Today we picked up our first CSA box as well as produce from the other farmers at our local Farmer's Market.  I apologize for the quality of some of these pictures, I'm still learning what works and what doesn't and forgot to take multiple shots of things in the process.  

Our CSA box, which is a half-share, consisted of the following goodies:


One dozen fresh eggs, to be used in various baking and breakfast applications throughout the week.  

Mmm.  Salad greens.  Nothing more really needs to be said.  Between this and the leaf lettuce below, we’ll have lovely salads all week.  

A nice sized head of green leaf lettuce which will supplement the salad mix in numerous salads.  


Green onions, which were supplemented by some from another farmer that aren’t pictured.  These will be used in a number of the week’s recipes as well as omelets.  


A nice handful of both parsley and dill.  The dill will be used in a salmon dish and the parsley will go into the Greek Chicken Pasta.  Fresh dill smells divine.  


Believe it or not, I’ve never eaten either of these things.  Lance loves radishes and we’ll be eating them with our frequent salads.  I’m still not entirely sure what will happen with the arugula, but I have a feeling it will be going into the Three-Cheese Baked Penne.  


The picture does not do this Swiss chard justice.  It’s a nice bright green and the stalks are crisp.  Chard is another vegetable that I’ve never had the pleasure of eating, although I believe that my mom loves the stuff.  I opted for Sauteed Chard with Pancetta, which is a rather simple recipe, in order to let the flavor of the chard come through.  


Turnips are yet another vegetable I haven’t tried before.  This is part of the joy of a CSA for me, getting to try new things but not having to pick them out myself.  These will be going into the Turnip-Potato Gratin.  

That’s all from the CSA box.  Lots of new veggies to experiment with and a good mix of tried and true favorites.  I’ve been trying to subscribe to a CSA for 4 years now, and I could not be more pleased!  In addition to the CSA box we picked up the following from other farmers at the market:  


Four nice heads of broccoli.  Last week, as I pulled out a bag of frozen broccoli from the freezer, I said to myself, “Maybe I’ll be able to get fresh broccoli next week!”  I was not disappointed and I’ll be roasting this for a meal during the week.  


This is low sugar strawberry jam from a local farm.  If you have the access to locally made jams, I can’t recommend them enough.  Art loves this stuff as he finds commercially made jams entirely too sweet.  


These beautiful strawberries come from the farm that we share about 5 feet of property line with.  They’re not cheap, but you’ve got to take advantage of them when they’re in season, right?  


Sugar snap peas are likely my favorite variety of pea.  These will be going into a dish called Chicken with Creamy Mushrooms and Snap Peas, assuming I can restrain myself from just munching on them raw.  We also picked up some young or “green” garlic from this farmer, but I neglected to take a picture of it.  Green garlic is very similar to green onion and can be used in similar applications where you might use onion or even shallot.  I used last week’s green garlic in a risotto with great success. 

You can find the meal plans for these vegetables here.