CSA share blogging #1

[larryhammer]

In an effort to post something that isn't Chinese translations, I'm thinking of starting that blogging-your-CSA-share thing that's going around. Which makes it a meme, but at least it's different.

We used to belong to this CSA, but went on hiatus before becoming parents because we were already having trouble keeping up. It's only now with lockdown/quarantine keeping all of us eating and cooking at home more, that we finally felt up for resuming.

The schedule for this CSA is different from most of the country: the main farm (there are two involved) has three plots at different altitudes -- the one outside Phoenix produces in the winter and the one halfway up the mountains produces in the summer, which means it runs year-round. That said, we're in the stretch that's the hardest for them to fill out a full share, in the hottest part of summer before monsoonal thunderstorms have gotten the better summer crops producing. So it was a small but interesting bag that I picked up yesterday:

half-dozen small gold onions
two cucumbers of indeterminate type (one may be pickling?)
one medium zucchini
basket of tomatillos
bundle of rosemary sprigs
three oranges
jar of mesquite honey

For the record, mesquite is my favorite flavor of honey -- it's not as full-on sweet as clover, with a dusky edge -- and I'm really glad that it's available at our local Trader Joe's as their standard variety. But this, creamy and straight from the farm, should be yummy. The oranges went into Eaglet's stash -- they were down to only three, including no mandarins, and we're not due to go shopping till probably Monday. The tomatillos are going to our neighbor, who actually likes them. (Are they good for anything but salsa?) The onions are going into the stockpile, and I'll probably use one as the aromatic in whatever I stir-fry tonight, along with some green onions left over from last week. (A few more things are left over, including a pattypan squash I don't know what to do with, and two small round yellow squashes had gone bad oops.)

Not sure yet what to do with the zuke, which is a good 10in/25cm long, and Eaglet's eyes went wide when I told them it's only medium. I have been entertaining them with stories of the time my father first planted zucchini and thought he was playing it safe by planting "only" four hills, and how he ended up forcing his grad students to take some. If we had ground meat in the house, I'd halve-and-hollow it and bake 'em with a meat-and-marinara filling, but I used that up in a pot of chili this weekend. It's too thick to fry until golden -- wedges don't work well for that. *shrug* Will think on't.

Who else is doing a farm share?

---L.

Comments

[ranunculus]

Not on a CSA, but. Garden plot about to explode with zucchini and yellow squash.
Back at Henry St the blueberries are still producing and the raspberries are on a "pick every other day" schedule.
Some problems with the tomatoes here setting fruit. Probably too much nitrogen in the mushroom compost. Great big vines, lots of flowers, no fruit.

[larryhammer]

Our tomatoes have not been very fruitful either. I've been "playing bee" by spreading pollen around with a very small paintbrush -- I'm really worried by how few bees I've seen this year: maybe once a week or less, some buzz about the crepe myrtle next to the garden, but I never see them on the garden flowers. (Butterflies also rare, but they do settle on the cantaloupe betimes.) Don't know if what I'm doing helps, but we did pick two this morning, with a handful more ripening now.

Good look with the sqaush.

[ranunculus]

I read up on tomato fruit setting. I think this week has been way too hot for them to set. Apparently days above about 85 or nights above 70 are problematic.
I'll probably try hand pollinating this week to see if I can get anything to stick.

[larryhammer]

Heat is definitely a factor -- high summer, our tomatoes go comatose. We're growing a drought- and heat-resistant variety of cherries that last year produced better than this, comparing weather.

[larryhammer]

A seafood share sounds like a nummy idea. (Well, aside from I can't eat shellfish.)

[genarti]

Ways of eating zucchini I have enjoyed:
- halved or quartered and then sliced, stir-fried with onions and herbs of choice and maybe tomatoes thrown in at the end, put on top of polenta or mixed with pasta
- halved or quartered and then sliced, stir-fried with onions and cumin and maybe some lime and/or lemon and/or chili powder, eaten with beans and rice and cheese (in a burrito or in a bowl)
- diced small, mixed with equally diced apple and maybe grated carrot, tossed in a miso-ginger dressing and left to sit long enough for me to finish the rest of dinner for the flavors to mix, eaten as a raw salad
- grated into chili, though that's more of a way of using them up when one has way too many
- zucchini bread
- zucchini chocolate cake

For tomatillos, I've never actually cooked with them, I confess! I have vague recollections of hearing about some kind of green soup with tomatillo and chicken? Which seems to me it could be very tasty, although possibly one could get the same effect by just using salsa verde in one's chicken soup.

My favorite honey I've had so far is Japanese knotweed honey. There's a certain irony in this, because Japanese knotweed is enormously invasive around here, and I consider it a bitter nemesis after a multi-year battle over my last apartment's backyard. (It was a draw. Except I moved out, and other friends moved in, and it's still putting up little runners, so maybe it's winning after all.) I hate the stuff when I see it growing where other things ought to be, which is depressingly often -- but it makes a lovely complex honey.

[larryhammer]

Ooo, the onion/cumin/lime thing sound good. I rarely reach for cumin when stir-frying, though it's a flavor Eaglet loves in chili. Thanks!

Haven't had knotweed honey. I'll look around and see if I can find some.

And yeah, tomatillo-chicken soup is a Thing.

[shewhomust]

Not on a farmshare / veg. box scheme, because we have a Really Good Greengrocer who delivers locally.

Zucchini are good sweet and sour: thin slices fired in olive oil, add (cider?) vinegae, handful of currants, parsley, pine kernels, chopped anchovies - to taste.

[larryhammer]

A Really Good Greengrocer who delivers is to be treasured.

That sounds good. Don't have currents on hand, nor pine nuts -- but broken cashews might sub for the latter. Hmmm.

[thistleingrey]

Belatedly--tomatillo: chicken (or pork) chile verde? Something like this, though that's not the recipe I've used the couple of times I've tried.

[larryhammer]

I am frankly not very good at cooking chile verde with tomatillos -- I don't know what I'm missing, but the two times I tried, it just didn't taste right (or the first time, any good at all). I know practice makes better, but for this I'm willing to let professionals do the work for me, when I'm in the mood for it.

Red chiles, I'm good at ...

[thistleingrey]

That was also my reaction to my chile verde attempts. Well, worth a try. :)