Local Food 6/13/2009 and Herb Gardening 102

Today we picked up our third CSA box as well as a few fresh herbs to expand my potted herb garden.  Sadly, since Lance and I will be out of town next week, I had to fight the urge to buy anything other than the herbs.  I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to use up all of the gorgeous veggies from my box this week!  

This week’s CSA box included the following delicious goodies.  Sadly, I forgot to take pictures of the eggs, but I did get there early enough to get a dozen beautiful eggs.  

A big bag of salad greens and two heads of lettuce, green leaf and red leaf.

This is the first time we’ve gotten broccoli in our box!  

More yellow squash and zucchini.  

Cucumber is another first in our box and it’s still a challenge for me since I’ve only grown to enjoy cucumber in the last few years.  I’m looking forward to figuring out how to use this.  

More green onions.  I can never have too many of these!

Not only is kale new for our CSA box, it’s also new to me.  I’ve never had it before and tend to think of it as iguana food due to my high school roommate’s iguana.  Hopefully it’s tasty for humans as well.  

I’ve found some delicious looking turnip recipes in the past week in hopes that I’d get more turnips in this week’s box.  And I did!  

That’s it for the box this week, lots of delicious looking vegetables and we’ll be having salad for all of the early meals this week.  I’m slowly learning which things last till the end of the week and which produce needs to be eaten early on in the week.  

I also expanded my herb garden this weekend.  

These are the peppers from earlier in the week; they’re still looking pretty and have some flowering going on.  I learned that I’m not supposed to pick these off.  

Little teeny cilantro plants.  I love cilantro and use it often.  Once tomato season starts up, I look forward to making salsa with good, local ingredients.  And lots and lots of fresh cilantro from my own back yard.  

This pot has gorgeous variegated sage on the left side and Greek oregano on the right.  

This pot doesn’t look like much, but it’s got chives in the upper left and the other two plants are dill.  The dill plants were HUGE stalks when I got them, but I trimmed them for planting.  In theory they will bush out as they continue to grow.  

Here’s the parsley from last week.  Not dead yet.  

This is the basil from last week, still shiny, green, and it smells so fantastic.  

Here are all six pots!  I have soil, rocks and pots for two more pots and they’ll be getting mint, rosemary and thyme.  Then my garden will be complete.  I’ve already got plans for expansion next year.