Okay, let's try something new.

[leahbobet]

I mentioned last summer, in and around things, that I signed up with a farmshare. It's one of those that's really collective on both ends: a bunch of small family farms in the Kawartha Lakes produce the food in an environmentally sustainable way, and then the organizer of the CSA (who is awesome) brings it all down to Toronto for CSA pickup and farmer's markets, five days a week. Where a bunch of people -- including a whole lot of my friends and co-workers* -- buy and munch it. This means supporting small family farms versus large industrial outfits; removing the timesuck of manning farmer's market stalls from the farmers themselves so they can, well, farm stuff; supporting ethical, fair trade, and environmental growing practices (although only some, not all of the farms involved are certified organic); eating a lot more vegetables, and they're much better-tasting vegetables; and actually achieving the first steps to a 100-mile diet.**

It also means I've learned to cook like an Iron Chef.

No kidding: Every Wednesday I stop at the pickup location on my way home from work with only the faintest idea of what I'll be getting that week. I grab whatever's chalked on the board, maybe buy a few extra odds and ends I really want, and then I have a week to figure out what to do with them. The words What do you do with ____? were uttered a few times last summer. Stuff got inventive. Many soups happened. It was kind of crazily, impressively fun.

So, farmshare started up for the summer again last week,*** and I had the notion that maybe this year I will blog it.

Consider this a new feature, as long as I have the time and attention span to do it, and as long as you guys are interested: CSA Wednesdays. What I did with my farmshare this week, and what I got for next week. Like jmeadows's Spinning Sundays, but, y'know, tastier.

It will have pictures.

---

So, Week 1:

Last Wednesday was a bit of a smaller haul. I think partially it's the first week, but partially I didn't browse the other stuff as much: I was sticky and hot and kind of sleepy, and needed to get home for something. We got:

1 Boston lettuce
1 pint, or maybe 1.5 pints of spring mix lettuce
1 celeriac
5 stalks rhubarb
1 bunch popcorn on the cob
1 bunch asparagus

There was a lot of "what do I do with that?" in this batch. And then I had an idea, and since I haven't been able to find a rack of lamb in this neighbourhood that's less than $50 (Dear Rowe Farms: No.) I haven't executed a lot of that plan yet. So most of this is still sitting in my fridge, hopefully to be used tomorrow when I go to Kensington Market to get lamb that isn't $50.

The lettuces got all used. I mixed them together for salads, and got one or two caprese salads and then this one, which has both lettuces, some grocery-store tomato, some daikon from The Biggest Daikon in the World, slivered almonds, and pickled pomegranate seeds I put up this winter. The dressing is mead vinagrette. Yes, mead. The honey vinegar is also local.



So carryover from week 1 is the asparagus, the popcorn, the rhubarb, and the celeriac, which I do not know what to do with yet, although Dr. My Roommate had a suggestion I might follow up on involving grating and raisins and salady things.

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The Week 2 preview!

This week's box was:

2 heads romaine lettuce
1 pint strawberries
1 handful garlic scapes
4 bunches spring onions
1 big basket spring mix

I also got a bunch of radishes on top of that, because I like radishes and they were there looking at me.

There's a MyMarket farmer's market a couple blocks away from home, also on Wednesdays, and I stopped there both looking for that lamb solution and to see what they had. So add to the count:

1.5 pint new potatoes
1 pint heritage mix cherry tomatoes

So that's the preview. Tune in next week to find out what happens to them! Thrill with suspense! Eat Ontario produce! Ogle pictures of yummy food!

(And if you have any recipes for celeriac, let me know?)

*Apparently CSAs are like Fluevogs. It takes two seperate vectors of exposure to get you addicted to them, and then they spread through casual social contact like you wouldn't believe.
**I haven't figured out the grains and staples yet, or a lot of the cheese. We're working on it in that idle, backburnered, compiling-code kind of way.
***I didn't do winter share last year, to my eternal regret. Won't be making that mistake again.

Comments

[haruhiko.livejournal.com]

!!!!!!! Wahoo, another CSA person! :D I just joined this one last year and I've been loving it ever since. (I get the "Bushel"--which includes everything in the "Peck" but with extra items--once every two weeks.) So much yummy stuff, mostly from org. farms, and grown just right outside the greater San Francisco area.

My favorite thing to do with celeriac is simple simple simple: I just grate it on a medium-to-coarse grate and then sauté it with garlic/olive oil/salt/pepper until it's soft and cooked through. The taste comes out like hash browns but with a definite vegetal/celery taste to it; in fact if you wanted it to really be like hash browns I suppose you could add flour/water to it and really fry it, or even add egg and leftover protein for a substantial savory pancake. :9~

[melanie ching (from livejournal.com)]

Celery root can be treated like a potato that tastes like celery. I grate it into my clam or corn chowder. I cube it and fry it with hashbrowns. We had a million of them in our winter share and we looked forward to them every week.

I am jealous of your new potatoes your cherry tomatoes. I can't wait for photos. I would commit to doing something similar but taking pictures of my food is a slippery slope for me. Once I start I can't stop...and then my food is cold. :D

[clarentine]

I'm not sure how the Canadian organic certification process goes, but on this side of the border part of the organic/certified organic issue is that the process is incredibly intensive of farmer time and effort and money, such that many otherwise organic-practicing farmers (like my folks) just don't bother. Hopefully north of the border has better sense...but, knowing governments, I am doubtful.

My other half keeps asking me to grow celeriac. Maybe next year, now that we have the space in which to try new things.

[amysisson.livejournal.com]

Terrific idea (and I love the "iron chef farmshare" tag)! I really must look into a CSA. I've really been trying to expand my cooking horizons, and to experiment with more veggie dishes, so I'll be looking forward to this every week!

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

I grew up with CSAs, but have only really started thinking about them recently. I look forward to seeing your posts!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The guys don't want to do a farmshare exactly because of the Iron Chef aspect of it that tempts me so. Sigh. But each year markgritter plants additional vegetables and does not neglect the ones he planted the previous year, so my summers end up a bit ferrous anyway. (Tonight was the beginning of it: the leaf lettuce has really started to thrive. Not that this takes the least bit of iron, but part of our dinner was grown on the premises, and that was good.)

I wish I liked celeriac. porphyrin gave me a celeriac that looked like the baobab planet from Le Petit Prince, and I was so ready to be in love with this vegetable. But alas, my distaste for celery has spread from texture into taste.

[wirewalking.livejournal.com]

The honey vinegar is also local

Noooo why did I click that link. Now I need either a monetary windfall or a short-term memory wipe.

[mmarques.livejournal.com]

I love food and food blogging! I'll be following your blog more closely. And maybe I'll even remember to visit my local farmer's market on Wednesdays. Or will drop by an actual farm a few times.

[rosefox]

There's a Dreamwidth community called iron_chef_csa that I highly recommend. vegancooking is also a wealth of great info.

Celeriac: boil until soft and then mash up with butter like mashed potatoes (either on its own or mixed with actual potatoes). SO DELICIOUS.

Also, there is only one thing to do with fresh young asparagus: sear it in an ungreased pan and eat it with melted butter and lemon juice.

Rhubarb + strawberries = pie, jam, cobbler, basically anything. I recommend cobbler mostly because it is ridiculously easy: bake fruit & sugar, fingerblend flour & butter & milk into dough, put dough on top of fruit & sugar, bake moar, eat. If you want to get fancy you can mix some oats in with the flour; this is especially nice with something rich and tart like rhubarb.

When I see "4 bunches spring onions" I immediately think of Chinese cooking. You can't go wrong with ginger and scallion, really. Ginger + scallion + noodles + meat + veg = stir fry. Ginger + scallion + sesame oil + five spice + blender = delicious goop to stuff under the skin of a chicken before you roast it, or to mix into dumpling filling, or to use as a condiment on basically everything.

Now I'm hungry...

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Celeriac makes a great remoulade-- grate, simmer a little, and mix with an herby mustard sauce.

My favorite thing to do with asparagus is to grill it brushed with a mixture of miso paste, mirin, water, and a little mustard powder and powdered ginger, all ingredients to taste except the water which should be used to get it to a brushable consistency. Cooks on beautifully.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Mmm celeriac. Mash it! Fry it! Make soup with it! So many choices... (If you are a soup-maker, you do have to try the notion of soup. With bacon croutons, if you are a bacon-eater.)