Tuesday, June 10, 2008

CSA Week One

Today was the first pick-up at our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Farm.

It was HOT (mid-90's) today so we waited until the very end of the day to go.

While we waited for the heat to break we...

Planted flower seeds in little pop-up peat pots that John found while cleaning the basement.



And painted little buckets to use while picking strawberries.



I would just like to say, for the record, that I do not like painting with my kids. It gives me great anxiety because I know that at some point I'm going to leave the room for two minutes and come back to find this...



Actually, truth be told, I encouraged them to do that (but painting with a toddler and preschooler really does cause me stress and I try to avoid it as much as I can)!

I'm getting ready to paint that wall, which according to my many Feng Shui books, is our "angels, travel, and helpful people" corner and should be painted grey or silver. I went with "organic garden" in the new Fresh Aire Choice collection, which has no Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and according to the nice man at Home Depot who put the pigment in and shook it up for me, it's "just like the other kind of paint but you can really enjoy it because there are no fumes. Your kids can even help you paint!"

I'm not sure how I feel about the kids helping me with any paint, but I'm glad to have an option that feels better for our family and better for our world!

And discovered that the "baby chicks" who are now about 10 weeks old (I think?) are bored with their little hog panel pen and had flown the coop! Guess it's time to come up with the next step of the plan for "Project Spring Peepers." (Below they are pictured later in the day roosting on the hog panel.)



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At the Farm

In the barn there were...

Sunflower sprouts
Green garlic
Mixed greens (we took spinach, chard and lettuce mix)

For Pick Your Own (PYO) it was...

Strawberries (Yum! Yum! Yum!)







We also got to choose three plants from several seedlings outside of the barn (we picked three different types of sunflowers).

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Back home

It's still hot here so it's hard to think about really anything, but especially cooking -- but it's the first week and I don't want to be wasting produce this early in the season!

This is our fourth summer in the CSA and I remember the first year (the summer Lily was born) feeling like I should just quit because I wasted SO much produce. One of our friends assured us that their first year was the same and that each year it gets easier and easier. Someone also recommended the cookbook From Asparagus to Zucchini, which has really been a HUGE help.

Each week when I pick up our veggies, I sit down with the book, which is organized alphabetically and includes nutritional information about the vegetable, how to serve it raw, how to preserve it and recipes that often pair the vegetable with another that is also in season.

For dinner tonight (we got home late so it was kind of a free-for-all) the kids had "yolky eggs" (over-easy) on toast. I'm not sure what John ate, or if he's even eaten at all.

For myself I made...

A whole wheat wrap filled with:
Scrambled eggs
Cheddar cheese
Sunflower sprouts
Chopped chard
And mashed avocado

It was really delicious. I'm looking forward to making another one tomorrow!

Speaking of things to make for tomorrow, the kids have requested a "breakfast ice-cream" (after I recently said no to chocolate ice-cream at 9:30 in the morning).

We buy fresh, raw cream at a nearby farm, and make the ice-cream ourselves, so I'm pretty convinced that we can come up with something that is both delicious and healthy enough to be served on top of our oatmeal.

I'm not quite sure what it is going to be but I'm thinking it will include cream, milk, maple syrup, egg yolks and some fresh strawberries.

And now back to tackling kitchen clean-up so I can get all this wonderful food we just brought home organized, rinsed, chopped and ready to eat!

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