I {heart} my CSA

Have you ever participated in a CSA? CSA is Community-Supported Agriculture, and you pay for a regular share. Usually CSAs are a summertime thing, but once before and now again I am participating in a Winter Share. Last time the share was once a month for three months, which was actually a little complicated. Too much produce to be eaten over the course of a month.

This time I'm doing a 10-week Winter Share, which works for me (summer is a little too complicated with all our time spent at camp), and we're in the third or fourth week of the season.

Here was my first delivery (it's actually more of a pick-up, but you get the idea):

In addition to the vegetables, we're getting 2 dozen eggs each week. I think I may have over-estimated our egg usage, but I'm finding ways to use them up.

I've been able to use almost everything we get, including an enormous butternut squash and a pie pumpkin, which I roasted, mashed, and froze for future use.

There has been an abundance of apples, which ended up being perfect for a huge batch of applesauce, made in my slow cooker:

Before:

 And after:

Simple recipe:
Peel and cut up a bunch of apples. Don't stress too much about the peels, a little bit of peel makes for nice color. Add in some water, I used about a cup. Add a little lemon juice, a bit of cinnamon and allspice, and I did put some sugar in but you could use honey or no sweetener at all. Cook on low for a while...4-6 hours was good. Then I mashed it up with a potato masher. I like it chunky, so I didn't worry too much about how fine it was.

A third went into the freezer, a third went into the fridge for eating, and a third went to a friend.

I look forward to many more weeks of my CSA this fall! (I do miss my garden, though.)
How are you enjoying the fruits of the season?

P.S. Welcome to November...it's NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month. As I've done for the previous few years, I'll be blogging every day during the month of November...join me!

Vegetable Heaven - CSA Delivery

One of the fun side-effects of blogging is that it has opened my eyes to so many thing out in the world that I never knew existed.

I have been reading for quite some time now about CSA's - Community Sponsored Agriculture. I've read all summer as people shared the contents of their baskets, and bragged about the canning and preserving they were doing.

I already receive a weekly shipment from Timber Creek Farms, a local company that delivers milk and organic produce. But even though they're great, I know they're not growing those pineapples and bananas in Indiana. They don't claim to, by the way. They do, however, deliver "hormone-free" milk that is far cheaper than ordinary organic milk (it's not actually organic, but if I had to rank my milk priorities, hormones and price are above organic). I also get a weekly Fruit Box and a few other grocery items like organic cottage cheese. I tried to get a Vegetable Box but it was just far too much veggies for my family to eat!

But I really wanted to try a CSA and HomeGrownWisconsin offers a Winter Share. Plus, it's Wisconsin, from where all good things come (as Sara well knows!). A WinterShare, if you're not familiar (I wasn't) is 3 deliveries, once a month, in November, December, and January. (So you can look forward to a similar post in December, right before Chanukah...I'm hoping for as many sweet potatoes so I can make sweet potato latkes!)

 

So here's what I got on Thursday night. Pie pumpkins, acorn squash, butternut squash, cranberries, carrots, apples, onions, leeks, mushrooms, sweet potatoes, dried celery, and....popcorn, dried on the cob. (That's in the bottom right corner of the picture.) How neat is that? I'm very excited for it to be an activity and a food. Plus I get a newsletter that tells me all about what I've got and how long it will last. 

While I know that we are not in the least bit qualified to be locavores (we like Costco too much), and we don't always eat organic (I pick and choose), I feel like this is my one little contribution to the world of sustainable agriculture. I look foward to figuring out what to do with all my veggies (pumpkin pie? cranberry sauce? leek soup? mushroom pate?) and, of course, sharing them with you all here in blogland.

What are you doing to improve the sustainability of your food?