Local Food 7/4/2009

We have made it to week six of our CSA.  I actually don’t know how many weeks our CSA runs for; I suppose that I should find this out at some point.  This week brought us our first CSA tomatoes.  Have I mentioned recently that I really love fresh, local tomatoes?   We’re also starting to see the first of our non-green bell peppers which makes me a very happy camper.  For some reason I love bell peppers in every colour except green.  

Tomatoes and bell peppers.  The bell pepper there in the top right is a rich shade of purple.  They’re all nice and small as well!  The peppers will be going into fajitas.  The tomatoes of this week will be going into Gazpacho, Caprese, burgers, and salads.  And my mouth.

More basil!  Lemon and regular basil this week.  Along with the garlic scapes I picked up in Pennsylvania, these will be turned into Pesto.  

Beets surprise me.  I’ve found that I really like them quite a lot!  I’ll be roasting these up with carrots this week, although it was hard to fight the urge to make Roasted Beet Risotto again.  

Art didn’t believe that these were hot peppers so he washed one of the small ones and popped it into his mouth.  Then he went running for a drink and shoved a cookie into his mouth to soothe the burning.  Or maybe he just wanted a cookie, I’m not sure.  These will be going into Indian food as well as Art’s mouth.  
Carrots and cabbage sort of speak for themselves.  This is a nice, small head of cabbage and it will be going into a peanut noodle dish.  The carrots will be roasted along with the beets.  

More cucumbers!  I feel like they’re coming out of my ears!  These will be used in Gazpacho as well as the peanut noodle dish.  And salads too, if the Salad Man remembers we’ve got them.  

I’ve recently learned scary things about commercial potatoes that make me appreciate locally grown potatoes about a billion times more than I did before.  I’ll be roasting these beauties and tossing them with pesto.  

Zucchini and yellow squash.  I love squash.  Next week I’m going to try my hand and making stuffed squash but this week I’m planning fajitas.  

I should have taken these out of the bag, but I was afraid I’d be tempted to eat them if I did.  These are from our awesome CSA farmer.  Some are oatmeal cookies with nuts and the others are oatmeal with chocolate chips.  

Green onions also from our CSA farmer, but not from the actual CSA box.  I go through so many green onions during most weeks.  

These are purple things.  The lower two pieces are different varieties of eggplant and I’ll be grilling them.  The top piece is a deep purple bell pepper.  It doesn’t know yet, but its fate is Gazpacho.  This farmer has lots of different varieties of eggplant, including the long, narrow Japanese ones.  I’m going to do some research this week to figure out how to use the Japanese eggplant I plan to buy next weekend.  

I’ve become a fan of buying tomato “seconds” each week.  I think they’re perfect. 

Art loves peaches.  While I don’t plan on cooking anything with them this week, he wanted to get a container anyway for midday snacking.  I love peaches too, so this is a win-win situation.  

These are “mucho nacho” jalapeños.  They called to Art and begged him to take them home with him.  Little do they know they’re going to be stuffed, roasted, and consumed.  

I’m never sure what this size of tomatoes is actually called.  Grape perhaps?  They’re mainly for salads and munching.  

Last year during market season I don’t think I bought a single onion or potato.  I’m not really sure what I was thinking since these are pretty amazing.  They’re nice and sweet, small, and delicious.  Looking at this picture I’m realizing that I probably should have gotten more of them.  Drat.  

And that’s the haul from the market this weekend.  We were a bit more restrained in some than last week and less restrained in others.  We’re starting to see eggplant and bell peppers, not to mention corn.  Glorious corn.  We’ll be having corn for lunch next Saturday.  I’m not sure that we’ll have it with anything; it might just be a meal of corn.  

I think I enjoy writing my CSA posts up after I’ve already done meal planning, since then I can include details about what I’ll be doing with things.  I’ll try to keep this in mind in the future!