Local Food 5/29/2010

Sadly we didn’t make it in time to get eggs this week, but that’s probably okay considering I’ve got almost two dozen in the fridge at the moment.  We’re still early enough in the market season that greens are dominating everything.  This week, in the CSA, we got a bag of salad greens, a handful of radishes, a bunch of reddish green onions, broccoli rabe there in the front, collard greens and spinach in the bags toward the back of the picture, and a bunch of turnips. 

The things I thought were cabbage last week are, indeed, collard greens.  Good thing they’re pretty similar so my recipe for cabbage rolls worked out anyway!  I guess I’m glad I didn’t know they were collards because all of the collard green (recipes I can find seem pretty unappealing.  Broccoli rabe is a new thing to us, so I’ll be tracking down (recipes later today to try to figure out how to use it. 

Elsewhere in the market I picked up some strawberry jam, a gorgeous bunch of green leaf lettuce, four green garlics, four center cut pork chops and a pound of bacon, plus some beautiful Swiss chard with pretty red stalks.  Peeking out from behind the lettuce, hiding so I almost forgot them, are five or six cute little green striped pattypan squashes.  First of the season!

This week the market has also started something that might be the doom of my budget.  Local crafters.  Eek.  The crafters will be coming en masse next weekend, this weekend we just had The Eden Company.  Ronda, the crafter, started out with olive oils, moved in to soaps, and now has all sorts of skin products that smell delicious enough to eat.  Since I have a slew of strange skin allergies, I’m always on the lookout for new products that might be safe for me and her stuff seems like the safest!  I got a container of lemongrass salt scrub and a bottle of lavender and lime mousse for moisturizing.    She’s hoping to have seasonal mousses that contain local fruits throughout the market season and, if I love the first things I picked up, I have a feeling this might be a new and smelly addiction!  It is fantastic to see our market grow but here’s hoping the other crafts that come to the market won’t be quite as attractive – for the sake of my wallet!

I also found out at the meat farmer (Zekiah Farms) will have turkeys for Thanksgiving.  Yes please, sign me up for one of those.