DELMAR - Dewy heads of lettuce are being delivered to shareholders of community-supported farms this summer, along with fresh tomatoes for sauces, squash for sauteing and mizuna for ... ummm, well for what?
“Should I cook it down like spinach or chard?” Leanne Abe of San Diego asked online after receiving a delivery of the leafy green. “Should I put it in a green salad (it's a little too bitter for my tastes raw)? Should I find someone's bunny to feed it to?”
Call it the quandary of community-supported agriculture programs, or CSAs. The weekly deliveries of food received by members is dependent on the harvests - it could be heavy on corn one week, kohlrabi the next. There's an element of surprise. With CSAs becoming increasingly popular, more people face the creative challenges of serving up non-mainstream vegetables like bok choi, or less popular ones like okra.
“It's fun. From week to week, you never know what you're going to get,” said Marcy O'Hare as she picked up a delivery in the Albany suburb of Delmar. Lined up on a table in a church kitchen were cardboard boxes of lettuce, Swiss chard, squash, tomatoes, cabbage, garlic, cucumbers and beets. A marker board instructs shareholders how much of each item they can take.
O'Hare belongs to a CSA operated by Fox Creek Farm, which offers 20 weekly deliveries starting in June for $440 a share ($22 a week). O'Hare likes the fresh, healthy food and supporting local business. The farmer gets guaranteed prices for his crops and can sell directly to consumers. The mutually beneficial arrangements are sprouting up across the nation as the related buy-local and eat-healthy trends pick up steam.
The buy-local Web site LocalHarvest lists more than 1,500 CSAs nationwide.
There are some trade-offs. Bumper crops bring overflowing delivery baskets, while bad harvests mean smaller deliveries. Farmers plant a multitude of crops, in part, to mitigate that risk. But in any year, CSAs tie shareholders to the natural rhythms of local agriculture. In the Northeast, members might get peaches in July, corn in August, late-season spinach in September and pumpkins in October.
Fox Creek CSA member Shana Lewis likes the fact that unusual bounties force her to try new food. She would have never gone to the supermarket to buy kohlrabi, but when she received it, she made up a delicious kohlrabi salad with onions and carrots. Still, there are limits.
“The last CSA I belonged to, we used to get turnips, I mean mad amounts of turnips” she said.
For offbeat offerings, CSAs like Fox Creek include recipes in their newsletters. Other farms post recipes online. Debbie Palmer, CSA coordinator for Live Earth Farm south of San Jose, Calif., has collected close to 2,000 recipes online in the past decade. It's searchable by ingredient, from apples to zucchini.
“I think there's kind of an infinite supply out there,” Palmer said. Case in point: her site offers more than 60 recipes just for kale, including gorgonzola crostini with kale, kale breakfast scramble and kale and tuna puttanesca.
CSA shareholders say discovery and challenge are part of the fun of joining. On a recent pickup in Delmar, shareholders talked about what to do with the fresh bunches of beets. Lewis thought maybe a beet salad. Noreen Kerrigan Cadieux eyed a recipe for beet capriccio with goat cheese and arugula. She didn't have any goat cheese, but figured she could improvise.
As for Abe's mizuna query on the CHOW Web site, she received a suggestions to stir-fry the greens, slip them in a panini and sear them with sesame oil.
She opted to saute the mizuna with bacon and shallots.
“It tasted pretty good,” she said. “Mizuna is a pretty bitter green, you can't really hide it.”
--
On the Net:
LocalHarvest: http://www.localharvest.org/
Debbie's recipes: http://www.writerguy.com/deb/recipes/keyingred.html
AP-ES-08-05-07 1222EDT
Call it the quandary of community-supported agriculture programs, or CSAs. The weekly deliveries of food received by members is dependent on the harvests - it could be heavy on corn one week, kohlrabi the next. There's an element of surprise. With CSAs becoming increasingly popular, more people face the creative challenges of serving up non-mainstream vegetables like bok choi, or less popular ones like okra.
“It's fun. From week to week, you never know what you're going to get,” said Marcy O'Hare as she picked up a delivery in the Albany suburb of Delmar. Lined up on a table in a church kitchen were cardboard boxes of lettuce, Swiss chard, squash, tomatoes, cabbage, garlic, cucumbers and beets. A marker board instructs shareholders how much of each item they can take.
O'Hare belongs to a CSA operated by Fox Creek Farm, which offers 20 weekly deliveries starting in June for $440 a share ($22 a week). O'Hare likes the fresh, healthy food and supporting local business. The farmer gets guaranteed prices for his crops and can sell directly to consumers. The mutually beneficial arrangements are sprouting up across the nation as the related buy-local and eat-healthy trends pick up steam.
The buy-local Web site LocalHarvest lists more than 1,500 CSAs nationwide.
There are some trade-offs. Bumper crops bring overflowing delivery baskets, while bad harvests mean smaller deliveries. Farmers plant a multitude of crops, in part, to mitigate that risk. But in any year, CSAs tie shareholders to the natural rhythms of local agriculture. In the Northeast, members might get peaches in July, corn in August, late-season spinach in September and pumpkins in October.
Fox Creek CSA member Shana Lewis likes the fact that unusual bounties force her to try new food. She would have never gone to the supermarket to buy kohlrabi, but when she received it, she made up a delicious kohlrabi salad with onions and carrots. Still, there are limits.
“The last CSA I belonged to, we used to get turnips, I mean mad amounts of turnips” she said.
For offbeat offerings, CSAs like Fox Creek include recipes in their newsletters. Other farms post recipes online. Debbie Palmer, CSA coordinator for Live Earth Farm south of San Jose, Calif., has collected close to 2,000 recipes online in the past decade. It's searchable by ingredient, from apples to zucchini.
“I think there's kind of an infinite supply out there,” Palmer said. Case in point: her site offers more than 60 recipes just for kale, including gorgonzola crostini with kale, kale breakfast scramble and kale and tuna puttanesca.
CSA shareholders say discovery and challenge are part of the fun of joining. On a recent pickup in Delmar, shareholders talked about what to do with the fresh bunches of beets. Lewis thought maybe a beet salad. Noreen Kerrigan Cadieux eyed a recipe for beet capriccio with goat cheese and arugula. She didn't have any goat cheese, but figured she could improvise.
As for Abe's mizuna query on the CHOW Web site, she received a suggestions to stir-fry the greens, slip them in a panini and sear them with sesame oil.
She opted to saute the mizuna with bacon and shallots.
“It tasted pretty good,” she said. “Mizuna is a pretty bitter green, you can't really hide it.”
--
On the Net:
LocalHarvest: http://www.localharvest.org/
Debbie's recipes: http://www.writerguy.com/deb/recipes/keyingred.html
AP-ES-08-05-07 1222EDT
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