Eating my Way through the CSA

I love going to the CSA each week and doing my part as a volunteer to keep it running smoothly. The only catch is that being around all that wonderful looking fresh produce for hours each week, right around dinner time, can be torture, especially if I had a lot of errands to do in town beforehand and didn't have a good lunch.




You see, what happens is that I look over what we are getting for the week and start imagining menus. Not only are there the vegetables from our share, sometimes there are a few leftovers from the previous day's CSA pick-up. The share is usually pretty much the same between the two days, but occasionally there are a couple of items that differ. This week, the other pick-up got arugula but we didn't.

On occasion, I'm hungry enough that I take a little bit of time to toss together a snack for myself and the other volunteers using some of the surplus produce and a little bit of my own share. Since there are cooking demos at the CSA on a regular basis, salt and pepper are always on hand for seasoning. This season, we've added a new component as well, through a separate local vendor: bread shares.

I decided to make open-faced sandwiches this week, starting with slices of my sourdough bread share. Next, I skinned and seeded a bag of surplus roasted green chiles. There was a bag of leftover arugula, so I used the salad spinner I donated to the CSA to clean the leaves. Finally, I cored a spare Asian pear and cut it in thin slices. To assemble the sandwiches, I laid a roasted chile on each slice of bread, and then added the pear. A light shake of salt and pepper over it added seasoning and a leaf of arugula added bite. All the volunteers agreed they were delicious, although I thought they could have used just a splash of balsamic vinegar on top.

With my appetite briefly sated, I did my work, which includes stocking the surplus baskets. We offer surplus items from the previous pick-up's leftovers - that is, what has not been donated to one of a number of non-profit agencies the CSA helps out, as well as surplus from members' gardens, and the occasional slightly bruised vegetable from the current pick-up that we don't want to leave out for someone to take home as part of their paid share. At one point during the pick-up, I walked by the surplus area to see carrots, a couple of red potatoes and onions, and a bell pepper in the baskets.

Yum. Stew ingredients! went through my mind. In fact, this thought even spurred me to trade my cucumber for a basket of okra. I'm planning to make a tasty stew for dinner tonight and use my remaining bread to make croutons. For members that aren't vegetarian, the CSA also sells locally grown, organic meats which would also work well with the stew theme. I have a few limes in the fridge, so an arugula-Asian pear salad with lime vinaigrette might be a nice accompaniment to the stew. Too bad I'm out of local pecans.

Oops! It's 9:30 in the morning and I'm drooling all over my keyboard from writing this post...