CSA Week 21

This week is actually our last summer share. Due to the timing of the farmer's market where we pick up our share, this one is both share 21 and 22 leading it to have a few items in bulk.

We've signed up for the winter share and it starts this coming week, picking up on Wednesday. We prefer later week pickups, so that's an improvement. We also hope that with so much of the winter share being hearty stuff, they will know what is in a share a bit earlier and send us that before our pick up. That's been an issue this time around, and not knowing until we bring it home has seriously interfered with our normal system.

Finally we are getting some cooking greens, in the form of kale and swiss chard. The chard went into our scramble for a quick weeknight dinner, and the rest of that and the kale are going into soup. This pumpkin is actually a culinary one, so I plan to roast and puree it. I think they current plan is to use the puree in my Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls for Thanksgiving morning. I'll also roast the seeds, and may get creative with the spices there, depending on if Mary plans on having any. Various squashes. Two of these look like rounder delicata, so we may be able to eat the skin. The others will definitely need more prep work, but that's ok. Squash has grown on us so much that it's worth the work.

Twelve heads of garlic. I had a storage crisis due to this garlic, and did a flurry of re-organization in our pantry/root cellar. It's better, but I am still agitating to deal with our overflow spices that also live in there. Another celeriac. Sunchokes are something that folks seem to go gaga for, but we have yet to find a recipe that we're in love with. We've only gotten them once before, so it's not a huge deal. At least this time we got a bunch of them, so it should be easier to find a recipe of the proper scale. A lovely bag of turnips. Less sweet that many other root veggies, we're big fans. These have already been roasted and glazed, along with some other roots. Notable about this recipe is that it appears to be a gateway for walnuts, perhaps the nuttiest of nuts. Onions The last CSA did not grow sweet potatoes. They actually had a policy against it, because they are an extra-hippy farm and sweet potatoes don't fit into their overall philosophy. Every time I worry that I have become the crazy guy that composts his own feces, someone comes along and reminds me that I am not actually that bad.

Guess the weight of this napa cabbage. Four pounds? Too low. Five pounds? Too low. Six glorious pounds. Of cabbage. We have three recipes planned, and with any luck we won't be throwing out too much after all that. These leeks are going into a pasta dish with lemon and chicken. Sounds a bit odd, but it's very good. A very large bag of potatoes of widely varying sizes and colors. A lot of times when we get oddly colored veggies, they prove to be the same as their non-oddly colored brethren under the hood. These purple carrots actually have streaks of purple in the flesh as well as purple skin. Fun! The last apples of the season! They are sitting on the counter at the moment, since the apple drawer in the fridge is full. Also, I am sure we will see more apples in the winter share, though hopefully fewer now that there isn't a formal, separate fruit share. I think that in the end, doing a fruit share with all local fruit in the midwest just isn't viable. Once you get past the berries of spring, there just aren't enough options.