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Jun. 15th, 2008 07:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I signed up for a CSA this summer. It's down past Flickerville, in the middle of nowhere. It's only about twenty miles from my house which must mean that I'm on the outskirts of nowhere. (It is my considered opinion that "nowhere" is somewhere between Flickerville and Dott, but anyway.)
If anyone had asked me, prior to my CSA pickup this evening, if I thought that anyone in Fulton County would be standing barefoot on a porch, facing east, praying in foreign to Mecca, I would have said no. No, I would have said. My first guess (and my second guess and even my third, which is impressive durability for what is, in all, a binary choice) would have been no. I would have been dead wrong.
Because this soul made eye contact (while continuing on in foreign), I said "Can I..." and he held up a hand in the universal language of "Just a sec..." so I waited until he was done praying in foreign. He helped me locate the CSA lady (who apparently runs this herd of assorted hippies, and hippies they indeed were) and paid her for the membership and picked up my foods.
CSA is community sponsored agriculture. You pay a membership and then they give you food (usually vegetables of some sort) every week, all summer long. I signed up for a CSA for a couple of reasons.
1. The food is grown locally, for values of local that include 40 mile round trips. This is less distance than I drive for dressage lessons once a week so it probably counts as "local". It's also about the same distance as the grocery store, only in a different direction.
2. The food is damn fresh.
3. The food is not made of corn syrup. It's actual food. Sometimes there is still some dirt on it.
4. The food is not waxed or gassed or anything weird. It's just food.
5. I will be forced to eat vegetables that I do not normally eat. This is the nature of CSA and I'm okay with it.
This week we got the following items...
Turnips. They're maybe Japanese turnips. Some kind of turnips. They're white. Food lady says they're sweet enough to eat raw. I need to find out how to cook turnips because I am not throwing away any groceries. The game plan here is to eat all the groceries, even the ones I do not ostensibly like. Maybe I will like them if I eat them. The turnips came with greens, which are also edible. I'll probably edible the greens -- I like greens.
Radishes. I'm not a huge radish fan, but I can eat them right enough. These will likely become instant pickles like I do with cukes. I will eat most any crunchy vegetable if it has sugar and cider vinegar on it.
Mixed greens. These are "spicy" and "sharp" greens. Whatever. They don't look like anything I know what is, but I took half of these and wilted 'em in some garlic/butter (sauteed first to be not-sharp), served the lot over rice. It was pretty good. The second half of the Mixed Greens will be done similarly tomorrow, only with bacon fat and real bacon bits from the bacon. Oh yeah -- I have bacon now. Bacon. Real bacon, not the bought kind. MMMMM, bacon. Go me!
Cilantro and sage. I have cilantro in my own garden but I didn't say anything to the food lady. It's nice cilantro and I will eat it. The sage, I'm not sure what to do with. Maybe I'll sautee it in butter and then use that to fry up some parboiled potatoes. That'd be nice.
Anyway, for the duration of the CSA, you can expect to see sundry posts about vegetables and my experiences with them. There may also be some further information about the hippies, should any become available. I don't know how other people do with CSA -- this one doesn't tell you what you'll be getting until you show up to get it. It's like a surprise package once a week, which is probably well worth the cost. I'm all about surprises.
If anyone had asked me, prior to my CSA pickup this evening, if I thought that anyone in Fulton County would be standing barefoot on a porch, facing east, praying in foreign to Mecca, I would have said no. No, I would have said. My first guess (and my second guess and even my third, which is impressive durability for what is, in all, a binary choice) would have been no. I would have been dead wrong.
Because this soul made eye contact (while continuing on in foreign), I said "Can I..." and he held up a hand in the universal language of "Just a sec..." so I waited until he was done praying in foreign. He helped me locate the CSA lady (who apparently runs this herd of assorted hippies, and hippies they indeed were) and paid her for the membership and picked up my foods.
CSA is community sponsored agriculture. You pay a membership and then they give you food (usually vegetables of some sort) every week, all summer long. I signed up for a CSA for a couple of reasons.
1. The food is grown locally, for values of local that include 40 mile round trips. This is less distance than I drive for dressage lessons once a week so it probably counts as "local". It's also about the same distance as the grocery store, only in a different direction.
2. The food is damn fresh.
3. The food is not made of corn syrup. It's actual food. Sometimes there is still some dirt on it.
4. The food is not waxed or gassed or anything weird. It's just food.
5. I will be forced to eat vegetables that I do not normally eat. This is the nature of CSA and I'm okay with it.
This week we got the following items...
Turnips. They're maybe Japanese turnips. Some kind of turnips. They're white. Food lady says they're sweet enough to eat raw. I need to find out how to cook turnips because I am not throwing away any groceries. The game plan here is to eat all the groceries, even the ones I do not ostensibly like. Maybe I will like them if I eat them. The turnips came with greens, which are also edible. I'll probably edible the greens -- I like greens.
Radishes. I'm not a huge radish fan, but I can eat them right enough. These will likely become instant pickles like I do with cukes. I will eat most any crunchy vegetable if it has sugar and cider vinegar on it.
Mixed greens. These are "spicy" and "sharp" greens. Whatever. They don't look like anything I know what is, but I took half of these and wilted 'em in some garlic/butter (sauteed first to be not-sharp), served the lot over rice. It was pretty good. The second half of the Mixed Greens will be done similarly tomorrow, only with bacon fat and real bacon bits from the bacon. Oh yeah -- I have bacon now. Bacon. Real bacon, not the bought kind. MMMMM, bacon. Go me!
Cilantro and sage. I have cilantro in my own garden but I didn't say anything to the food lady. It's nice cilantro and I will eat it. The sage, I'm not sure what to do with. Maybe I'll sautee it in butter and then use that to fry up some parboiled potatoes. That'd be nice.
Anyway, for the duration of the CSA, you can expect to see sundry posts about vegetables and my experiences with them. There may also be some further information about the hippies, should any become available. I don't know how other people do with CSA -- this one doesn't tell you what you'll be getting until you show up to get it. It's like a surprise package once a week, which is probably well worth the cost. I'm all about surprises.