Gastography

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 6

2 big eggplants
3 big cucumbers
3 green bell peppers
2 globe zucchini
1 head cabbage
1 head romaine lettuce
10 Roma tomatoes
2 lbs. potatoes
1 bunch lemon verbena

Lewis Waite Meat Share Box 5

1 lb. sweet pork sausage
2 nitrate free kielbasa
1.13 lb. turkey breast
0.69 lb. NY strip mini steaks

Lewis Waite Challenger Share 3

Lamb riblets
Pork neck bones

How I Used My Share

I stuffed the zucchini with some tomatoes, some potatoes, a bell pepper and the sausage.

I pan seared the little NY Strip steaks and served with baked eggplant.

I ate a few tomatoes with lunch salads – incorporating leftovers and a little of the lettuce as well.

I used some lemon verbena in lunch salads, but most of it dried up before I could find a use for it.

I turned the turkey into paleo butter poultry, which I served with some diced cucumber.

I baked the second eggplant and turned it into a meatball with ground beef.

I threw some of the other tomatoes into a peach salsa, which I served with pulled pork tacos in cabbage wraps.

I turned the pork neck bones into stock, which I cooked with the rest of the potatoes and half the cabbage and served alongside the kielbasa.

I roasted the beets I had leftover from another week and made a beet and cherry gazpacho.

Leftovers: Lamb kidneys, lamb riblets, 1 green pepper, 1/2 head cabbage.

My Favorite Dish From This Box

This week, my favorite was the stuffed zucchini. My DH has a differing opinion – he absolutely loved the potatoes & cabbage stew thing.