The CSA Season Begins
It's all so fresh and tempting.
Once again I joined a CSA for the upcoming summer/fall season. For the un-indoctrinated, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. And what that means in English is that I purchased shares in a local farm’s output of vegetables for this season. Every Monday I will drive to the farm and fill my medium size basket with whatever is available this week. I attempted to join a CSA last summer, but it didn’t work out because the farm changed their pickup schedule from what they had originally promised, and it wasn’t convenient for me.
Since the girls are home this week before camp begins next Monday, we all discovered the new farm together. Our haul was better than expected, given the lack of sunshine for the past, what seems like, millennium. We received a large cabbage, bok choy, one each of dinosaur and regular kale, red swiss chard, two zucchini, one yellow squash, one pattypan squash, one bunch each of green onions, dill, and parsley, a large head of green leaf lettuce and zucchini flowers.
The challenge will be planning meals around produce rather than meat. I knew from the farm’s newsletter that there would be kale today, so I planned to make a kale soup with smoked kielbasa for tonight’s dinner. The dill smelled so delicious that I think we’ll have salmon tomorrow night with a dill sauce. Oh, and I didn’t anticipate the zucchini flowers, but we’ll have to batter fry them tonight for a special treat. I’m not really sure what will be on the menu for the remainder of the week, but right now I look forward to the challenge.
Just Like a Television Commercial
We're Going to Fix Our Own
When it comes to food, advertisers know how susceptible we are to the power of suggestion. It doesn’t even take a slick marketing campaign to inspire some of us to choose a particular food to eat.
For example, Louisa and I were reading a chapter in the charming children’s classic, “The Faraway Tree” by Enid Blyton, and we found inspiration for a dinner next week. In this chapter, the mother told her three children that they would have a baked potato with cheese and butter for dinner and suddenly we decided that should be one of our dinners next week. Yes, I know this isn’t an innovation in cuisine, loaded potato skins have been on restaurant menus for years. But we’ve never used this as the basis for our dinners at home. We’ve had make your own tacos, and do it yourself fondue, top your own pizza and, of course, make your own sundaes. But we’ve never worked with potatoes.
So we’re planning on having baked potatoes with toppings and a salad. So far we’ve selected bacon and gouda cheese as two toppings. But we need other, healthier ideas to add to the menu. Maybe chopped peppers? Any suggestions from the peanut gallery? Have you ever served “top your own potatoes” for dinner?
Okay Kids, You Can Stop Eating Prunes Now
Hmmm, Will it be Prunes or Froot Loops?
Kellogg Company has recently announced that they will be beefing up their breakfast cereals with extra fiber. Since they’ve finally recognized the importance of fiber in kids’ and adults’ diets, they will be dishing it up to us with all the sugary goodness of their cereals. The first cereals to receive the extra hit of fiber will be two kid favorites, “Froot Loops” and “Apple Jacks”.
I guess Sunsweet’s loss is Charmin’s gain.