Saturday, May 30, 2009

CSA Adventure: Week 3

Well. The official verdict on the radishes is that they're disgusting. Garlic and butter could not make them acceptable. Thankfully we did not get any more in this week's share.

What did we get? Well...it was...interesting, to say the least. Herbs seemed to be the main feature yet again, and I confess that I don't really know what to do with fresh herbs. Unfortunately we haven't gotten any basil or cilantro--the two herbs I *would* know exactly how to use fresh and get a lot of mileage out of! We also keep getting interesting homemade herb products: this week was a mix of herbs for the bath. I'm sure that would be exciting to some people, but I'm not a bath girl myself, plus the idea of taking a bath in tea, basically, just doesn't seem appealing to me...

At least the greens have been enjoyable each week, and we did receive some more yummy strawberries (I tried a different shortcake recipe which, while good, only left us regretting not using the traditional Bisquick recipe). Our newsletter had also said we'd be getting baby carrots, so we were anticipating something roughly the size of what you get when you buy a bag of baby carrots in the store. Instead, we opened the bag to find these:



Oh dear. It's hard to get a sense of scale from this picture, but these carrots are perhaps the length of my finger, and the thickness of a pencil. And these are the biggest ones. They looked...well, scraggly and pathetic. And if they had come in the midst of a heaping portion of produce, we might not have thought twice about them, but since the bags have seemed pretty sparse so far...all we could do was laugh and take a picture for the blog. As Steve said, "Why on earth don't they just leave these in the ground and let them grow into REAL carrots?!" He actually tried re-planting a few in a pot :)

However, the next morning, Steve realized what had happened. The carrots had to be thinned. These were pulled up so the others could grow well--but there's nothing wrong with them, so they might as well be eaten. That makes more sense.

Anyway, we're still optimistic. Though the shares have been a bit disappointing so far, it is still early. Most people who have backyard gardens are not harvesting ANYTHING yet! We are hoping that in a few more weeks, the produce will be plentiful. Our farmers have also explained that the weather has been difficult to work with. After a couple of years of drought, we've gotten lots and lots of rain this spring, and while rain is certainly necessary, too much water causes seeds to mold and young roots to rot. We're in a transition time when it's not hot enough for the warm-weather veggies and too wet for the cooler weather ones.

This week's bounty:
  • red leaf lettuce
  • "baby carrots"
  • strawberries
  • fresh herbs (oregano, thyme, spearmint)
  • dried herbs for the bath
  • a large grass-fed beef chuck roast
  • a recipe and fixings for the roast: cream of mushroom soup, pepperoncinis, Italian dressing mix and onion soup mix
  • four eggs (the hens apparently weren't laying well this week, I guess)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Can you dry the fresh herbs and use them for cooking? Just a thought for something you can do with them. :)

By the way, my recipe for the sweet and sour chicken is in my notes section on my Facebook profile. I think you will enjoy it very much, we sure do!