My First CSA Experience

I convinced Mr X to let us join a CSA this year. I just got my first "veggie share" yesterday evening. I was a bit nervous for a few reasons:

1) I paid up front for shares for the rest of the year so I would have been incredibly upset had the share turned out to be disappointing. I wasn't disappointed at all.

2) I wasn't sure how much a single "share" was. The information I read through said it was enough for 1-2 people for a week. I didn't know if that was more 1 person or more 2 people. It was 2 people.

3) I was concerned that the produce might be wilted or in less than stellar condition. My concerns were unfounded.

4) I was concerned that the veggies would be ho-hum, nothing special. Not the case.

5) I was concered that the veggies would be too strange and unusual and I wouldn't be able to use them. Wrong again.

This is what my small share contained this week:

Garlic scapes, several spinach bunches, green leaf romaine, flat-leaf parsley, curly parsley (which I diced and froze), cilantro, rhubarb, green onions, heirloom Mexican Red beans (which I froze for future use as well), farm-made sauerkraut.

(These photos aren't mine. Just ones I found on the interweb to add some visual effect to this post. Plus they are pretty much right on anyway.)

I also signed up for a dozen free-range eggs each week.

So I figured I should start using my veggies right away so I included some of them in dinner. I used the romaine lettuce to make a garden salad.

I sauted some of the garlic scapes (which I hadn't even heard of before) and I used the rest to make a compound butter for our steaks. (I did some research on these online and found those two ideas.) They are very garlic-y but not quite as potent as regular garlic bulbs. When sauteed the flavor changes quite a bit and they taste similar to asparagus. Very garlicy asparagus. And yes, they are as crazy curly as the photo below depicts. I liked them a lot.

I made potatoes dauphinoise just because I had potatoes on-hand that I needed to use up.

Mr X also agreed to let me purchase part of a grass-fed cow this summer. It is a lot of meat. So I used my first steak from our cow tonight.This particular steak was called a delmonico cut steak. I seasoned it with salt and pepper only because I was planning on using the garlic scape compound butter with it. (Butter, lemon juice, finely diced garlic scapes, thyme.)