Galia Melon and Heirloom Tomatoes ~ Week of August 5th

No photo this week, but a tasty box full of treats nonetheless. We are starting to miss what we think of as “real veggies,” though. Tomatoes are terrific, but they don’t satisfy the leafy green urge. At least there was a bit of broccoli this week!

In this week’s box from Farm Fresh to You:

Blueberries (6 oz.)
Flame grapes (1 lb)
Cherries (1 lb)
Galia melon (1 large)
Broccoli (1 crown)
Portobello mushroom (1 large)
Cherry tomatoes (1 pint)
Heirloom tomatoes (2 lbs)
Romaine hearts (3)
Purple basil (1 bunch)
Yellow onions (1 lb)

The quality of the produce is still really good, and stuff doesn’t rot immediately, which is a huge plus for summer CSA fruit and tomatoes. I wish the newsletter recipes were a little more inspired though… This week’s recipe was for grilled cheese sandwiches. They sound like amazing grilled cheese sandwiches, but that’s one I can pretty much figure out on my own!

What’s in the box?

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve been holding out on you.

The whole purpose of this blog is to catalog my adventures in community supported agriculture, and while this is something I’ve written about thoughtfully and voluminously in the past, there’s been pretty much radio silence on the topic for the last several months. I started off this blog writing about Eatwell Farm’s CSA, but in October of last year, after a little more than a year of weekly farm boxes, Eatwell and I parted ways. In February Duck and I gave Eating with the Seasons a try, and I gave you a detailed compare and contrast of the two services. But our Eating with the Seasons experience only lasted a few weeks. It’s really is more of a customized grocery delivery service than a traditional CSA, and for some reason it just didn’t appeal. We wondered if we were done with the CSA model, at least for the time being, but then a friend won a free subscription to Capay Farm’s Farm Fresh to You CSA and, reading his newsletter and ogling his box, our interest rekindled.

So since the end of April (has it really been that long now?) we’ve been getting a weekly box from Farm Fresh to You, and we’ve been loving it. FFTY lets you create a “no” list, so your box is semi-customized. That puts it between Eatwell (everyone gets the exact same thing) and Eating with the Seasons (you make up your box from a list of 35 or so offerings). I think this is perfect for us – we love the surprise element of a CSA box, but get frustrated when a third or more of our box is stuff we don’t like, week after week. (That would be during pepper season!) FFTY also drops the box off on our porch, rather than at a central location. It’s pretty sweet to head outside and find this treasure chest of gorgeous produce waiting on the steps. 

And yes, the produce is gorgeous. Our tomato experience this summer with FFTY has been head and shoulders above the mealy, rot-the-day-they-arrive Eatwell tomatoes of last summer. With the exception of some tasteless fruit – melons, stone fruits, and grapes – everything has been at its peak both in terms of flavor and hardiness (i.e. not going bad within a few days).

So why have I been keeping all this fabulous CSA data to myself? The answer is simply that I’ve been tired, tired with a capital “T”. (And a capital “I,” “R,” “E,” and “D,” most days.) I manage to get up a little spark now and then to put up a menu plan or write a little post about something fun I’ve cooked, but I’ve barely had the energy to unpack the CSA box (good thing I have Duck and Farm Princess), much less photograph it and blog it. 

But really I think the thing I was too tired to do was write this intro post, letting you know about the new CSA and giving you the skinny on how it was the same and different from other CSAs, how the quality is, and so on. But now it’s done, and we can move forward!  So, without further ado, I give you the contents of this week’s box! (I’ll also be going backwards in time and inserting some box contents info on the appropriate dates in the blog, just so folks have a record they can consult if they are researching CSAs.) 

Week of July 29th:

Green grapes
Cherries
Krimson pears
Globe eggplant
Summer squash
Heirloom tomatoes
Cherry tomatoes
Cucumber
Lemon cucumbers
Basil
Yellow onions
Nantes carrots
Gypsy peppers (we thought we asked them to exclude all peppers, but it turns out we only checked off “bell”)

These are the contents of the FFTY “regular box.” They offer about a billion sizes, different proportions of fruit and veggies, and you can even choose to get the regular, mostly-local selection or opt to only receive produce grown in the Capay Valley.

Spearmint and yellow nectarines ~ Week of July 22nd

This week’s box was a fruit salad-lover’s dream, with three kinds of fruit and a delicious bunch of mint. Too bad no one here but me likes fruit salad… We used the mint in a lentil salad instead.

Cherries (1 lb)
Cameo apples (2 lb) (these look gorgeous but their taste & texture is not so great)
Yellow nectarines (4)
Globe eggplant (1 big one)
Yellow squash (1 lb) (the kind that is shaped like zucchini – possibly is zucchini?)
Gypsy peppers (.5 lb) (because we keep thinking they got our request for no peppers, but apparently it hasn’t gone through)
Broccoli (1 crown)
Heirloom tomatoes (2 lbs)
Cucumbers (1 big one)
Spearmint (1 bunch)
Nantes carrots (1 bunch)
Yellow onions (1 lb)

One thing I really, really like about FFTY is that they keep those yellow onions coming. They are such a staple, and if memory serves, Eatwell didn’t cure onions and only sent them fresh and in season. That was a nice thought, but we were always having to run to the store for more onions!

White corn and red onions ~ Week of June 24th

Sorry I don’t have a picture for you. I know it’s so much nicer with pictures! I’ll give amounts, though, so you still have some idea of how much was in the box.

Here’s what came in our box this week:

Blueberries (6 oz.)
Apricots (1 lb.) (these were pretty bad)
Yellow peaches (6)
Broccoli (1 lb)
White corn (3 ears)
Pattypan squash (1.5 lb)
Red lead lettuce (1 large head)
Basil (1 bunch)
Carrots (1 small bunch)
Red onions (1 lb)
Fingerling potatoes (1 lb)

Strawberries and Rhubarb ~ Week of April 29th

This was the first week of our Farm Fresh to You CSA. For loads of info about the CSA and how it compares with the others we’ve tried, check out this post.

We started out getting a small box, but switched to a “regular” one after just a couple of weeks. The small box just didn’t have enough veggies to get us through the week. The regular size seems to work well, even with the addition of Farm Princess to the household, although we of course supplement with additional veggies (and sometimes fruit) throughout the week.

Strawberries
Rhubarb
Red leaf lettuce
Apples
Nantes carrots
Zucchini
Broccoli

Simple inspiration for a vegan, gluten-free Menu Plan Monday

At last I return, with another week of retroactive menu planning! Putting together this week’s menu plan was a bit of a triumph. I have chronic fatigue syndrome, which means I am very, very tired. Quite often I am can’t-get-out-of-bed tired, which means lots of delivery and take-out and burritos from the place down the street.

The reason I participate in Menu Plan Monday is because I love to get inspiration from other people’s menus, so I want to offer my own inspiration and ideas in turn. I am one of the few people creating menu plans that are vegetarian (mostly vegan) and gluten-free, as well. What this all means is that usually my “weekly” menu plan is a compression of several week’s worth of meals, since my actual week looks more like: cook something, eat leftovers, get delivery, go to bed without dinner, cook something, eat leftovers/get delivery, go out to eat.

But not this week, kiddos! This week was an awesome week full of easy-to-make food with plenty of fresh veggies and fruit for dessert. This week I ate out three times less than before.

Here are the dishes that kept the home fires burning:

Monday:
Tangy red lentils (this recipe sounds so unassuming but it is AMAZING)
Steamed brussels sprouts with Hollyhock dressing*
Sweet potato fries (from TJs) with vegan wasabi mayo
Red quinoa

Tuesday:
Roasted parsnips and carrots
Steamed kale and beet greens with kale sauce
Deborah Madison tofu
Brown rice

Wednesday:
Tinkyada brown rice spiral pasta with baby broccoli and white beans sauteed in fresh rosemary and garlic (a distant relative to Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Suppers, p.187)

Thursday:
I am DIY Rice Bowl with black Chinese “forbidden” rice, avocado, kale, scallions, nori and sesame seeds

Friday:
Sweet potato and kale soup (from freezer)
GF toast with olive and pine nut spread (Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home, p.49)

Saturday:
Stir-fried baby bok choy with hijiki (MRCH, p.89)
Broiled marinated tofu (MRCH, p.261)
Brown rice

Sunday:
Spanish stew with chick peas, potatoes, and artichoke hearts
Red chard with pine nuts and raisins

*(Duck used to make this dressing all the time when he was a cook at the meditation retreat center where we used to live)

You can find a bazillion more great menu plans over at Organizing Junkie. This week Asparagus Thin is hosting the delicious Gluten-Free Menu Swap, with the theme umami. There is umami all over this menu! The original umami research began as an investigation of kombu, a kind of seaweed that infuses the Tangy Red Lentil recipe with absolutely no seaweed or fishy flavor but plenty of savory deliciousness. There’s also nori (another umami heavy-hitter) on the rice bowl and hijiki with the baby bok choy. Add to that nutritional yeast in the Hollyhock dressing, balsamic vinegar in the kale sauce, soy sauce in the rice bowl dressing and the tofu marinade, sweet potato fries and yellow potatoes in the Spanish stew, and this week’s menu is an umami explosion! I also find that broiling and roasting are two cooking methods that bring out that savory, “meaty” umami flavor, and both found their way into this week’s cooking.

Read on after the break for more about how I avoided eating out ALL WEEK! and download my what-to-cook-when-the-fridge-looks empty spreadsheet to tape to the fridge!

Tangerines and Baby Bok Choy: Week of February 19th

In case you haven’t heard (or read, I guess), I’ve started up with a new CSA. It’s called Eating with the Seasons and it uses a very different model from Eatwell Farms, my previous CSA. For a comparison (and something of a review) of the two CSAs, check out this post. If you’re here to read about what came in my box this week, you’re in the right place.

This week’s box had:

Mixed apples (Fuji, Pinata, Pippin) (6 small)
Minneola tangerines (4)
Red chard
White cauliflower
Baby bok choy (2 adolescent bunches)
Yukon potatoes (1.5 lbs)
Red cabbage
Lacinato kale

Brussels Sprouts and Baby Broccoli – Week of February 12th

We picked up our first box from Eating with the Seasons today! It wasn’t actually a box – it was a brown paper grocery bag with my name on a label. Unlike Eatwell, which packed identical boxes and you could just pick up any which one, each bag from Eating with the Seasons is customized to each person. This alternative model is part of what attracted me to try out this new CSA.

With Eatwell the summer was a grind of tomatoes that would rot before we could use them and tasteless, mealy fruit. After that ended, I just couldn’t face another season of turnips which I hate and lettuce which I never have the energy to wash, dry, and dress. I’m very, very tired these days, which means Duck is doing a lot more of the cooking and when I cook I don’t necessarily want to get creative, I want to get us fed. So it made sense to try out a CSA that let us order nothing but kale for a week if that’s what we felt like we needed and/or could handle.

On the other hand, with the Eating with the Seasons model, I am giving up a lot of what I loved about the CSA idea in the first place. I have a comparison of the two models, below.

Basic Model:
Eatwell – Nearly all the produce for the Eatwell CSA is grown on the Eatwell farm in Dixon, CA (66 miles from SF). The farmer-owner, Nigel, has talked about how challenging it is for them to always grow enough variety that our boxes stay interesting and varied year-round but they do a decent job of this. Occasionally they will supplement with something exciting (usually fruit) from another farm with to give even more variety. Eatwell has only one size of box for one set price. Each subscriber goes to a location near them to pick up their box, and all the boxes are interchangeable.

Eating with the Seasons – EWTS has a very different model. Their slogan is “Bringing the farmer’s market to you!” They started as a strawberry farm, and I think this is the only thing grown on their own farm. They provide produce from many other farms, most about 90 miles away but several in Southern California (400 or more miles from SF). A subscriber chooses from four different sizes: 6, 8, 12, or 16 weekly “items.” Each week you visit the EWTS site and see the list of what’s available that week. There is an online order form where you choose which things from the list you want as your “items.” One item could be a bunch of kale, or it could be 4-6 apples. A pound of brussels sprouts is equivalent to two items. There seem to be about 30+ items on each weekly list, with a great variety from greens and lettuces to other veggies, herbs, fruits, potatoes, onions, etc. Like Eatwell, you pick up your customized bag at a location near you. (You can also order additional things when you choose your CSA order – honey, olive oil, spices, jam, granola, and more, from local farms. For these you pay for each thing as you order it.)

Cost:
Eatwell – One Eatwell box costs $27. If you pay in advance for multiple boxes, there is a discount (13 for the price of 12).

EWTS – The size I am getting (Small – 8 items) is $22. To see the other prices, visit the EWTS site. There is a 3% discount if you get an annual membership. I’m not sure if you pay for this completely in advance or if you commit to a monthly fee.

Quality:
In general I found the quality of produce from Eatwell to be very high, despite my summertime gripes. In my limited sample size so far the EWTS quality has also been very good.

Abundance:
To see what came in my Eatwell box last February, check out my February records. It seemed like I would generally get around 10 or 11 items, which seems equivalent to EWTS, as the cost of an Eatwell box is between the cost of the 8- and 12-item bags.

Variety:
Eatwell – With the exception of the summer, there was always pretty good variety in my Eatwell boxes. You can review an entire year of box contents, with photographs for many of them. I know the constant flood of lettuce that so plagued me was a response to subscriber requests, and in general they seemed open to listening to what people wanted, giving us different spinach varieties to taste-test and compare, and so on.

EWTS – Obviously variety is the main point of the EWTS CSA. Each week there are around 30 or more items to choose from, and you can also choose multiples of one item, which would be helpful for planning a party or big dinner or just if you are craving something in particular.

Local & Seasonal:
Eatwell: Eatwell Farm is located in Dixon, CA, about 66 miles from where I live in San Francisco. This is well within the locavore definition of “local,” which I’ve seen as within 100, 150, or 200 miles of where you live. The produce follows the same seasons I do, and when they get flooded out with rains, I’m feeling the same storms here. The farm has seasonal farm-visit days that helped me to really connect with where my food came from and who was growing it for me.

EWTS: Most of the produce on the list seems to come from farms in Watsonville and San Juan Bautista, which are both around 90 miles from here. There is also a fair amount of produce from places which are between 160 and 400+ miles from here. The items from Southern California are marked as such on the list, so it would be easy to avoid them, but it’s hard to hold back when I’m craving juicy fruit and there’s a list with all this citrus on it and all of it comes from SoCal. Also, with produce coming from so many different farms to the central EWTS clearinghouse and then to my drop-off point, the carbon footprint is significantly higher in this model even if I only ordered produce from the more local farms on the list.

Newsletter:
Eatwell – This was my favorite part of the Eatwell CSA. Each week our boxes would come with a newsletter. The newsletter described what was in our box, with storage tips and cooking hints for each item. It also contained recipes using ingredients that came in the box, as well as news and pictures from the farm. I loved the recipes, appreciated the storage tips, and was fascinated by the farm news.

EWTS – No newsletter. Obviously with the customized boxes it would be impossible to have a newsletter with recipes that pertained to the produce, since everyone is getting something different. And the time that would go into a newsletter must be going into the arduous task of sorting and collating all those unique bags of produce. But I’m really sad about this! I miss the sense of community and connection and fun the newsletter brought. Without the newsletter and the produce that all comes from one farm where you start to know over time the people growing it, this is less a CSA and more a local, seasonal grocery delivery service that doesn’t even deliver to your home. “Bringing the farmer’s market to you,” indeed! The produce even comes with those big plastic tags on it that I associate exclusively with buying things at the supermarket.

Community Supported Agriculture:
Eatwell – This is community supported agriculture at its finest. Subscriber gives farm money. Farm uses money to grow food. Food goes back to subscriber. Taking some of the burden of financial risk off the shoulders of the food growers is the whole point of community supported agriculture.

EWTS – I have no idea if my subscription is providing security for the farmers who are part of this CSA. That is between the EWTS folks and the farmers, not between me and the farmers. With such a large list to order from, I assume the farmer’s don’t even know what specific part of their harvest is spoken for until the orders come in. Also, as I mentioned in the Newsletter section, there isn’t an emotional feeling of community either. I’ve only been doing this for a couple of weeks, though, so perhaps that will develop more over time.

Convenience:
Eatwell – Eatwell has a very easy-to-use website and a very simple sign-up process, and they are generally responsive to phone and email questions. They have many locations in the Bay Area and the one I used was a few blocks from my house. On the other hand, most of the reason I had to stop getting their CSA was that it was no longer convenient for my lifestyle to get a random assortment of vegetables each week.

EWTS – Eating with the Seasons has an awful website that is very confusing to navigate and pretty unpleasant (due to layout) to read through. It seems like a site designed by non-web folks who are doing the best they can, and I admire that, especially because their site involves online order forms for several different pick-up days (which means different ordering days). The ordering process is confusing – there are different box sizes as well as different subscription levels and these aren’t shown clearly. They also don’t deliver year-round and it is confusing to try to figure out what’s happening with that, as well. On the other hand, being able to choose my own produce obviously overrides every other consideration for now. The pick-up location is far enough from my house that I drive there, but still much easier than going to the store. (I can double-park while I run up to grab my bag, for one thing!)

Getting produce from Eating with the Seasons is not really fulfilling my CSA fantasies, or assuaging my need to contribute more actively to my food production system. But Duck and I were getting pretty haphazard with our shopping and ending up eating out or eating totally veggie-free meals several times a week at minimum. So at least now we get to choose 8 nice things that will be part of our diet for the week. In the two weeks that we’ve been getting the EWTS CSA (it’s been two weeks now as I write this paragraph) I’ve eaten a total of 3 meals I didn’t prepare myself, compared to 9 in another typical pre-CSA 2-week period (that includes breakfast, lunch, and dinner as well as leftovers from eating out that served as meal). There are other factors at work, as well, but this is a huge victory for home eating, too.

Oh, and right: here’s what was in our first box. (Yeah, I know it was a bag, but it’s gonna be a hard habit to break. Or rather one I don’t have any motivation to break.)
Mixed apples (6)
Navel oranges (4)
Kale
Brussels sprouts (counts as 2)
Avocado (1 large, 1 small)
Beets w beet greens
Baby broccoli

Oh, okra…

Sticky, slimy, gooey, gummy – okra.

Our CSA farms like to push our boundaries and challenge our culinary repertoires with odd and unexpected vegetables, but I don’t think Eatwell ever dared to put okra, one of Northern America’s most reviled and misunderstood vegetables, in my box. But even though I never get it in my box, I get so excited every year when I finally spot okra at the farmer’s market. I don’t pretend to have mastered this challenging vegetable, one that seems to explode into snot-strings if you so much as look at it funny, but I do have one recipe that’s so delicious it keeps me dreaming of okra all year-round.

I’ve heard various techniques for dealing with okra’s challenges, from “never get it wet” to “never cut it – only cook it whole” to “just embrace the sliminess, haven’t you heard of gumbo?” But this magical recipe, straight from my beloved 5 Spices, 50 Dishes, breaks the first two rules and still in no way requires an enthusiasm for slime.

Relying firmly on the “everything tastes good fried” rule of cooking, this recipe for okra raita combines crisp, delicious rounds of pan-fried okra with smoky mustard seeds. The tadka, or spice mixture, is placed raw on top of the yogurt, and the delicate spices get cooked perfectly when you pour the hot oil from the mustard seeds right onto the yogurt. The okra is beautiful, making a flower-like shape when cut crosswise, and the colors of the cooked vegetable range from green to orange to brown.

I really debated whether or not to post this recipe, as I have already posted a few from this cookbook and I try to limit the recipes I post to “just a taste” from a given book. But I want folks to try okra, to not be intimidated by this delicious vegetable, so I am going to share this one. And I fervently hope that you will try this dish and be so blown away that you will run out immediately and buy 5 Spices, 50 Dishes, a terrific, solidly-written, Indian-made-simple (but fabulous) cookbook from which I have made nearly every vegetarian dish and whose recipes form a solid portion of our regular cooking repertoire.

The last box ~ Pumpkins & Grapes: Week of October 1st

Well, this is it, my friends. One full year has gone by since I began my CSA experiment. Today I picked up my last box, and a beautiful box it was. I still believe very much in the CSA model, and I hope that this isn’t the end of community supported agriculture in my life. But for now, this box, this farm, this system, isn’t working with my life. It was a hard summer from the box – fruit that was underripe or mushy and tasteless, watery tomatoes that rotted in a day, and Duck and I found ourselves groaning every week when it was time to go pick up our box, instead of being eager to see what new treats were in store. I know more of the vegetables and fruits that I love will be coming now that it’s fall, so the decision to stop getting a box wasn’t based on summer’s disappointments, but the disaffection I was feeling towards the box after this summer certainly made it easier to just not renew my subscription when it ran out this week.

A lot has changed in my life since last October. I don’t live alone anymore, for one thing, and a lot of the time and energy I once spent cooking new and wonderful things to use up unfamiliar or unloved ingredients goes instead towards building a home together and just being with the person I love. I’ve also gotten much, much more tired. I’ve mentioned on here in the past that I have chronic fatigue syndrome, and my energy level in the last few months has declined so greatly that I’ve had weeks where I barely get out of bed. This means more take-out, more cans of soup, and more Duck cooking. He’s a wonderful cook but the challenges and constraints of a CSA aren’t a pleasure for him the way they were for me, so it makes more sense to have him pick his own choice of ingredients from the farmer’s market.

I feel sad, and I feel guilty. Getting a CSA box and fully committing myself to this project gave me a taste of some things I value deeply: community, sustainability, drastically reduced waste and fuel consumption, a chance to honor more directly the great service of the folks who grow my food. It seems crazy to cut myself off from these benefits, just because it’s inconvenient or not as shiny and exciting as it used to be. On the other hand, I also deeply value taking care of myself, which means being realistic about my time and energy, and also preparing food that feels nourishing and energizing. Right now that seems to be leaning more towards the Japanese spectrum of cuisine (I feel a new project coming on!) so I want to respect that and see where it takes me.

Last week I took Duck to the Oakland Airport and on my way home I stopped at Berkeley Bowl. I spent a couple of hours in there, roaming the aisles and luxuriating in the produce section, buying daikon and lotus root and tender Japanese cucumbers. None of this was organic, and I have no idea where it was from or who grew it or how it got from farm to my cart. But I felt excited about cooking again for the first time in a while. I guess what I’m trying to articulate is that there’s a balance between all these factors and values and pleasures, and I am feeling my way along it, bit by bit. And I may swerve to one side or another as I go, but if I don’t let myself play on all sides of the line I won’t really find a grounded place to stand. I’ll just be rigidly holding myself in the spot I’ve intellectually decided is the “right” one.

I listen to these radio cooking programs and I’m aghast when people casually discuss eating imported Italian tomatoes or meat, cheese and eggs that must have been factory farmed, or talk about coffee without holding a bottom line of fair trade. I don’t understand how their passion for food can just totally trump their concerns for the environment and the welfare of people and animals. But on the other hand if I have to deal with another five bunches of turnips I swear I will throw up or shove them straight into the compost, because food without passion is just a grinding slouch towards bare sustenance. So I will keep walking the line, experimenting to find the balance, paying attention to this relationship I have with food, one of the most tender and passionate relationships I know, and seeing where it wants to take me.

Below are the contents of my final box. Because I’ve been so tired the past couple months I have many recipes I still want to try to post about, so I may be catching up on the backlog from previous boxes in the days to come. There’s another project brewing as well, though whether that will live here or in its own blog I have yet to decide. For all of you who joined me on my CSA adventure – I have loved getting to know you and sharing ideas with you, and I hope we can continue to share recipes, techniques, and philosophical musings for a long time to come!

Zucchini
Red bell peppers (I left these at the site for someone else)
Pumpkin (a small lovely one)
Romaine lettuce
Cherry tomatoes
Green tomatoes
Roma tomatoes
Crimson seedless grapes
Thyme
Basil
Tomatillos
Baby leeks