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 3

1 bunch English Breakfast radishes
1 bunch red mustard greens
1 bunch lemon balm
1/2 lb. yellow beans
1/2 lb. green beans
1 big bunch collard greens
1 head romaine lettuce
1 big bunch swiss chard
1 bunch basil

Lewis Waite Meat Share Box 2

1 lb. unidentified bone-in bird breast
1 lb. turkey breast
1 lb. ground beef
1 lb. pork ribs

I also bought: eggs and (aged) raw milk cheddar as treats

How I Used My Share

I roasted this week’s radishes + the balance of week 1’s radishes and beets with grapefruit juice and served with pistachio butter as a side dish for the pork ribs, which I slow cooked with roasted garlic sriracha BBQ sauce.

Half of the basil wilted before I got to it.

Most of the lemon balm wilted the day after pickup.

I used some lemon balm and basil to dress up: watermelon salad, water, and sparkling water.

It turns out the unidentified bone-in bird breast was actually half a chicken, and I roasted it with a little basil butter and served with roasted lemon green/yellow beans.

I made a spicy chard salad to take to a potluck.

I sautéed the mustard greens with bacon, olives and rosemary and served alongside the turkey breast, which I chunked and crusted with plantains and buffalo sauce.

I made the ground beef into burgers.

I used the romaine in lunch salads.

I used some of the collards to make wrap sandwiches.

Leftovers: 1/2 a bunch of collard greens, 1/2 a head of romaine lettuce

My Favorite Dish From This Box

This week, my favorite was spicy slow cooked pork ribs. The roasted veg side was so-so, but the ribs were frickin delicious.