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 1

1 big bunch swiss chard
1 bunch callaloo greens
1 bunch kale
2 bunches tazoi spinach
1 big bunch light Asian greens
1 big bunch beets + greens
1 bunch carrots + greens

How I Used My Share

I used half of the carrots, a little of the carrot greens, a leftover 1/4 bell pepper and the tazoi spinach in a stir-fry.

I used the kale and callaloo greens in a simple coconut curry bowl with leftover rotisserie chicken.

I sautéed the swiss chard with mustard and served with a bunless turkey burger.

I ate the Asian greens as a salad base for 2 days’ worth of lunches.

I used the rest of the carrots, carrot greens and beet greens in a Thai chicken bowl.

Leftovers: Just the beets. Not bad for week 1. 

My Favorite Dish From This Box

This week, my favorite was probably the first meal I made – a simple stir-fry. I threw together some leftover meats (pulled pork and rotisserie chicken), half an onion, a few cloves garlic, a hand full of basil, 1/4 of a bell pepper, half a bunch of carrots, a hand full of carrot greens and 2 bunches of tazoi spinach with a quick sauce of coconut aminos, ketjap manis and fish sauce and stir-fried until everything was tender. This dinner was quick, tasty, and a great exercise in utilizing CSA greens. I love this time of year and it was a good way to exercise thankfulness. Plus, the fresh carrots were delicious.