Greens. And optional greens.

[resonant]

I realize that not everyone is as fascinated by community-supported agriculture, or what I cooked last night, as I am. So: an opt-out opportunity.

Poll #627 CSA/food filter

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 12

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I do not want to be on Res's CSA/food filter.

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Remove me, madam.
12 (100.0%)

We got our first shipment of meat this week -- eight pounds of assorted organic free-range chicken, beef, and pork. We ate a pound of the ground beef tonight in sloppy joe casserole (which is rather fun: seasoned meat, no ketchup thank you, with dollops of cornbready stuff cooked on top), and it ... tasted like ground beef. But I suppose the point is not meat that tastes different but meat that doesn't ruin the entire world.

Unfortunately, the cut-up chicken is frozen all in one piece rather than separately. When the weather cools a bit, I'll thaw it enough to separate out the pieces and put them back in the freezer; a whole cut-up chicken might be as many as six meals for us, depending on how meaty our mood is.

Aside from that, we have a whole not-cut-up chicken, probably destined to be poached in the crockpot and served with rice, but not while it's this hot; two pork chops; two steaks; two more pounds of ground beef; and a pound of bacon.

Vegetables: more turnips with greens (mine! all mine!), chives, lettuce, assorted salad greens (tatsoi and arugula and other stuff I don't know the name of), assorted cooking greens (kale and chard), more sugar-snap peas.

Most of the peas have already been eaten in salads or taken to work in my bento lunch. Tomorrow we're having the cooking greens in a frittata. Saturday we're having many raw greens in a main-dish salad from The Splendid Table with green apple, salted almonds, and goat cheese.

Comments

[queue]

...totally hungry now. Also, v. happy about this filtre.

[resonant]

Once, for some reason, I decided to get an astrology-feng shui report (despite the fact that I don't believe in astrology and am iffy on feng shui), and the only thing I remember about it was that it said, "You should cook for everyone you care about," and I thought, "Yes."

[queue]

spuffyduds (whom, if you do not know, you should, and vice versa) told me today that I should use some of the post-bionicization energy to cook for my co-workers. My inner earth mother immediately surged forth and demanded a large pot and a high-quality cutting board. Secretly, I'm meant to feed multitudes. Join me?

[resonant]

Yes! Let's! Soup and smut for everyone!

[resonant]

I'm in central Illinois, where the cost of living is very low, and I'm expecting it to be considerably more than I spend on food in the summer. 22 weeks of vegetables are $462, and five monthly deliveries of meat are $450. (There are eggs, too, but I don't remember what I paid for them, and since they're sold out the website doesn't list the prices any more.) Half-shares of everything are available.

This means, for instance, that I essentially just paid $90 for that eight pounds of organic meat; I'm thinking if I went to the supermarket and bought ordinary meat and Oscar Mayer bacon, I'd have paid about $45.

Harder to compare the vegetables, because a lot of this stuff you just can't get in the supermarket -- turnip greens that aren't inedibly large, in Illinois? Uh-uh.

[caseylane]

Butting in...

In the Detroit area it's $700 for 20 weeks, which works out to $35 a week. I haven't joined because my daughter and her boyfriend have no interest in eating the things offered and I fear I would end up throwing them out. I don't know how much the meat is, I didn't look it up.

[resonant]

So far I've been more enthusiastic than the rest about most of what we've got, and we've gotten several things that no one will eat but me. And I'm expecting to spend part of the late summer begging people to take bell peppers and winter squashes off my hands.

On the other hand, already I've been introduced to two things I like and had not previously tried (garlic scapes and tatsoi).

[gchick]

Serious yum!

[resonant]

I know! And it's not even tomato season yet!

[gchick]

My CSA has tomatoes for the first time this week, but we're a few weeks ahead of you. CAN NOT WAIT.

[yahtzee]

I just wanted to say thanks for talking about this -- it's been very educational for me, and I am hoping to join a CSA later this year as a result!

[resonant]

Oh, that's great! I've been wanting to do it for years, but the money deterred me.

[kass]

We joined a CSA fifteen years ago and it's been pretty much my favorite thing ever since. (Rates have, alas, gone up, but there's not a lot we can do about it, and at this point the CSA is more important than pretty much anything else on our expense list.) We go every week to pick up what's available, plus things like berries and sugarsnap peas are pick-your-own, so we wind up hanging out in the fields with other folks from the community, nattering, which is...oddly old-fashioned and lovely, to my mind.

These wee little turnips make me so happy. And all the interesting salad greens -- tatsoi and arugula and mustard greens. Huzzah.

[resonant]

Oh, that sounds lovely! Our farm is pretty far out -- we pick our stuff up at a nearby church parking lot instead of going there -- and there's no fruit at all, alas.

the CSA is more important than pretty much anything else on our expense list.

I can definitely see that. I don't think I'd give up high-speed internet for it, but I'd be willing to, say, turn the air conditioner down some, or eat oatmeal instead of pricey boxed cereal.

[giglet]

Organic bacon! Just the thought of it makes me happy.

[resonant]

Me too! Unfortunately, we already had a pound of ordinary bacon in the fridge, so we'll have to get through that first.

[binkii]

Cooking junky!

[resonant]

Yes! I told someone else: I knew I was a serious cook when I thought, "Wow, getting a box o' random stuff every week will really complicate my meal planning" -- and that was one of the pluses!

[lynnmonster]

Oooo! Thursdays are my CSA days (with ours, meat is only available sporadically and on an as-ordered basis, but I did opt for the fruit share as well). I had the *best* salad tonight of lettuces, sugar snap peas, green onion, raw turnips, and blue cheese; also, some brown rice and braising greens with onions, red pepper flakes and a little peanut oil.

I look forward to hearing how the frittata goes, b/c we get *lots* of "braising greens" and it gets a little old after a while...

Yay, CSA! Yay, cooking!

[resonant]

Oh, I wish we had a fruit option; I would be all over that. The kidlet is a little fruit bat.

Your salad sounds glorious. I swapped out the frittata for a main-dish salad (lettuces, thin-sliced Granny Smith apple, salted almonds, basil, goat cheese, and red onion) because it's so hot I couldn't face cooking, but tomorrow night we'll see how it goes.

[rhi]

::laughing:: I am an idiot tonight so I might as well laugh at myself. I can't seem to get back off that poll, but please leave me on the filter anyway? Thank you!

[resonant]

Hee -- no problem. I'm not at all sure how opt-out filtering is going to work with cross-posting anyway (maybe I shoudl just not cross-post the food stuff), but you're safe.

[rhi]

I've used filtering on a crosspost, and it worked fine. I just made damn sure the filter had the same name on both DW and LJ, and then posted from the DW interface. Good luck, and thanks, these have been fun to read!

[swordage]

Oh my GOSH am I interested in this kind of thing. XD I'd love to know how you deal with getting semi-random foodstuffs - do you get weird things you don't know how to deal with? Do you plan meals around what you get from the CSA, or are they just neat extra stuff to work through? My curiosity is endless.

[resonant]

It's so cool. I can read and write about CSA all day.

Normally I'm a pretty anal sort of meal planner -- whole month's worth of meals planned out at one time, etc. -- but while I'm getting the CSA, I'm not planning that week's meals until I see what I've got. (The meat is more flexible, since it arrived frozen and can wait indefinitely.)

At the moment, the boxes are pretty light, and it probably wouldn't be that hard just to slip the vegetables in as side dishes, but one of these days I'm going to get a box with five pounds of tomatoes in it, and that's going to have to dictate what I cook that week. (And I can't wait!)

I'm definitely going to be glad that k8andrewz linked me to foodgawker, because some things (like spinach) I have five million recipes for, but other things (like beets) I just simply don't know how to cook.

[girlnamedpixley]

I didn't know I was fascinated until I started reading your posts about it, but now I just take it all in with envy and hope that in the near future I can make beginning steps to be equally community-minded with my grocery purchases and meal preparation. I have no idea what my local resources for local agriculture are, but I'm motivated to find out. : )

[resonant]

This is how I got hooked, too -- by reading the posts of people who had it and envying them. (Of course, now who I envy are people who live in places like San Francisco, who could probably get CSA vegetables all year.)

I've always shopped a lot at farmer's markets, and they're getting a lot better locally -- we have three farmer's markets in town, and two of them require the food to be grown in Illinois. (The third one will have things like oranges and avocados for sale, grr.) But this is an even bigger step, I think. I'm loving it so far.

[carolyn_claire]

I want to be in the filter, but I also want to call you madam. So. Madam.

[resonant]

We really don't use nearly enough variety in our forms of address. Mistress.

[neery]

Christ, that is a lot of meat.

My experience with organic meat is that ground beef tastes like ground beef, free range chicken is noticably better than meat farm chicken, and organic turkey is a revelation. I always thought I hated turkey, but as it turns out, organic turkey is actually pretty delicious.

[resonant]

Wow, now I wish we'd be getting turkeys, but I kind of doubt it.

I guess it's going to be hard for ground beef to have much character. (Well, especially after I dumped diced tomatoes, cinnamon, cumin, allspice, and cayenne in it!)

I'll look forward to tasting the chicken. I have this fabulous recipe where you cut out the backbone of a whole chicken to butterfly it, rub lemon zest, salt, and sugar under the skin, and then oven-roast it in a pan with an inch or so of broth and lemon juice -- that way you get crisp skin and juicy meat.

[tevere]

Hmm, your vegetable selection sounds much like my CSA-equivalent, in short: lettuce. While I've managed to keep the lettuce at least vaguely crisp in the fridge for up to 10 days by washing it, cutting it and storing it in a plastic ziplock with holes punched in it, it is still just TOO MUCH LETTUCE. Is there anything you do with the stuff other than make salads? (I've never been a massive leafy-green salad person; I prefer a bit of substance to my salads.) Or do you have a particularly awesome lettuce-based salad recipe? *begs*

[jesse_the_k]

Since I'm celiac I'm always looking for gluten-free sandwich opportunities, and let me just say that romaine lettuce is a great way to eat a sandwich. Dry it well, distribute the ingredients the long way, and roll that baby up like a cigar.

[tevere]

Huh! That's a really great idea, I'm totally going to try that -- maybe lettuce leaves instead of tortillas, which you can't buy here and I'm crap at making from scratch. Thanks for sharing the lettuce wisdom!

[resonant]

That's a great idea, and I really didn't have any great ideas to offer; we eat a salad with every dinner (or else a salad for dinner) and that's all I really use lettuce for. Well, I have a vegetable broth recipe that uses those tough outer leaves that you usually throw away, but it won't go far in using up an oversupply of lettuce.

[resonant]

I love main-dish salads! I love a cobb salad (tomato, hard-boiled egg, cooked chicken, avocado, and bacon over lettuce). I love deli turkey, sharp Cheddar, green apple, toasted walnuts, and dried cranberries. Or an old-fashioned chef's salad with hard-boiled egg, whatever deli meat and cheese you have around, and radishes.

Tonight we had a new one that I'm definitely planning to make again, from The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper: thin-sliced Granny Smith apple, goat cheese, salted almonds, red onion, and basil. The basil really made the salad. Just regular dried basil.

For side salads, I alternate between toasted walnuts with dried cranberries (or halved purple grapes) and an all-green salad with thin slices of cucumber and celery.

We added a salad to every dinner when the spouse was diagnosed with high cholesterol. It didn't keep him off medication, but both of us lost a little weight, and I've really come to look forward to those salads.

[tevere]

Tonight we had a new one that I'm definitely planning to make again, from The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper: thin-sliced Granny Smith apple, goat cheese, salted almonds, red onion, and basil. The basil really made the salad. Just regular dried basil.

Oh man, that sounds good. Why does Timor have so many goats and so little goat cheese? *cries*

I riffed off this for lunch today: salted almonds, lightly pickled red onion, basil, a bunch of random other veg (snow peas, green beans, potato), lettuce. Delicious! Now if only we had apples...

[resonant]

Sounds tasty! The recipe said that any slightly underripe fruit would do, and offered peaches and green grapes as an option. What kind of fruit is almost ripe where you are now?

[the_shoshanna]

Aiee, if I'm lucky I'll get my first CSA box of the year on June 30. (I have a half share, so it's biweekly, and I still haven't been told whether my first pickup will be that week or the next one.) Darn short growing season and bad weather; I'm really looking forward to it!

[resonant]

And I thought we had a short growing season! We've had a weird spring, as far as weather -- constant rain for a month, and then sproing! up to the nineties without any warning. So we didn't get spinach or broccoli or cauliflower. Maybe in the fall.

[thingswithwings]

I love the CSA talk. :) And am jealous of your turnip greens YUM.

[resonant]

I'm glad! I love everyone's food conversations.

And almost no one properly appreciates turnip greens.

[stultiloquentia]

Oh, hey. Tell me about your frittata. *also has lots of cooking greens*

[resonant]

The frittata (a Deborah Madison recipe) was delicious but more time and trouble than I usually expect with a frittata.

You sautee onions and the finely chopped stems of the greens for quite a long time on Low, add the greens and go even longer on Low -- this part alone takes about half an hour. Then you mix the eggs with parsley and basil and a little Parmesan and quite a lot of Gruyere, beat the cooked greens into the egg, and only then pour it back into the pan to cook like a frittata.

And it only used up half my greens! I'm thinking I may need to braise/sautee the other half as a side dish to something.

[stultiloquentia]

Huh. The ingredients sound YUMMY together, so thanks for this -- but I bet I could get more or less the same effect in 15 minutes, tops. Sauteing greens needn't take that long, especially if you've got a wok.