CSA

by Liz Dierbeck

Chris and I have been hosting a weekly “south side” small group at our home, complete with potluck (how very Methodist!). No matter who ended up bringing what, we always seemed to have enough food to go around, and each meal was delicious. After breaking bread together, we put salt in our mouths, and discussed a section of the Bible, ranging from Ephesians to other books attributed to Paul. This past week, I turned our CSA bounty into our portion of the weekly feast: fresh salad from the two types of lettuce we received in our box, topped with tomatoes and fresh mozzarella; and pound cake with strawberry topping (presto: shortcake!).

As I am not a terribly adventurous cook, for dessert I looked at a number of shortcake recipes on Allrecipes.com, my go-to source. The cake, blessedly, was from a boxed mix; I baked it in two 9×9 pans so they’d be flat (rather than a loaf). There seemed to be enough leeway among the recipes that I could trust my eyes and sort of wing it with the sauce. I washed the entire quart of strawberries, lopped off the tops, and sliced them up, even the few pinkish-white ones. I combined these with 1/3 cup of white sugar, and 1 tsp of vanilla extract, then stirred the mix in a saucepan until it was bubbling gently. It looked a little runny, so I added in a few shakes of cornstarch (I’m guessing 2-3 tsp all together) and it thickened up just right. I chilled the mixture, and when it was all ready to serve, I combined the cakes with Cool Whip in the middle (thanks, Ronna!) and poured the mixture over the top.

We didn’t plan out exactly how our small group would go; we didn’t measure our progress in any way other than our growing understanding of each other, and more experience with the New Testament. In the end, it all came out right, even when we made up the “recipe” as we went along.

by Amy Schumacher

My earliest memory of beets was when my aunt and I went to Larriland Farms in Maryland; it was a mere half hour or so from home, but at that age, being in the car for more than 5 minutes felt like an endless odyssey.  We tended to focus on picking berries when we went for our yearly adventure, where we probably headed back to the main barn with an equal amount of strawberries, blueberries, and/or blackberries in our pails and our bellies (to this day, I am uncertain how much the practice of eating in the fields was encouraged or frowned upon . . . so, Larriland, sorry if I unintentionally scammed you as a child).  I would have been content to load up the car with our berries and perhaps a pint of peaches or a few ears of sweet white corn.  But on this one outing, my aunt suggested we pull beets out of the ground.  I went with it because there is something quite satisfying about yanking a vegetable out of the dirt to see how big it was.  So much so, in fact, that my aunt had to stop me since we would certainly never consume as many beets as I had uprooted.

That was my last beet memory until this week.  I’m pretty sure I never even dared to taste the vibrant purple beets as a child, and I certainly avoided them whenever they made an appearance at a salad bar.  Pickled beets?  No, thank you.  But when we got word from Karen, our farmer friend at Big Head Farm and grower of all that arrives in our CSA box, that this week’s shipment would include beets, I knew that my life-long beet avoidance was coming to a swift end.  A quick Google search for beet recipes yielded a promising collection named “Beet Recipes Even a Beet Hater Can Love”.  Not that I’m a beet hater per se, just a beet novice, so it seemed like a safe way to venture into the purple juiced world of beet preparation.

So we made a grated raw beet salad (recipe link below), and did you know?  Beets are sweet!  True story!  I mean, literally sweet, I’m not just trying to rhyme here.  We were even able to use some of our fresh herbs from our CSA box in the citrus-y salad.

As it turns out, you can even eat the beet greens.  We were lucky enough to make a CSA-inspired dinner with Meg, featuring a goat cheesy pasta with sauteed beet greens, which taste rather like spinach in the best possible way.  We also enjoyed a salad with our farm-grown romaine lettuce and CSA radish greens with sliced radishes and an herb dressing with CSA herbs (are you noticing a theme here?).

I may not have been the most adventurous eater in my youth, but the CSA experience so far has been a great opportunity to break out of my comfort zone of vegetables and sample some delicious new recipes.  Though let’s be honest: I’m still pretty excited about the prospect of strawberries making an appearance in my CSA box this weekend.

Want to try your hand at beets?  Have a go here.

How about the greens? You’ll be glad you did.

by Megan Whitney

Summer is finally here! Yesterday marked our first CSA drop-off weekend at Holy Covenant, and for months I’ve been anticipating the moment I’d get my first box of freshly picked organic veggies. I met Karen, our friendly farmer who runs Big Head Farm in South Haven, Michigan, and happily hauled away a box of these goodies:

Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce
French Breakfast Radishes
China Rose Winter Radishes
Lemon Balm

For those of you unfamiliar with the term “CSA,” it stands for Community Supported Agriculture. The concept is brilliant: you buy a share of crops on a local farm, and each week you get a box of whatever is fresh that week. More info on CSA’s here:

http://www.localharvest.org/csa/

I packed my veggies into the Tacoma this morning and brought them out to my family in the suburbs, ready to blow their minds with my delicious culinary creations. I grew up in a food-obsessed family of cooks, so I knew they would appreciate the meal I had dreamt up with the help of my cookbooks in the morning.

My sister, Libby, and I made the Radish Top Soup recipe that Karen suggested using for the Winter Radishes. I must admit, we all were a bit skeptical of this recipe, but my excitement to cook with radish greens for the first time won over. I’m so glad I tried it, as it was a huge hit, and we felt very fancy having a soup course. The flavor was actually quite similar to a cream of broccoli soup. We also were surprised by the Lemon Balm, an herb in the mint family that smells and tastes delightfully lemony. Ben, my four year old nephew, and I threw it into a salad of Big Head lettuce, carrots, other soft herbs, and a Honey-Lemon dressing that we made. Like many four year olds, Ben is a very picky eater, so I was shocked when he voluntarily plopped a piece of lettuce into his mouth. He rarely tries new foods beyond pbj’s, pizza, and crunchy salty things. Sure, he said, “this tastes like tires,” but at least he tried a green vegetable! (Trust me, it was good). I saw first-hand that when you get kiddos involved with cooking, they are more willing to try new foods. Next stop, brussel sprouts.

One of my goals in joining HC’s CSA was to become more creative in the kitchen, and to focus even more on fresh and in-season ingredients in my cooking. I definitely was successful in accomplishing that today. I also love the fact that I feel more connected to the earth and the 27 others at church who are doing this… and this is just the beginning (our shares last through October)! I met “my” farmer, I know that the farm workers are treated fairly, and I’m confident that there are no icky pesticides on my food. Karen’s emails to her CSA supporters make me feel like I’m a country girl on the farm, checking out my spring onions and beet greens and getting excited for what’s to come.