Tag Archives: vegan

Adventures in CSA: trying something new

Posted on by — 3 Comments ↓

Ironically, as much as taking part in a CSA involves somewhat of a leap of faith (“I’ll like _____” or “I’ll at least TRY ______”), the investment of money and time involved with a box program locks you into the notion that you must live within that structure. It’s a good discipline to get into, for sure, but can you do it when no one’s looking?

Put another way: do you need the CSA box to inspire you to try something new or eat more fruit/veg?

This week, we’ll put that to the test.

The CSA box from our local farm was announced this week and, since I didn’t opt into the season share through work, we have the flexibility of the week-by-week program at the local farm to lean on. This means that we also have the option NOT to purchase a given box, if we’re uninspired by the box. Amazingly, we’ve already come across that situation. This week’s box, as described on the farm’s web site, contains:

  • 1 pint blueberries
  • 1 bunch carrots
  • 1 bunch swiss chard
  • 1 bunch parsley
  • 1 bunch radishes
  • 1 lb beans
  • 2 lbs squash
  • 2 cucumbers
  • 1 head lettuce

As it happens, this being Wednesday and all, we have yet to get through the beans from the box we got last Friday. And we still need to get to the tatsoi, squash and carrots…and only dh eats the blueberries (I’m just not a fan of blueberries, sorry). This new box would have several of the same contents PLUS lettuce (which is fine, but we tend to lean more towards the more nutritious spinach), and dh would be stuck with the blueberries and radishes, since no one in the house but dh will bother with radishes. I’ll confess, I keep trying everything in the boxes, even the stuff I know I don’t typically like, and CSA-quality radishes have yet to sway me towards thinking that radishes are tasty. I know there are people who like radishes, but I just don’t count myself as one of them.

All this leads me to having the convo with dh this morning about the veggie box contents and having him say, “I don’t think we should get it this week.” Cue my surprised look. It hadn’t occurred to me that we wouldn’t get a box, but he’s right; we wouldn’t need more of what we haven’t yet finished and there are several items that only he eats, so it’s just more stuff for him to plow through alone.

So we’re going to go in a different direction this week: a make-your-own box approach. I’m going to take the same $20-22 we’ve spent per box in the CSA programs and use that as my budget. I’ll head to the grocery store with the following conditions:

  1. Must not cost more than $22 total
  2. Must have at least six items
  3. Must not have items already needed/planned for a meal
  4. Must contain at least one item that’s new to me (or that we have had only infrequently, at best)
  5. Must be items grown within the US (preferably New England, to keep it regional)

That should hit on the “in season and local” aspect, as well as the “try something new” aspect. Depending upon whether or not I can get decent tagging from the local grocery store, I may have to switch over to a Whole Foods (so I can get a better sense of where fruit/veg were produced). I don’t want to come home with items sporting other countries’ flags, and I’d really prefer to get stuff that’s from the local area.

If you ask, “Why not just go to the local farm and buy from the farmstand?”, the answer is this: they also cart in stuff from out of the region, to supplement what they make themselves. What they’d offer that’s “local” right now is pretty much what they’re putting in the boxes. This is the benefit of the box that hits more farms; you have a better shot at a variety when you’re pulling from a number of different local farms versus just one.

I’ll head out Friday to get my stuff, just as I would get the box, and my BYO-box contents will be announced once I have ’em, along with the prices. If it ends up being a fun-enough experiment, then I’ll probably repeat it if we get to any other weeks where the CSA option looks less interesting. Of course, my hope is that I can just buy the box straight from the farm, but when that option doesn’t hold a ton of appeal, I think the BYO is a great way to improvise a way to keep things going.

Short thoughts on shell peas

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓

Shell peas had been given nearly-mythic status in my mind thanks to the ravings of my BIL, who swears that freshly shelled peas from my sister’s garden is one of his favorite summer foods. So, it was with great joy that I saw the CSA box would have shell peas (aka “English peas”) this past week. I was never much of a pea person until dh and I started dating and he would get me into canned peas as a decent side dish at dinnertime. After we had kids, we more firmly transitioned to frozen peas – typically, the 2lb bag with the grocery store brand label.

And then there’s shell peas. They’re going to be fantastic. Mythic. EPIC.

My verdict: They’re yummy, but they’re more trouble than they need to be worth. That’s not to say that I didn’t like them. I did – really, I did! But they didn’t blow me away enough to make me think that this is THE PEA FOR ME FOR NOW AND FOREVER.

First off, there’s some effort required in taking them from in-the-pod to not-in-the-pod. For the bag of approximately 2lbs of shell peas, I spent a little more than a half-hour to shell the lot of them, and I yielded just about 13oz of peas. Half of them were prepared last night, and the other half went back into the fridge to be prepared later in the week. Everything I’ve read about shell peas said that you should eat them pretty soon after they’re picked, so we’re trying to be good about getting through them.

Once you get past the shelling process, the cooking process is super-easy. For about 6-7oz peas, just boil some water in a saucepan, add the peas and cook them for about 1-2 minutes, until they’re a pretty green. Turn off the heat, strain them to get rid of the water, and then stir in about 1/2Tb butter or margarine. Some people put salt in the water or salt the peas after. Some bypass all that and just eat them raw. Peas are, as always, a “whatever works for you” kind of vegetable.

Everybody liked the peas, but it was clear that the reception was only somewhat better than what we get for the frozen ones heated up in the microwave. For the price difference and the work required, that relegates shell peas firmly to weekend-duty, on an irregular basis. Shell peas may be a treat, but I think I’ve seen now that the myth was more in my head than in the pod.

Adventures in CSA (year 2 week 2): Better in several ways

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Surprisingly, while there was a still a price gap between what I paid and what I got, it was a smaller gap in several ways. First off, I got several things that my grocery store doesn’t actually carry IN-STORE. The easiest way to price these more random items was to find the closest equivalent on the “To Go” portion of their web site, which allows me to see a vastly larger array of produce than what’s available in the store. For example, the spinach (on the stems) and the shell peas were only available on the web site; in store, you can have bagged spinach leaves and bagged (shelled) peas. I used Baby Bok Choi as the closest equivalent for tatsoi on pricing, since it looked just similar enough for these purposes. I’m still in a net negative position, financially, BUT I’m getting things that are harder to find than what I normally come across, and that’s worth something that you can’t really put as much of a price on.

 

Year 2 – Summer Week 2
Weight
(lb)		 Grocery Store Unit Price
(per lb)		 Grocery Store Total Item Cost
Blueberries (pint) 1.00 $4.99 $4.99
Shell Peas 2.25 $2.49 $5.60
Summer Squash 0.89 $1.99 $1.77
Pickling Cucumbers 1.65 $1.99 $3.28
Green Beans 1.00 $1.99 $1.99
Spinach 0.45 $2.98 $1.35
Tatsoi 0.28 $2.99 $0.84
Carrots 0.73 $0.99 $0.73
Grocery Store Total Cost $20.55
Year 2 Summer Week 2 Savings (Deficit) ($1.45)

 

As of Saturday, when I went grocery shopping, we had yet to really dig into this box, since we’re still finishing off LAST week’s box, but I’ve already got my schemes in mind. One suggestion (thanks, Tammy!) was to put a bunch of the items from the box (including the blueberries) into a blender and make a smoothie out of them. I don’t see this as any kind of a cop-out: it’s a great use for fresh fruits and veggies! I have to admit, coming into the grocery store yesterday and filling my cart first with produce, I felt pretty happy about what I was pushing around, seeing how my cart was packed to the gills with all kind of fresh fruits and veggies. Of course, that didn’t completely cancel out the turkey pepperoni and Gatorade I put in the cart right after that…but, oh, don’t judge.