It’s already been seven weeks! This week included basil, carrots, cucumbers, eggplant, kale, string beans, yellow squash, and scallions. There were also PYO berries, but it was raining, so I’ll go back later in the week. Still no tomatoes.
Here are a few close-ups…
Three colors of string bean:
Carrots just loosened from the ground:
Look at that shiny, inky skin:
Look at these lovelies. So diverse below the surface.
This time with five instead of six:
This CSA share is really starting to heat up. This week, we got garlic scapes, kale, salad turnips, basil (yes!), pick-your-own raspberries (yes!), yellow and green zucchini, two types of salanova lettuce, and cabbage.
We’ve had quite a heat wave this week, so picking our own fruit was a pretty sweaty undertaking. But it was well worth it for a pint of perfect raspberries. I mean perfect. My daughter was very unhappy in the heat—who can blame her? As she wilted in the heat, my husband and I gathered berries. The discomfort was worth it, and based on how many my daughter has eaten, she thought it was worth the temporary discomfort as well.
No filter on those pics…just perfectly ripe raspberries in all their glory. As I said to my husband as we walked back to the car from the fields—I’d probably never buy a pint of perfect organic raspberries. Lovely as they are, it’s just not the kind of thing I’d splurge on. So it felt like I was taking home some precious gift.
And speaking of gifts: wow, that basil! There will be some homemade pesto this week. And those garlic scapes? My daughter loves to wrap them around herself: her arms, her neck, her legs…she can see how ornamental they are. I love that. And not to be too produce-crazy, but the salanova lettuce is just gorgeous. They look like flowers.
The yellow zucchini are enormous. I think maybe they’ll get stuffed. And we got salad turnips again. Two weeks ago, I sauteed them as well as the greens and they were great—the turnips had a subtle sweetness. These week, the greens were already a feast for some bugs, so they wound up in the trash. But the turnips will get sauteed or roasted any day now.
This week, our share also included cabbage. I love cabbage, but it’s pretty un-sexy. But this round, tight little head of cabbage was better looking than any I’ve purchased at the store. And last but not least, we got another head of kale. As someone or other once said, kale is the Kardashian of the greens world—really overhyped and overexposed, showing up in way more places than it should. But that’s not kale’s fault, is it? It’s still crazy healthy and can be really delicious. Check out these purple stems:
Quite a bit to work with this week. And I caught a glimpse of list of the expected crops due next week—blueberries and cherry tomatoes! I’ve heard from others who’ve done this CSA that I will be drowning in heirloom tomatoes this summer. I’m counting the days….
rachel leff 