2010

I was sick for market week 12 so Art went to pick up our CSA box by himself.  We ended up with eggplant, yellow zucchini, Serrano hot peppers, sweet bell peppers, tomatoes and potatoes.  Lots of pretty colours and delicious veggies.

This is the 11th week of the CSA and tomatoes are in full swing as well as squash and potatoes.  This week we got yellow zucchini and green zucchini, bell peppers, hot peppers, pattypan squash, yellow paste tomatoes, a few heirloom tomatoes, and some little teeny eggplant.

Then I picked up even more heirloom tomatoes from the CSA farmer!  Elsewhere at the market I picked up some small tomatoes, peaches (too bad everyone else is sick and won’t want any peach crisp – or is it?), more potatoes, pecans, onions, halfway red bell peppers, and cucumber salt scrub. 

I also bought eggs, but I forgot to get them into the picture.

This was a nice day for the market.  Lots of local crafters showed up to help celebrate tomorrow’s holiday.  It was great to see the market so busy.  This week the CSA box had tomatoes!  I love tomatoes!  It also had green and yellow zucchini, yellow squash, broccoli, some teeny tiny eggplants, Anaheim chilies, potatoes, and right in the middle is GARLIC! Wooo!  It’s just a teeny head of garlic, but it’s a start! (I do have a trip planned to PA in the middle of the summer so I can stock up on garlic.)

I didn’t go completely crazy elsewhere at the market.  Not entirely at least.  I picked up quite a few onions, more zucchini and yellow squash, more tomatoes, and some locally made basil salt scrub.  And some cucumbers that blend in with the zucchinis. 

Most of the squashes and onions will be going into fajitas on Monday.  I’m not entirely sure what to use everything else for, but everything will get used!

Summer squashes are still coming in strong and I need to get on the ball with using them up!  I’ve still got quite the glut leftover from last week.  This week I got more yellow squash, zucchini, and pattypan squash.  I also got broccoli, red potatoes, tomatoes(!!), cucumber, green tomatoes, and hot peppers in the CSA box.  I also bought two dozen eggs…

Elsewhere at the market I picked up two smallish eggplants, three pretty tomatoes (I need ripe ones for tonight’s dinner), some green onions, a bunch of yellow onions, and some yellow wax beans. 

I also bought 6 ears of corn, but I forgot to get them in a picture.  I’ll be grilling them up for dinner tonight.

Summer squash season is here in force.  The CSA box was filled with yellow squash, two huge zucchini, and a large pattypan squash.  The box also came with 4 or 5 cucumbers, a bag of new Yukon gold potatoes, two bunches of tarragon, a bunch of basil, and two cute little heads of cabbage.

Elsewhere at the market, I behaved and exercised restraint since my fridge is still overflowing from last week’s bounty.  I picked up two lovely bunches of small beets, some tomato “seconds,” a jar of Black Raspberry Jelly and a jar of Grape Jam.  The red onions in this picture are from the CSA, I just didn’t put them in the correct picture. 

I have a few thoughts bouncing around in my head for how to use things up.  The only thing I know for sure that I’ll be making is Panzanella with some of those cucumbers.  Yum.

I also put the first real scratch in the new table with the CSA box today.  *sob*

Another lovely green week for the CSA!  This week we came home with a bag of collard greens, salad greens and then green onions, basil, dill, turnips, radishes, yellow squash, and zucchini.  Yum!

Elsewhere at the market I picked up eggs, Italian green beans, more green onions and some green garlic, potatoes, raspberries, pecans, cucumbers, and a cabbage. 

I also bought entirely too much meat.  I got a package each of sweet Italian sausage and bacon, three frozen chickens, a London broil, and a brisket.  Zekiah Farms won’t be there for the next few weeks, so I stocked up a bit!  Plus this was the first time they had chicken. 

It’s already Monday and I haven’t thought at all about how I’ll be using things.  Eep.

This is the third week of the CSA and I did not do a good job of asking what everything was.  Oops.  While I’ve had everything in the box before, I’m pretty bad at telling the difference between various greens.  I believe that I’ve got a bag of mustard greens, a bag of kale, and broccoli rabe. These all look the same to me which could prove festive. Thankfully I can recognize the salad greens that I got!  There are some radishes hiding in front of the salad greens, a bunch of green onions, turnips, garlic scapes (!!), and some bean things which I think might be peas in their pods.  Again, I should have asked.  I also got a nice bunch of dill and lemon basil.

Elsewhere at the market I added a bit more colour to my haul.  I got a few more garlic scapes from my CSA farmer, as well as a green garlic, some larger green onions and eggs.  I picked up Swiss chard and pecans (!!) from another farmer.  More strawberry jam since the jam we had last week was so amazing and chunky and not super sweet at all.  I got cucumbers and pattypan squash from a fourth farmer – I have dreams of gazpacho.  I got even more green garlic from a fifth farmer.  I’m so thrilled that two farmers are now getting into garlic at the market!  Maybe I won’t need to stock up in Pennsylvania at all next year!  I also got a package of sweet sausage from the meat farmer because I used up the last package during the week to make Pasta with Sausage, Basil and Sundried Tomatoes. 

I bought a jar of body butter from The Eden Company!  I’ve been loving the body mousse I picked up last week and, after talking with Ronda, decided to give the butter a try on my lips which get extremely dried out every winter.  I believe that the butter is lemongrass and grapefruit which certainly sounds like it would be lovely on my lips! 

I also bought a number of herbs for my little garden of herb pots, I hope to get them planted later today.  I got quite a few basil plants, since those worked the best last year.  I’ve also got some oregano, sage, cilantro and parsley.  Here’s hoping I can keep us in a few herbs again this summer.  I’ll try to fill out the rest of the pots next weekend or the week after.

As a sign that Southern Maryland is improving every day, we’ve now got a new market on Friday evenings.  Friday isn’t a super convenient day for us to go out to the market, and we do love our Saturday market, but we decided to check out the Friday market yesterday just to see what was there.  While most of the farmers are the same, there was a farm selling baked goods and another selling hydroponic lettuces.  Art and I got two mini loaves of bread and a shoefly pie (which, sadly, weren’t very good), some granola, a handful of nice little greenhouse tomatoes, a kohlrabi and red raspberries.  I also got some all natural bug repellant, since bugs love me, and some arnica massage oil which is amazing stuff for aches and pains. 

And now I’ve just got to figure out what to do with all of it!

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.

Yay!  This week is the first week of the CSA! 

I was out of town, so Art picked up the box and also took a picture for me.  It looks like we got a dozen beautiful eggs, some red and white green onions, a bag of mixed greens, radishes, turnips and.. a bag that we believe is full of huge cabbage leaves.  It smells like cabbage at least, so I’m betting that’s what we’ve got.  It looks like the Jersey Wakefield Cabbage we got last year so it seems like a safe bet.  There is also a pretty bunch of parsley.

I’m not sure what I’m going to use everything for, but I had some amazing scrambled eggs while I was out of town that were made with fresh parsley and goat cheese, so I’m betting at least some of the parsley will be going into scrambled eggs. I suppose we’ll also be having lots and lots of salad. 

I also did some shopping while I was in West Chester with my parents.  I went to their local Growers Market and filled up 3-4 bags with loot.  We also stopped by Taste of Olive, Éclat Chocolate, and Pete’s Produce.  This picture has everything I picked up, although some of the items are a bit hard to see. 

From the market: garlic chives, green onions, three huge fragrant bunches of basil, radishes, a 2 pound loaf of sourdough bread, a baggie of dried morels (WOW), two containers of brebis (which is the sheep milk equivalent of chevre cheese), and a container of sheep feta. 

From Taste of Olive: basil olive oil, sweet lemon olive oil, wild mushroom and sage olive oil (which is insane), and a refill of my original bottle of garlic olive oil.  Then I picked up bottles of pomegranate balsamic vinegar, peach balsamic vinegar, and golden pineapple balsamic vinegar. 

From Éclat: I picked up a 12-piece box for each of us as well as two containers of mendiants.  This chocolate is simply amazing. Sadly my favorite chocolates, the pave de tour, are only made in the fall and winter. 

From Pete’s Produce: bumper stickers for our cars to promote local eating, garlic scapes, cherry tomatoes, salsa verde, stone ground corn meal and local red wheat flour. 

My drive home was very fragrant and I can’t wait to try everything out.  It’s always great to have access to things I don’t often see at home.  This will be a delicious week indeed, as soon as I figure out what I’ll be cooking.

Where is Market Week 2, you ask?  I was out of town that weekend and, while we did get a few things from the amazing produce stand near my parents’ home, I neglected to take any pictures.  Close your eyes for a moment and imagine two gorgeous bundles of green and white green onions, a container of salsa flecked with corn kernels, two or three packages of bacon from locally raised pigs, and a bag each full of bright green arugula and multi-coloured salad greens.  Label that “Market Week 2” and voila!  That’s the post I didn’t make. 

I was worried that our CSA would start this week and I was going to have to figure out how to use everything up in the day that I have home before heading north to my brother’s place.  Luckily our CSA starts next week, so I just bought a few things that I was looking for and that I knew I’d be able to use over the weekend.  Since it’s still early in the year many farmers are selling potted plants (which I can’t buy because I’d kill them), herbs (which I need to buy next weekend I’ll be home for a while), and various jams and jellies (which I already have a ton of). 

I did come home with seven bundles of green onions and three green garlics.  The green garlic is hiding under the red leaf lettuce on the left side of the green onions.  Then I got lettuce – the aforementioned red leaf lettuce on the left and romaine lettuce on the right.  Isn’t the romaine such a deep, rich green?  It’s hard to believe it’s the same lettuce as the pale green stuff sold in the grocery store!

And then there was meat.  This is the reason that I’ve changed the name of this section from “CSA and Local Produce” to “CSA and Local Foods.”  For the first time, we’ve got a meat farmer at the market.  Art and I talked with her for a good 45-60 minutes today.  I’m pretty sure we asked her every question there was to ask and she answered all of them.  Depending on the season she’ll have cow, lamb, pig, goat, and chicken.  While we already have a local source for pastured cow, she does have some cuts of cow that we haven’t seen other places.  The other meats I haven’t been able to find anywhere locally, so I’m pretty thrilled to now have a source.  It’s pricier than non-local stuff, but I think it’s a price I’m willing to pay.  (I am not going to rant about the benefits of locally and humanely raised meats because that’s not what my blog is for.  I’m a firm believer in people spending their food budgets as they see fit.  However, I am pretty excited about this new opportunity and looking forward to taking advantage of it!  I hope to be able to share that enjoyment with you.)   

The farmer is considering starting a meat CSA and, if that happens, it’s safe to say that we’ll join it because we always enjoy exposure to things we wouldn’t otherwise think to try.  In the meantime we’ll buy parts we’re interested in trying or already know that we love. 

This week, to start out with, we got a package of sweet Italian sausage and a package of bacon – those are at the top of the picture.  On the left side there are three small packages of goat chops.  None of us have ever had goat before, so this is a pretty exciting thing to get to try.  Apparently it’s quite healthy and delicious!  The package in the front is a pound of ground goat meat.  Then, on the right side, there are two small packages of skirt steak.  Skirt steak is one of those cuts that I love but have never been able to buy outside of a restaurant. 

It’s a good thing we bought that larger freezer!

(And, yes, that is my cat trying to figure out what the goat is.)