available locally in the winter, so other than the fresh lettuce for our salads and the occasionally indulgence of imported fruit, we've been relying on frozen vegetables. Some are summer share surplus that we froze for exactly this purpose; others are bags that we've purchased at our local grocery store. Frozen seems to work well for us. While I feel bad about the food we've wasted from the winter CSA, we've learned an important lesson - a winter CSA is just not for us. (Now, I'd be singing a different tune if we lived in say, California, and a winter share included fresh citrus and greens - but alas, we live in a land of thrice-weekly blizzards.)

So the plan for this year is to sign up for our summer share - once again, a small share from Luna Bleu Farm - and to take the money that would go for a winter share and designate it for farmer's market purchases. That way, when our favorites like kale and spinach are in abundance, we can buy a lot and immediately freeze it for winter use.

Winter CSA, Month 1

I have been remiss in posting pictures of our winter share. This is a shot of the first winter share, which we picked up in early November:


Pretty incredible, isn't it? And yes, those are my pink-stockinged feet in the corner. I had to stand on a chair in order to get far enough away to get everything in frame. And this isn't actually everything: we also had a huge bag of onions, shallots, and garlic bulbs (to last throughout the winter), a bunch of dried rattlesnake beans, still in the pods, and as much basil as we could pick.

The basil was turned into pesto and frozen in cubes; likewise, I roasted most of the squash and steamed all of the kale to freeze for future use. I have a few pictures of meals made from this harvest, which I will post eventually. A lot of my pictures from this time did not turn out very well. The days were getting shorter and the light more elusive, and by mid-November, it was usually dark out before I even started cooking dinner.

What about month 2, which we picked up in early December? Well, I never photographed it. As I mentioned, I kept getting sick, and I was very busy, and frankly, what we got in month 2 was just not as pretty. Think parsnips. Lots and lots of parsnips. Plus carrots, potatoes, and more cabbage than I will ever know what to do with. We still have some cabbage in the fridge, and we're going to pick up month 3 tomorrow!

Check back Monday for a picture of tomorrow's haul, and have a wonderful weekend.