Eating Local

We joined a CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture) for the first time this year. It's a 22 week season that is supposed to start in mid-June, but cooler weather pushed our start date back to the very last Saturday in June and we just picked up our third week's produce a few hours ago.

These first few weeks there has been a plethora of variants of lettuce. I'm not sure if it's because it's the start of the season or perhaps because it has been an excessively cooler and wetter one this year. We've also had a different type of onion each week so far, which includes the entire, long, green portion, which I've been chopping up and freezing in the hopes that it will get us through a year of garlicky chicken dinners.

We split the bag with another couple, which has been a good thing because it would be really hard for the two of us to get through that many greens in a week, even though I have a penchant for cooking for more people than actually live in this house. The goal has been to get through our entire share during the week and use only what has come in the bag for the vegetable portions of our meals (this has been good for testing out new recipes). On the whole, we've been successful...both weeks we had to carry over a bit of lettuce and purchase one or two other produce items...but we are getting really good at integrating lettuce and other leafy greens into our diet.

Frittata made of Week 1's sweet onions and swiss chard

Week 2 (red onions with tops, romaine and green crisp lettuce, red and golden beets, and spinach)

There were only four beets total in week 2's bag, which meant only two for us, but we roasted them and made the most out of them...

and they were a great main attraction (along with homemade blue cheese dressing) on a salad (using the CSA lettuce of course) to go with a roast chicken dinner

Korean bulgogi/pulkogi with lettuce wraps

Juiced greens (lettuce and beet greens...with some apples for some sweetness) along with pure fresh apple juice

Week 3 (picked up today: sweet onions, green and yellow zucchini, spinach, boston and romaine lettuce). Currently brainstorming about what to make this week...