CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Essentially, one purchases a ‘share’ in a local farm – much like the stock market, one then has a vested interest in seeing the farm succeed. Dividends/pay outs come in the form of produce – vegetables and sometimes fruit. Different farms do things differently; my farm happens to be also organic, and I pick up my box each week – Tuesdays for me – from a local location. Join me on this journey – my inaugural season with a CSA – as I explore the various vegetables I receive and what I can do with them to turn them into delicious happiness…
For more information on CSAs, click here. To find a CSA local to you, you can click here or for one in NYC, visit JustFood.org. I found mine by typing “Forest Hills CSA” into Google – my neighborhood name + the word CSA, and I’m sure that would work for you as well. Good luck and enjoy the fruits of your labors… har, har.
Remember that soup I made last week? Well, I hadn’t quite finished it yet when it was time for my new CSA pick up – week #8! I grabbed the collards & the carrots, chopped them up and tossed them in, along with some more chicken stock. Yum!!! (I boiled the collards super much to get the stems all soft so I could digest them more easily… I learned from my past mistakes!)
I proceeded to eat this soup nearly every meal… because it was that damn delicious.
Along with a nice big hunk of bread and yes, I sliced some butter on top to add some richness to the soup. Sue me. I know it’s a lot of butter. But it was good.
You see that book next to my bowl of soup? Deborah Madison’s What we eat when we eat alone was sent to me for review. I’ll be really honest here. I mean, brutally honest. Are you ready? I actually get sent a lot of books (generally food related) for review, and most of the time, I skim through them, try to muster up some excitement, and wind up putting them aside for later perusal. Yeah, one day in the future (probably sooner than you realize), I’m going to run out of pictures of food I’ve eaten/made to write about, and I’ll resort to having “Book Week” where I talk about a different food-related book each day just so I’ll be able to continue posting on a daily basis (it’s coming up on a year that I’ve had a new post up at 10:30 every morning… can you believe it?).
Well, this book isn’t one of those that I couldn’t bring myself to read. You can ask pretty much any of my closest friends, anyone I talk to on any sort of regular basis, even my boyfriend who couldn’t give a butt about food for the most part… I couldn’t shut up about this book. “Hey, I think you should read this,” I told everyone. “I’m reading this book called what we eat when we eat alone, isn’t that fitting?” I would open the book and shove it at people. I’m serious. The book is a nice, easy read – very approachable voice, and though none of the recipes really jumped out at me screaming “MAKE MEEEEEEE” there were enough that I could see myself modifying to suit my own tastes that even the recipes were worth the read.
Of course, as a person obsessed with food and what other people are eating (duh, evidenced by being a bento blogger and an avid reader of bento blogs), I found the bits where she talks about asking everyone she knows “What do you eat when it’s just you?” really, incredibly fascinating. As you probably know, I live alone and eat alone more often than not (and love it!!!), as do some of my very closest friends. Unfortunately, many of those very same closest friends seem to think it a bit odd when I ask them in great detail what they normally eat by themselves, so I’ve curbed my curiosity and kept the questions to a bare minimum…. So Ms. Madison does a good job of fleshing out some amazing answers. (Um, I try to be open minded, but really, sardine oil over cottage cheese just does not appeal to me. I really dislike cottage cheese.)
Also, Ms. Madison’s musings brought up some very fond childhood memories for me… which I may or may not discuss in the near future 🙂
In any case, I highly recommend this book for anyone with any interest in food or what other people eat. Or anyone who eats alone. Or really, anyone, but I guess people who hate food and only eat because they have to or they’ll die might not like this book, but then I don’t know why anyone like that would be reading my website, right?
Oh, and here’s my second bowl of the soup – yes, directly after eating the above bowl. But see, I eased up on the butter a lil bit! It was damn good and I’m not sorry.
Ooh, and here’s what I did with my half of the cucumber! I sprinkled salt on it and some freshly cracked black pepper.
Oh, you want to know what’s next to it? Everything else on the plate? Sheesh, people. Just a hunk of bread… some marinated artichoke hearts… sliced up Piave… dried cherries… and jamon serrano yes it is nom nom nom… Oh, and a glass of green tea that I added canned lychees with a bit of the syrup to. YUM.
And here are ribbons of summer squash interspersed with ribbons of zucchini. I had this grand vision of making a sort of “pasta” with it, but…
yeah, not so much. I roasted some ribbons of each, along with some kosher salt & freshly cracked black pepper, then tossed it with some grated cheese. This tasted really good (despite its ugly appearance!) but lacked some punch, some WOW factor I sought. Ah well.
So I kept looking. With the remainder of the zucchini & summer squash, I diced it up into cubes. I also minced up a single clove of fresh garlic (zomg purple skinned and smelled sooooooo good!), tossed it into a bit of olive oil in a skillet, and then added the zucchini & summer squash. At first, I kept it over low heat, letting it cook a little, before I cranked the heat up to brown up some of the squashies and let them get a lil crispy around the edges. Plated it and grated some hard Italian cheese on top (Pecorino Romano, if memory serves)…
Then I fried two eggs and plopped those on top. Oh, my…
But wait, there’s more! I added some freshly plucked (from my windowbox!) basil ribbons on top. Hmmm, still missing something…
More cheese, of course! And holy crap, that was THE AWESOME. I will be making all future squash this way. Seriously. Those little crispy bits were just amazing. And the yolks added a touch of creaminess… the cheese a bit of tangy saltiness… just amazing. *pleased look*
I guess I should mention the DVD you see in the corner of the photos. It’s a preview copy of Food, Inc. Yeah, that movie everyone and their momma was talking about a few months ago but I forgot to mention. Oops. Well. You should watch this movie if you haven’t already. I don’t really have much more to add to that… sorry.
In any case, this was a pretty amazing week of food discoveries for me. Definitely lots of deliciousness right there… I highly encourage making any and all of these veggies, tweaking to your own tastes 🙂
Happy eating~!
Previously:
CSA Week #1
CSA Week #2
CSA Week #3
CSA Week #4
CSA Week #5
CSA Week #6
CSA Week #7
eonyc says
Fried eggs make everything better. Yum to all of the above!
Ambitious says
The zucchini looks amazing! And I love how you ate two bowls of soup 🙂
Can i borrow the book when you are done? (is that cheating if i borrow instead of purchase?) 🙂
eilismaura says
omg omg omg omg
LOVE your use of summer squash!!!!
I will be passing this article to someone at Weight Watchers who is really starting to use veggies differently than what she grew up with – I think she will find your stuff very inspiring!!
SkippyMom says
I keep telling you that you HAVE to make squash and egg sammiches on yummy bread [like that is in the pic or a baguette] it is one of my fav' childhood memories and so, so, so good.
And I hate eggs. 🙂
The soup looks awesome! [but my slather of butter would've gone on the bread, hee]