My niece Colette asks two great clarifying questions for my project:- Are you receiving only veggies and fruits? Or do you also receive meat, poultry, and legumes?
- If you do only receive veggies and fruits, are you concentrating on only vegetarian dishes, and dishes you can make using ONLY the foods you receive from CSA? Or would you additionally incorporate foods that are not from CSA (eg. grocery-store chicken) into your recipe?
Well, Colette, and the rest of you, Sang Lee Farms is strictly a vegetable farm, but two of my weekly distributions have included fruit (strawberries and blueberries) from nearby Briermere Farms. There are many CSAs, including mine, that offer additional shares for a variety of farm-fresh items such as eggs, cheese, meat, bread and coffee, but I am only receiving produce in my share.
My goal is to take inspiration from the goodies I receive each week to make dishes that may or may not incorporate non-CSA items, including meat, poultry, and fish, since I am not a vegetarian. When I do cook meat, however, I try to use only properly fed, hormone-free products. I am fortunate to live near a weekly farmers' market as well as a convenient grocery store that stocks a decent selection of items with which I can nicely supplement my CSA items. For example, one dinner last week featured sauteed garlic scapes, scallions, and bok choy (all from the CSA) with pork and fennel sausage (from Bklyn Larder) over brown rice. Our salad that night was made completely with CSA-received items: red and green leaf lettuces, cucumber, radishes, cilantro, and parsley.
As I mentioned before, we are quickly approaching week five of our season, so I hope to do a recap of highlights in my next post from the first four weeks which included fried stuffed squash blossoms, strawberry-rhubarb pie, caramelized turnips with mushrooms, and a new take on Ensalada Rusa with sugar snap peas!
Thanks for asking, Colette. Hope that helps!
Hello friends and foodies!
Welcome to my first blog, designed to document the kitchen adventures and challenges of my first season as a member of my local CSA. My goal is to create a site to collect and exchange recipes and meal ideas inspired by my weekly produce distribution.
For those of you who may not know, CSA stands for Community Supported (sometimes Shared or Sponsored) Agriculture. Briefly, a CSA consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation where the growers and consumers share the risks and benefits of food production. My local CSA of Crown Heights is supplied by Sang Lee Farms of Peconic, NY. Sang Lee Farms is a second generation, organic vegetable farm originally growing produce for the Asian markets in New York and along the east coast. Over the last fifteen years the farm has shifted its focus to retail, farmers' markets, and, luckily for me, CSA.
This Tuesday marks the fifth week of the distribution season and so far, I've received a delightfully delicious collection of several lettuces, bok choy, turnips, beets, radishes, cucumber, asparagus, multicolored carrots, sugar snap peas, scallions, garlic scapes, squash blossoms, strawberries, and blueberries! I'll recap some of the recipe highlights from the past few weeks in my next posting and then hope to record my kitchen ventures more frequently, at least once a week.
Thanks so much for reading! Please send any ideas and/or questions my way. . .
