C to tha SA

The first few weeks of the CSA were a bit rough, between rain and hail, but we've still been getting plenty of greens each week, rain or shine- even if the emphasis lately seems to be on the former. Last Thursday when I picked up our share I did so in a heavy afternoon thunderstorm. The farmer, Luke, was kind enough to let me take refuge under his awning with the veggies.

Soaked to my bones

 I stuffed the saddle bags of my bike with heaps of freshly picked, wet, dirty veggies (my favorite!) and pedaled home as fast as my little wet legs would take me. Here's a picture of the share for the week:

Clockwise- spinach, rainbow chard, basil, snap peas, breakfast radishes

 Since it was time for a late afternoon snack after pounding out 3.5 miles as fast as possible on the bike, I decided to take advantage of the fresh spinach and make a smoothie.

 I had about two cups firmly packed, so I processed that first and then added raspberries, coconut milk, a magical banana, chia/flax seeds, and some ground ginger.

 Pretty much as soon as my food processor stopped, the sun came out. Perfect timing for a picture!


The basil was put to good use in a pasta sauce, and the chard was dumped into another smoothie. The snap peas are excellent raw, just the way they are, but hummus is a worthy companion. I grated a few of the radishes into a salad, and the remaining few are hanging around waiting for a dinner to take part in. Tomorrow we have another pickup- I wonder if this one will be rain or shine?

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.

I. Love. My. CSA.

This is an exact copy of a recent post on my other blog, but I really wanted to share it here too- enjoy! And to learn about how you can get your paws on your very own CSA, check out www.localharvest.org. You'll be glad you did!

Last Saturday was Farm Day with our CSA. It's the last pickup of the season, and they invite all the members out to the farm to see where the food is grown and glean the fields. For our last pickup we got an insane amount of grey Hubbard hard squash, a baking pumpkin, a pile of tomatoes, a half gallon of homemade organic, local apple cider, fresh roasted green chilies, and a huge bag of apples. After we hauled all that back to the car, Bobby and I hit the fields. I really, REALLY wish I had brought my camera to the farm, but at least we had a good time photographing the pile of food we brought home, as we laughed and told each other about 10 times "getting a CSA was SO worth it".

We both agreed we should lay everything out on the table and take a picture. It was pretty ridiculous.

In addition to the potatoes, carrots, peppers, broccoli, swiss chard, corn, and tomatoes we gleaned from the field, we also got to pick out a carving pumpkin. Here I am for size reference. Bobby said a few times "this is the best Halloween pumpkin I've ever had!". Thanks for making dreams come true CSA. You're a peach.

You might be thinking, what do you do with all those squash?? The good thing is, these gray guys will last until March, provided they are stored in a dark, temperature controlled, fairly cool place...

so now they're living on the shelf in our laundry room. Their more colorful friends will last until December this way.

This is a HUGE wooden bowl in the middle of our dining room table, filled with apples.

Then we took about two hours to wash, chop, and store all the fridge worthy veggies.

More veggies and the chard filling up both drawers- the left one that's closed is more of the same.

All of the onions, potatoes, shallots, garlic, and beets we got will be going in a wire hanging basket we scored from Goodwill for $1.50, but it needs to be hung. So for now they're living in a canvas bag.

We have been eating like crazy this whole week, and you can bet that the apple cider is almost gone. I need to use the chilies soon before their roasted awesomeness is wasted, but everything else is working out well. Between the natural shelf life of the hard squash, and the fact that we sorted, washed, and chopped pre-emptively, I think we'll get through without wasting too much.

All in all, I'm VERY sad our CSA is over. I've shopped at farmers' markets for years, but CSA's are so much easier, and to me, more enjoyable. Once you vet your CSA and know how they work before you buy a share, you absolutely know that everything you are getting each week is local, organic, and fresh picked. You get to see the people who grow and pick your food every single week for 5 months, or in states with longer growing seasons, sometimes as long as 9 months. Plus it's always fun to have veggies fresh enough to have clumps of dirt on them, or fruit that naturally ripened instead of being picked early to sit on a truck for a month and arrive at the store feeling like a rock and tasting like nothing. And it's cheap. Our CSA was $500 for 5 months. That's $100 a month, $25 a week. We had a fruit and veggie share of local, organic, fresh produce, plus we had a flower share- we got a bouquet every week of native flowers. And then at the end, we were able to glean as much as we wanted. I saw some families carting away wagon loads of food. It's a healthy, environmentally friendly, and economical way to help local farmers and eat great food. I don't ever want to go without a CSA again, and I hope I don't have to!

Buying the CSA Kids' Love with Vegan Cookies

So, as I've mentioned before, our CSA is through our local university, and it's run by students. They're awesome kids and they do a great job, so I decided since I'm always take, take, taking, I should give back in our relationship. I made them vegan peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips. The chocolate chips were made out of a Mayan dark chocolate bar that I chopped up. The spicy chocolate was really, really good with the peanut butter. I got the recipe from ChooseVeg.com, and I modified it by adding cinnamon, the chocolate chips, and enough unsweetened coconut milk to make it not as crumbly, it was quite dry even before I added the chocolate. Here's the recipe-

Vegan Peanut Butter Cookies

* 1 1/2 cups flour
* 1 cup peanut butter
* 1/4 cup oil
* 3/4 cups sugar
* 1 tsp. vanilla

Mix all ingredients in a bowl, roll the dough into 2-inch balls, place on an ungreased cookie sheet, and bake at 400°F for 10 to 12 minutes. Could it get any easier?

Here's the link- http://www.chooseveg.com/display_recipe.asp?recipe=236

These are about 2 inches in diameter, and they came out crumbly on the outside but moist on the inside. I definitely suggest adding whatever milk sub you like to use. Bobby and I each had two, and then I packed up the rest to take to the CSA gang. I don't know about anyone else, but it's always nerve wracking for me to make sure that if I'm going to make food for someone, it needs to be *good*, so maybe it will plant a seed of "hmm... that tastes awesome, cookies don't need milk/eggs/butter at all!". There are already so many misconceptions for vegan/vegetarian food being bland, or "missing something". This recipe was simple and quick, and it's going in the keeper file.

Thank you CSA, or, Baked Tofu Makes My Night

Today was the CSA pickup. We get ours through the local university agriculture program, so not only is it local, organic, in season produce, but it directly supports our local university and helps students get hands on experience. This is literally only *one fourth* of the rainbow swiss chard we got, in addition to all sorts of other goodies. All of the colors against the green make me happy- and hungry :)



Dinner was themed around the leftover Israeli couscous with pistachios from "Veganomicon". The tofu recipe is from the same cookbook, "Tangerine Baked Tofu", but I subbed orange for the tangerine as suggested and made several other changes to the marinade. It soaked all day, and then I baked it until it got really chewy and meaty. It's spiced with orange zest and juice, lime juice, maple syrup, soy sauce, cumin and allspice, and some other random things I added and can't remember. Bobby and I both declared it to be our favorite, most flavorful tofu ever. Even if you eat meat like a champ, I really suggest getting "Veganomicon", because since veggies are the star, there are tons of really unique and very tasty ways of making them.



On the side in a lil' blue teacup is a half lazy/half wingin' it soup. I got a creamy acorn squash and mango soup- Imagine brand- from Sprouts to use as a base. I added more spices and a bit of coconut milk to the base and let it simmer while I sauteed red onions and CSA swiss chard, turnips, and radishes in a bit of garlic, spiced with cumin, ginger, and black pepper. All of this sauteed mix was dumped into the soup base, making a very thick, stew like greens soup. I added a handful of chopped walnuts just because, well, walnuts taste good and they're good for you, so why not? I liked the convenience of the soup base, but I'd definitely recommend using it as you would Campbell's Cream of Fill in the Blank- it's a great, creamy base, but needs to be gussied up.

Incidentally, I *hated* tofu, no really, that isn't too strong of a word, until I baked it at home myself. A lot of restaurants leave it very soft, spongy, and "cubey", whereas I prefer mine very thin, chewy, and almost kind of dry unless it's in miso soup. So, if you think you hate tofu, give a try cooking it at home, after it soaks in a complex marinade overnight. It really makes a huge difference.