Scoring well with this week's CSA haul

Last year I posted my haul weekly but I’ve forgotten, and we’re already in week 9. (NINE!!) Bad me. I’ve been taking photos, though, and I’ve been creating most of the newsletters, a job that I’m especially enjoying now that we’re using e-marketing software. If only I were getting paid for this. (I’m for hire on a freelance basis!)

Here’s what I tweeted from the pick up site yesterday:

3 types of melons, blueberries, corn, fennel, garlic & LOTS more at the @EverdaleFarm CSA pick up today!

I’d run out of fruit and was rationing the last few days so it felt like I’d found an oasis or hit the jackpot. I split a HUGE yellow fleshed watermelon with a friend and picked up muskmelon (cantaloupe) and honeydew. All three took about an hour to cut up and the juice ran off the cutting board, down the cupboard and onto the floor. Yeah, the ants will love that. (I cleaned.)

Watermelon tastes like summer to me and it is SO nutritious! Antioxidant rich, they’re high in vitamin C, beta carotene, vitamin A vitamins B1 and B6.  They’re packed with magnesium (involved with over 300 cellular metabolic functions), potassium and lycopene. Turns out that watermelon seeds are high in zinc and iron, which makes me feel better about pulverizing them in my Vitamix for smoothies. For more information on watermelon, read nutritionist Julie Daniluk’s 5 reasons to eat watermelon and this article from Natural News. Julie’s article lead me to the National Watermelon Promotion Board’s website/blog and there’s some cool stuff on there.

Cantaloupe melons are a good source of potassium, Vitamin A, and folate. It’s high in antioxidants.  The sweetest of the melons, honeydew is rich in potassium and one serving of honeydew melon will give you almost half of the vitamin C you need for one day! They’re also high in vitamin B6 and Folate but low in antioxidants. I recently waited nearly a week before cutting into my cantaloupe, then blended it up with the remainder of my vodka and took it to the beach. Refreshing!

Melons kick ass for taste and nutrition.

But it wasn’t all fruit. I picked up salad greens because I eat salads daily for lunch during the work week and a packed small paper bag usually lasts exactly 7 days. I make my own vinaigrette (Kozlik’s tarragon mustard has become a staple ingredient) and throw on extras such as sprouts, hard boiled eggs, avocado, cilantro, and recently, sweet fruit. (Try wild blueberries and peaches.) Beans, tempeh, quinoa… almost anything goes. I’ve even used pickles in salads.

Garlic is in! Two weeks ago seemed to be the big garlic harvest. The Cutting Veg, home of the Global Garlic, harvested 15,000 bulbs over the long weekend as reported in their newsletter. Farmer Carl of Everdale Farm (my CSA) said in his weekly update “Garlic harvest is complete! They are curing in our greenhouse and in a barn.” I plucked two bulbs, stems attached. I will acquire much more this season, as much as I can. It will last for months stored in a paper bag – though my kitchen has been so hot that garlic has been perishing more quickly.

Corn! I don’t love corn on the cob because it gets in my teeth but I also do love it, especially fresh. Especially barbecued with some salt, lime and chili. I picked up 3 ears so that I could cut the kernels off and use them in salads. I don’t have a barbecue. Freshly picked, corn is good raw. I don’t know why more people don’t eat it raw off the cob.

So much to choose from. I don’t like fennel and only buy it if it’s called for in a specific recipe (though I want to try chef Ezra’s recipe for “Salad of watermelon, celery, fennel, mint & grilled Haloumi cheese“, without grilling the Haloumi), which means that I think I’ve bought it twice ever. The containers of blueberries were sadly tiny. I’m not so into radishes, still have kale from weeks ago, don’t really eat potatoes, couldn’t decide what to do with broccoli, etc.

My final selection was labelled cauliflower but it’s romanesco, aka “Roman cauliflower”(a fractal vegetable, for you fractal nerds).  Romanesco broccoli, or Roman cauliflower, is an edible flower of the species Brassica oleracea, and a variant form of cauliflower. Romanesco is rich in Vitamin C, folic acid, potassium, and fibre.

The selection was abundant. One of the reasons I love summer.

Tonight’s dinner includes yam from a previous week, an ear of corn and some of the cauliflower.

Looking for a CSA/harvest share to get your own fresh fruit and vegetables directly from the farmers through November? There’s still space in ours for pick up in the Annex, or try The Cutting Veg. They might still have space in one of theirs.

Eat well, be well.