Yippeee!
Tonight, I picked up our first farmshare basket from Manorun Farm, a local organic operation.
After at least three years of planning to support a local farmer by purchasing a half-share for the pair of us, Christopher and I finally remembered to sign up with Manorun (www.manorun.com) and send them our post-dated cheques. Behold, we are participants in Community Supported Agriculture!
We're quite excited about this whole venture. Not only are we delighted to support a local farmer, but we also like the idea of the weekly mystery box of ingredients. It's so easy to get into a bit of a cooking rut, making the same few meals over and over again because they're proven favorites and you don't have to think too hard. The amount of broccoli and pepper stir fry with tofu fritters we've eaten this past winter for this very reason is not to be believed. Now we'll get a basket of ingredients not of our choosing every Tuesday night and enjoy the challenge of figuring out what to do with them week by week.
Our inaugural basket contained a generous bunch of radishes (radiculous!), two bags of greens, a paper bag of dried beans from last summer's crop, as well as 6 good sized potatoes from the farm's cellar. Crowning the basket was a lovely bunch of chives, complete with their aromatic fuzzy purple blooms. In addition to the obvious salads, meals this week will include chive and potato fritatta, radishes with sweet butter and coarse salt (I'm a radish beginner. Having never really liked their biting sharpness, I'm thinking that the butter might mellow their flavour a bit for me) and likely the first egg salad of the season to help consume the big bunch of chives. Oh, and I just remembered a delicious dish I had at The Black Trumpet in London, Ontario that might help use up those radishes -- it was a seared salmon fillet dressed with a sauce of chopped radish and creme fraiche, so simple and so good.
Will keep you posted on how our first season as CSA participants goes. I see a lot of kale in our future, do you?
Kara
3 comments:
I was looking in to the CSA but didn't know if it was worth it. I'll keep reading how you do and maybe next year we'll start.
I don't suppose you're the same Kara who went to OTHS in the 80's and spent an inordinate amount of time hanging out in the Tim Hortin's a few blocks from there?
Oh, good GOD, don't remind me how much time we spent at Hortons, Nick.
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