2011

Local Food 6/23/2011

This is our fifth week of the meat CSA and the first pick up after The Great Freezer Disaster of 2011.  I’m not sure when we’ll have our second freezer back in working order, so I only picked up a package of sweet Italian sausage on top of what came in the CSA.  We also had chats with the farmer and it seems like we’ll be getting in on the September slaughter for both cow and pig.  Sadly it looks like we won’t be able to get another pork belly until then so my Ultimate BLT idea will have to be shelved until next year. 

Our CSA included a chicken, ground beef, a gorgeous London broil, maple sausage, and eggs.  In addition, I picked up some sweet Italian sausage.  Once the second freezer gets sorted out, I’ll figure out what we want to do in terms of bulk purchasing other meats.

Local Food 6/18/2011

Since I was out of town again, Art went to the market without me.  As always, he does a great job of marketing, but I am so happy I’ll be home for the next 6 weekends!  Just in time for tomato season to begin too!  I can’t wait for tomatoes. 

This week Art picked up zucchini, yellow squash, potatoes, and Japanese eggplant.  I’m glad he didn’t go too overboard since this week proved to be a short cooking week for us.  Next week, however, we’ll be going crazy at the market.

Local Food 6/16/2011

Our fourth week of the meat CSA!  This was a pig week so we came home with pork chops, bacon, fresh sausage, a ham steak, and a dozen eggs.  Outside of the opening credits in Dexter, I’ve never actually seen a ham steak, so I’m not sure how I’ll be using it yet.  However it gets used, I’m sure it will be delicious!

Local Food 6/11/2011

Finally!  I got to go to the market!  Oh happy day!  I tried not to go overboard because I’ll be heading out of town next weekend and won’t have that much time to cook during the week, but I came home with a few scrumptious things. 

The first potatoes of the year are showing up so I had to get a few pounds of those.  Art has requested that I roast them.  Beets are starting to arrive as well so I picked up two great looking bunches.  I also picked up some spinach and four pounds of sweet Italian sausage since we’ve run out of the sausage from our first half pig.  (Only one pound is shown, the others were already in the freezer.)

Local Food 6/9/2011

For our third week of the meat CSA, we remembered eggs.  We got a dozen for this pickup and a dozen that we’d missed earlier.  We’ll pick up the extra dozen we missed at some point in the future, but right now I’ve got three dozen in my fridge and that is enough! 

This week also brought us two pounds of ground beef, a chuck steak, and another whole chicken.  Some of these whole chickens are going to be smoked or become beer can chickens at some point in July.  Fun and excitement!

(We switched our pickup day to Thursdays, which accounts for the dates on these pickups.)

Local Food 6/5/2011

Here’s the second week of our meat pickup!  Again, we forgot to pick up the eggs.  Oops. 

This week we got smoked pork sausage, a beef rib steak, and a huge container of pulled beef.  I can’t wait to thaw that container for delicious sandwiches in the near future.  (Or when I remember that I have it.)

Local Food 6/4/2011

And, yet again, Art was amazing and went to the market without me.  I can’t believe that I haven’t been to the market yet myself!  Hopefully that will change this weekend and I can’t wait to do my own veggie shopping.  Not that Art doesn’t do a grand job himself, I just miss it. 

This week we ended up with a ton of veggies.  Sugar snaps, broccoli, various summer squashes, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, green onions, and Swiss chard.  What a great haul!

Local Food 5/21/2011

This is the missing week of the farmers market!  It was hiding on a different camera so I had to track it down.  This is another week that Art went to the market without me.  This time it was because of the Attack of the Killer Kidney Stones. 

He did a great job and came home with green onions, strawberries, peach chutney, salad greens, eggs, broccoli, and spinach.  He also got a small loaf of gingerbread and the long things next to the green onions are young garlic.  It was all used and all delicious!

Local Food 5/29/2011

We’ve decided to try something new this summer.  Our local meat farmer, Zekiah Farms, is offering CSAs for produce, meats and eggs.  We decided to give it a go for a season and see how it worked for us.  It seems like a great way to go for people who don’t have lots of freezer space so can’t buy cow and pig in bulk like we have in the past.  We signed up for a half share of meat plus chickens as well as an egg share.  This means we should be getting around 4 pounds of meat a week, a dozen eggs, and a whole chicken every other week. 

For this first week Art forgot to pick up our eggs, so those aren’t shown and we’ll just get two dozen next week.  We ended up with some pork chops, beef cubes, a flank steak, and some ground beef.  We also got a chicken and they gave us two gorgeous cabbages as a bonus.  This will be an exciting test even though I have a feeling we’ll go back to bulk meat purchasing once the season is over since we do happen to have the freezer space for it.

Local Food 5/28/2011

Yet again, Art went to the market without me, this time because I was out of town for the weekend.  He did a great job vegetable hunting and came home with romaine lettuce, zucchini, yellow squash, patty pan squash, green onions and kohlrabi.  Yum!

I seem to be missing a photo for the market on ⁵⁄₂₁, it might be on a different camera and I just need to track it down.  Once I do, I’ll go ahead and get that posted.