CSA Potluck Muffins

I've talked before about how much I love having a CSA. The CSA we had last year was incredible, but we ended up switching to a newcomer on the scene this year. This was primarily because our new CSA is right off of one of the bike trails, and we happen to live only a mile and a half a way off of  said bike trail. The charm of biking along the creek to pick up freshly picked, local, organic veggies direct from the farm was too much to deny.

Last week was the CSA kickoff pot luck. I love pot lucks, because they're such a good return on investment. I only have to make one dish, but I still get to choose from a buffet of various food. That's sound economics right there, ya'll. I decided to make an old standby, the blueberry banana muffins from How it All Vegan. As usual I cut the sugar in half and added a bit more blueberries- 1 1/2 cups instead of 1 cup. These are made with whole wheat flour, but even with half as much sugar they are still an excellent sweet bread.

 The recipe says that it makes 12 muffins, but even when I fill the tins up to the top, I always have batter left over. Since I only have 2 muffin tins and I don't want to have to wait, I just pour the leftover batter into a bread pan and bake it along with the muffins. This lets me add in random things to experiment. In the past I've added chocolate chips, nuts, or  more fruit.

This time I added in a generous portion of unsweetened/unsulphured dried coconut. It went really well with the bananas and the blueberries. We kept the bread for ourselves, and loaded up the muffins on the back of our bikes to take to the CSA.

 Biking along the trail...

 the creek...

 and one of several wooden bridges you cross.

 When we got to the farm we parked our bikes along with everyone else. Check out all the bike trailers for  hauling little nuggets. I sometimes wish someone would haul me around in a trailer. Kids. They get all the breaks!

 We picked up our share for the week. Lots of greens- kale, chard, lettuce. Mmmm, salads and smoothies.
 The  muffins were added to the communal food table and then we chowed down. Turns out our co-members are good cooks as well as interesting people. We hung out for an hour or two, and I was happy to see that the muffins were quickly polished off. I admit that is one thing that is a bit nerve wracking about pot lucks- you don't want your dish to go untouched or left out, like the last kid picked for the kickball team.

If you're interested in getting a CSA for yourself, check out Local Harvest. You might be surprised at what your local community has to offer. I can't promise you'll have a full scale farm a mile and a half from your apartment off of a bike lane, but I can bet that you'll be able to find a good network to plug into.