Whoo hoo! It’s CSA time again! Time to shrug off winter’s recipe rut and reign spring’s exuberance with bi-monthly boxes of vegetables (and hopefully meat).
This year’s CSA is from Brooklyn Beet CSA. Brooklyn Beet provides veggie shares from Angel Family Farm, a sustainable farm located in Orange County, NY that was created with the support of GrowNYC’s New Farmer Development Project; fruit shares from Hepworth Family Farm, a 250-acre NOFA-certified seventh-generation family farm in Milton, NY; baked goods from Wild Mountain Bread based in Brooklyn; and a wide variety of grass-fed beef, pasture raised pork, and other products (like other meats, cheeses, bread, flour, grains, lax-fermented vegetables, pastas and other pantry goods) from Lewis Waite Farm, which sources from over 35 local family farms.
I purchased a half share, and will be getting a box containing 6-8 vegetables (about 2 bags worth) every other week from June – October (11 shares), and plan on ordering a carnivore share box from Lewis Waite (4-6 lbs. of meat) for pickup each veggie week. I also purchased a “Challenger Share” for the season (6 deliveries total) containing odd bits like animal fats, organ meats, neck bones, shanks, and rendered lard to stretch my culinary skills. The price of my CSA averages out to $25.50 per share for veggies, plus an additional $45 per pickup week for meat/offal. This total will be accounted for in my weekly Adventures In Budget Paleo Cooking posts.
You would think by now that I’d be used to flying blind when it comes to CSA season, since they rarely seem to post previews of upcoming shares, but I’m not. At least not going into this first week. Pickup this year is on Tuesday, so it looks like another summer of alltheveggies for half a week & utilizing the stragglers before they go bad on Mondays and Tuesdays. Such is the life of a CSA devotee. Boom and bust every week (or every other week, in my case).
Brooklyn Beets 2015 CSA Box 9
1 bunch kale
1 bunch parsley
1 head lettuce
1 eggplant
2 lbs. green tomatoes
1 bunch carrots
1 small pumpkin
Lewis Waite Meat Share Box 8
1 lb. ground beef
1.33 lb. bone-in lamb steaks
0.74 lb. pork sirloin chops
1 chicken leg
How I Used My Share
I made a puree out of the eggplant, which I served with the lamb steaks.
I was supposed to make a salsa out of the green tomatoes – twice – for dinner, but forgot.
I ended up throwing a couple tomatoes into lunch one day, and made myself a taco night dinner bowl with half of the ground beef, a few tomatoes and half an avocado one night the DH wasn’t hungry.
I broiled the lamb shanks from last Challenger share + the lamb riblets from a few shares ago with some carrots and served over a cauliflower puree. Ended up eating that for lunch quite a few days.
I made a slow cooker chipotle pumpkin soup, which I served with pork chops.
I roasted the rest of the carrots with chicken.
I served pretty much everything with a sprinkle of parsley.
The lettuce, unsurprisingly, went bad before I felt like addressing it.
Leftovers: Lamb kidneys, 1 chicken leg, 1/2 a pound ground beef, a couple green tomatoes and a hand full of parsley
My Favorite Dish From This Box
This week, my favorite was the pumpkin soup. That stuff was delicious and fall in a bowl. I’ll have to do a repeat with this next box – it’s chock full of squash!
Gastography 