Box #4: A busy week

Often, people who decide to buy into a CSA share a portion with another household. It's a good way to try out the system without committing to a lot of scary spontaneous vegetable consumption.

Here's another lesson we've learned the lucky way—by doing it right, then realizing later how important it was to a good outcome: Share your box with someone you trust. Your CSA vegetables will be some of the most emotionally valuable food you'll ever have, second only to what you grow or hunt for yourself, and you have to divvy this stuff up with another household.

Patrick and I were out of town from Thursday morning until Sunday evening, so Marcos and Jamie picked up the box we all share. We didn't expect much when we got back--maybe one or two hardy morsels. Instead I had a phone message from Jamie, saying our half of the share was safely preserved and waiting for us. She even offered us some basil from their garden to make up for the herb that didn't survive the weekend. Can you believe these friends? Thanks, Marcos and Jamie!

One disadvantage to CSAs is that you pay in advance for the season, and if you can't pick up your box at the prescribed place and time, you forfiet your veggies. Because we have four adults sharing our box, there's a good chance one of us can claim our stash.

Here's what awaited us: garlic scapes, Italian parsley, strawberries, yellow and purple scallions, collard greens, fennel and peas.



This photo shows our half of the share. Previous box photos show the whole shares before we divided them.

The first thing we did was eat the fennel bulb and stems raw. I can't believe I'd never tried this before. It's like candy! I can't believe it's a vegetable. Why isn't this stuff more popular? It should be in every kid's lunch box. It tastes the way fennel seed smells, maybe a bit sweeter. Yes, like anise or licorice, but I don't like black licorice and I really liked this.

I dried the leaves using paper towels and wire racks. It took about 36 hours.



The next morning, I needed a snack that I could prepare quickly and bring to work. We had the Driftless strawberries and some peaches that were threatening to pass their peak. Time to macerate! I cleaned the fruit and cut up the peaches. I put them in a container with 6 Tbsp (?) lemon juice, some half-dried fennel and 2 Tbsp. (?) sugar.



To macerate, I left the covered container on my desk all morning while I worked, shaking it like once an hour. I ate about half of the fruit with my lunch, then refrigerated it and brought the rest home. Here's how it looked when it was done:



If I do this again, I'll chop up the fennel first so it looks more like herbs and less like spindly spider legs. Maybe that's just me.

That night, Patrick made what's becoming his signature dish: delicious pan-broiled salmon. He used the purple scallions.



We never used to buy radishes, but after incorporating them into our salads for a couple weeks because of the CSA, we didn't want to go without. So we got some from our co-op.