CSA

The last two weekends were the last two weeks (23 and 24) of our CSA from One Straw Farm. I will miss the weekly trip to Waverly market and picking out some delicious produce from their stand. I’m looking forward to next year!

This past weekend, I picked up a bunch of spinach and some red carrots. The spinach I have already eaten — half in a pasta dish (starts off with frying a piece of bacon, can’t go wrong!) and half in these baked spinach egg things, which were pretty good. I overbaked it a little, but that’s what you get when you’re only sort of following directions. (The oven was at a completely different temperature while I was cooking something else.) Naturally, I also got some apples from Reid’s.

Last weekend I was out of town, but Paul and Danielle grabbed a bunch of beets and some chard for me. The beets I roasted and will eat after I get back from Thanksgiving. (Which reminds me, those need to go into the freezer tonight when I get home.) The chard I kinda forgot about and it was rather wilty, but I blanched and froze most of it and will throw it in some soup sometime soon.

Well, my plan to go to the market with a plan this week didn’t wind up working out so well for me, so I didn’t get much. From the share, I got some potatoes and some swiss chard. From Reid’s, I picked up some apples for snacks — fuji, and another variety I forgot. Then, from another orchard, I bought 12 pounds of jonagolds and fujis (that’s 12 pounds total, not 12 of each) for a canning adventure last night (more to come). I also grabbed an acorn squash.

I believe we only have two more weeks of the share. I will be sad to see it go — it’s been really great to have a motivating factor to get to the market every weekend (and, a ride to go along with that motivation has been helpful, as it is a 4-mile round trip trek to the market). I am hoping to get there a few times over the winter, but we’ll see.

It’s a rainy fall day in Baltimore, which meant the farmer’s market was deserted (comparatively speaking; it also helped that we were there a bit earlier than usual as I am writing this from the reference desk at my library). I was feeling cold, tired, and uninspired, so I picked up a bunch of swiss chard and some spinach for my portion of the share. The spinach I’ll be using in a pasta dish I made a couple of times last week (more to come). The chard I’m not sure yet — I might make some soup tonight.

As is my usual habit, I then hit up the Reid’s Orchard stand for a some fruit. I got cameo apples to eat for snacks at work. Then I picked up some bosc pears and a few varieties of apples: mcintosh, and two others that I now can’t remember despite my efforts to make a mental note. Golden Crispin might have been one? Who knows. In any case, the plan for them is to cook them down into some kind of compote or the like that I can put on my oatmeal in the morning. I have one recipe that I’ve used in the past, but it calls for a lot of butter, which tends to separate out. So, I’m going improvise a bit and see what happens.

Fall is out in force at the farmer’s market. This week for the CSA there were several varieties of squash, and I picked out an acorn squash. I don’t eat much squash aside from summer squash and zucchini, and I’m going to try and branch out a bit more on that this fall. My plans for this one are to make Southwestern Stuffed Acorn Squash, which my friend Laura made a couple of winters ago. Maybe not this week, but it will be fine if it has to wait around. I also picked up a bunch of fresh spinach that I think I’m going to have in a dish involving pasta and pancetta.

On top of that, I got some nice big fuji apples for snacking this week, as well as four big stayman apples that I used to make apple cider muffins. (More on those later.) We also got a nice bucket of green beans to split. I might throw those in with the pasta, or I might eat them separately. I haven’t decided yet.

This week, Paul and Danielle are out of town, so I got the whole share. I picked out potatoes, radishes, chard and kale. The kale will get blanched and frozen for use when the cold weather sets in — I’ve got a couple of recipes that sound good. The chard I’ll eat this weekend, with some black gold cherry tomatoes from another farm, and possibly also the cranberry beans I grabbed. The potatoes, who knows but they’ll wind up in something. I have no idea what I’ll do with the radishes. I picked them mostly because this summer, I kept reading about “delicious, peppery radishes,” but they’ve never tasted like anything much to me. I figure if that’s still the case with radishes straight from the farmer, then I can officially continue to ignore them.

In addition to all that, I grabbed onions and garlic, some Ginger Gold apples for baking and some Jonamacs (I think) for lunches. Plus a bag of coffee from Zeke’s, where the guy was very helpful and friendly. I get overwhelmed by all the different regional varieties, and mentioned I was looking for something to serve with brunch. He suggested their Montebello Reserve blend, which I am enjoying now.

This week I picked up a bunch of rainbow chard, and three small purple bell peppers.

While we were at the market, I also got a cinnamon swirl (croissant dough with cinnamon & sugar) for breakfast. While I was disappointed to see the last of the heirloom tomatoes (just a few left) I was very excited to see bins upon bins of apples at the Reid’s stand. I picked up a few different varieties and a couple of pears as well.

This week I got a little box of potatoes and a couple of striped eggplants.

I also picked up more heirloom tomatoes, 10 pounds of peaches and a box of green grapes (from Reid’s Orchard, I have never been disappointed with anything from them). Top that off with some red bell peppers and some onions and that was more than enough to carry.

The peaches, onions and peppers are all going into a chutney (more later). The rest of it I have no big plans for.