This will be our very last food box from our CSA here in New York City. As a grand finale, we have Jonagold apples, ramps (wild leeks), golden beets, Treviso radicchio, tatsoi (AKA spinach mustard or rosette bok choy), purple top white globe turnips, and chef potatoes.
Perhaps we have unknowingly consumed them before, but we’ve certainly never heard of ramps. What we’ve learned about them is fascinating! They’re Continue reading This Week’s CSA: 4/21/2016
Our CSA food box for this week contains very colorful and classic fresh goodies! We have organic curly kale, baby heads of lettuce, Empire apples, red onion, crimini mushrooms, red tomato, orange carrots, parsley, and pinto beans. Continue reading This Week’s CSA: 4/14/2016
Here’s what we’ll be having for dinners this week: Golden grape tomatoes, zucchini, Lacinato kale (AKA black, Tuscan, or dinosaur kale), Jonagold apples, Poblano peppers, sunchokes (AKA Jerusalem artichokes), and rolled oats. Continue reading This Week’s CSA: 4/7/2016
This week’s box is the heaviest yet: red potatoes, red chard, leeks, celery root, eggplant, Gala apples, and baby arugula. We have never seen or heard of celery root before so it will be interesting to figure out what to do with it! Supposedly the flavor is a cross between celery and parsley and can be used in soups and mashes. Continue reading This Week’s CSA: 3/24/16
We’ve seen radishes before, but what are French breakfast radishes? They are smaller and more elongated than the familiar variety. Apparently they are also milder as well. We decided to try them sautéed them in butter, inspired by this recipe. Continue reading CSA Highlight: French Breakfast Radishes
This week we have spring garlic, Fuji apples, Little Gem lettuce, medium green peppers, parsnips, and grape tomatoes. As with last week, the local farm produce is supplemented with produce grown in Florida since not much is growing here yet, though it is starting to get warmer! You may remember that green garlic was in one of our first CSA boxes last year. It is not-quite-ripe garlic with a stalk that is also edible and a bulb that does not need to be peeled. It’s like a cross between garlic and scallion. Can’t wait to try it! Continue reading This Week’s CSA: 3/17/16
Very little produce is harvested during the winter until April (mesclun and parsnips are the earliest), so the contents of our colorful CSA box this week either comes from storage or from non-local farmers (i.e., Florida). Still delicious! We have cherry bomb peppers, French breakfast radishes, baby bok choi, Mutsu (AKA Crispin) apples, red onions, green peppers, lacinato (AKA black) kale, and orange carrots. These radishes are new to us! They are an heirloom variety that is sweet, mild, and can be eaten plain as a bite-sized snack. Continue reading This Week’s CSA: 3/10/16
This week’s CSA food box featured a vegetable that we had never seen or heard of before – Romanesco. It’s in the same family as broccoli and cauliflower, and you can definitely see the resemblance. Looking closer, you can see the fascinating fractal structure where the spirals are made up of smaller spirals which are themselves made up of even smaller spirals. Continue reading CSA Highlight: Romanesco
Since June 2015, Silas and I have had the pleasure of indulging in community-supported agriculture (CSA) foods. Prior to that, I was not familiar with the idea. In a CSA, the consumer’s funds go directly into the farmer’s cost to run and maintain the farm, which is usually a smaller scale operation. Because risks such as bad weather are shared between farmer and consumer, the farmer is less reliant on banks and loans and can instead devote more effort in producing quality goods. In return, the consumer gets produce that is ultra-fresh and in-season. Furthermore, because the farms are local (in our case, within 350 miles of NYC), less cost and waste goes into food distribution. It’s an economically and environmentally sustainable model! Continue reading Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA)
