This week’s return to the Make-Your-Own-Box (MYOB) plan is brought to you by the letters “O” for “Oops” and “E” for “Enh”. The “Oops” relates to my having remembered on Thursday morning that we didn’t place an order by Wednesday night. D’oh! The “Enh” relates to what I saw when I looked at the list of items included in this week’s box. Sure ’nuff, there were some great things, like 8 ears of sweet corn, but they were also throwing in a bunch of hot peppers – and the kids aren’t yet up on the same amount of spice that we like.

I don’t see this as the worst thing in the world; there’s a certain satisfaction to be had from bringing the kids into the farmstand and letting them help decide what will go into the cart. The more excited they are to eat, and the more invested they are in the food decisions, the likelier they are to want to eat the food…or so the theory goes.

To keep things simple, I pointed out the items that were clearly marked as being from the farm; that was the bulk of what they had to offer right now, anyway (apart from any citrus, which is always coming from out of state). This week’s haul:

Lush color = luscious food

Now, you’ll probably notice that I WENT OVER THE LIMIT OF $22.00! (cue forbidding music and potential influx of ninja warriors to cut up my debit card with a sword) Here’s the issue, and I’ll leave it at this set of excuses:

1. For whatever reason, Friday afternoon was THE time to be at the farmstand and it was packed with people. Thus, it was hard to get things sorted out easily with two small kids while trying NOT to be in the way.
2. The farmstand, God love ’em, doesn’t appear to have a scale that’s accessible to shoppers, so it’s hard to tell how much you’ve purchased. I tried to keep a running tally on my iPhone, but I didn’t have a way to measure the weight of the items that were priced by the pound. Of course, it also didn’t hep that the kids were aiming for the more expensive items, like the grapes, but if the biggest problem that I have is that my kids like to eat fresh fruit and vegetables, I’d say there are probably plenty of people who’d like to have that kind of “problem” themselves.
3. I was in a hurry. We still needed to hit up the fishmonger (who sets up outside the farmstand every Friday afternoon) to get some scallops before we headed home and started getting the corn on.

So, we have an overage. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! But it’ll all work out in the end. Why? Because it’s only $1.23, and it’s worth it when you taste the difference. I know it’s impossible to express this properly over a web page, but if you can get fresh stuff straight from the source, boy, is there a world of difference. I will note that the raspberries are the only one item that did NOT originate at this particular farm. However, they came from another farm elsewhere in Massachusetts, so I consider that local enough for my purposes.

Now, the only tricky item in this list is the one I never cooked with before: the currants. I haven’t dug through all of my cookbooks yet to see what the options are (aside from “heating and making into a sauce for meat”), so I’m curious as to what these currants will turn into. And I’m really hoping they turn into something tasty before they end up being “that thing I really wanted to try and never got to before it went bad.” Any suggestions for currants, folks??