My friend Micki works at a CSA near Columbia, and thanks to her connections, four of us decided to go in on a share of fruit, veggies, and EGGS! (Yes, I actually went up to the farm and met the chickens and confirmed that they were happy and ACTUALLY free range, so I don't have qualms about breaking my veganity for these specific eggs.)
I've been getting the food for about five weeks now, and it's a pretty interesting haul. Although I have to confess that Ari, the cook of the household, gets much more excited about it than me.
For fruit, which has been mighty tasty, we have gotten:
- blueberries (The best)
- strawberries (small and super sweet)
- rhubarb (Ari made rhubarb muffins out of the stalks. The muffins were essentially cinnamon muffins but with rhubarb bits. Very tasty)
For veggies, we have gotten:
- radishes
- 1 whole beet (more to come, I believe)
- carrots (only 3 carrots, actually, once we divided up the share)
- epazote (interesting green; apparently it reduces gas after eating beans)
- LOTS of varieties of lettuce
- rue (which is apparently toxic in large quantities and can give you blisters...we decided not to eat it)
- purslane (kind of tastes sour, but good in small quantities in salad)
- mint
- cilantro
- chives
- green onions
Ari loves to make salad dressings from scratch, so when we get a lot of greens, we generally just make a huge salad, which is kind of awesome. I usually feel very healthy afterward!
This scene looked a lot prettier on my kitchen table (the colors didn't really come through), but I did the uncreative (yet delicious) thing and put all the veggies in an awesome salad (adding a few grocery-bought veggies such as tomatoes and avocado). And I'm saving the corn for dinner tonight.