CSA 2010 - Week 1

It's CSA time again, which means I'm blowing the dust off the ol' blog. Because we wanted to try a fruit share on top of our veggie share (and due to our pick up spot moving,) we are going with a new CSA this year. The fruit is not from the same farm, or even remotely local (lots seems to be from CA and Oregon this week) which is odd, but such is the life of the midwesterner. You'll notice that all the hardcore 'locavores' live in more temperate climates. On to the share!

So yeah, about that fruit share. Turns out, it's quite a bit of fruit. Being old hands at the vegetable share, we were already trying to outsmart it and preemptively find uses for what we thought might be trouble items (our guess this week? The herbs.) We may have to rethink that though, and start focusing our creative energies on the fruits. These pluots look and taste just like plums, despite being a hybrid with apricots. No special plans for them yet, but we'll see if we manage to get through them. Valencia Oranges are clearly a non-local choice, and hail from California. We are not big orange eaters, so having quite this many is going to be a challenge. We have a stir fry in mind for some and others may get sectioned, tossed with some booze and brown sugar, and lightly broiled as a dessert (a variation on a Rachel Ray recipe, I must admit.) We'll see how that goes. It's early yet for Cherries around these parts, so these also come for sunny CA. As I type this they are all pitted (thanks to my new cherry pitter which, while awesome, makes me feel a little like Anton Chigurh) and half are baking away as part of a coffee cake. The other half are in the freezer, banked for some future use.

Meyer Lemons are an item I always read about in blogs and recipes and wonder about, but since they only seem to be available in the Pacific Time Zone I never gave recipes featuring them much thought. Guess that's changing now. They should last a few weeks in the fridge, so they're out of mind for now. Apricots apparently have a short shelf life, so these are up first for just plain eatin', as are these Flame Grapes. Then we come to a whole buncha nectarines and peaches. Some of the nectarines are slated for a pork dish and some of the peaches for breakfast, cut up on yogurt. The others have no destiny at the moment, but will probably end up as snacks -- It's a bit early yet to bust out the preserves, butters, jams, or ice cream.

Summer squashes are starting early this year, and we are answering that start with zucchini bread. We have a few different recipes we like, and it banks some easy breakfast options, so it's a win all around. Purple and White Scallions are both headed for the stir fry that's consuming some of the oranges as well. Chard is one of our favorite cooking greens. Some of it is going into a simple but delicious scrambled egg dish that also consumes herbs, and the rest will become a calzone along with this spinach.

This poor head of bok choi came to us looking like it had to suffer many humiliations in its lifetime. It's pretty busted up, but we still plan on having it in a spicy stir fry with garlic and ginger. The warm, wet spring seems to be very kind to broccoli yielding three heads of the stuff. We have a few old standbys for this: One head will be roasted and served with raisin sauce (so much better than it sounds) and the other will be lightly sauteed with garlic and red pepper. Spring means lettuce and lettuce means salad. Our old CSA sent us tons and tons of garlic scapes, but this one only forwarded on a few. Having seen that they were coming we pulled out all sorts of recipes. Having only gotten a few, we'll likely just sub them in for garlic here and there. Herbs from the CSA like this basil and oregano are usually hard to use up during the week before the next batch drops, but these are pretty small bunches and will likely get entirely consumed in the scramble with the chard. We had thought we were getting cilantro, which caused me to pull out a recipe for Cilantro and Coriander flat breads that I've been dying to try, but the basil had to go and ruin it.