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Change.orgCSA Week Three: Beets and the Great Kale Race
Okay, how much kale can one person eat?
I have nothing against kale; it’s just not the first thing I grab in the fridge. The CSA newsletter this week was pretty kale-focused, admitting that “there is a slightly unusual presentation of kale in the box” (I assume they’re referring to the big chunk of kale on the stem instead of just getting the leaves) and offering up a blog called 365 Days of Kale. I guess that answers how much kale one person can eat. More power to the blogger, but that’s probably about 300 days of kale more than I can handle.
I had a backlog of last week’s curly kale in the fridge and there was more regular kale this week. With Russian kale on the list for tomorrow’s box o’ veggies, you can probably guess what dinner was tonight. Kale. Okay, not just kale, I threw in the beet greens, garlic scapes, olive oil and pasta. (Ingredient Count: 5)
This week’s share, in addition to kale: cabbage, rainbow chard, scallions, lettuce, romaine, beets, garlic scapes, arugula, radishes.
Find of the Week: Whole Foods has these awesome salad shakers. I don’t know about you, but I love salad with a lot of stuff on it – different veggies, grains, nuts, olives, whatever. I’m into everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-or-meat salads, but obviously, unless I hit up a salad bar, creating one of those concoctions exceeds my internal ingredient limit. That’s why Whole Foods salad shakers rock my world – one cup with half a dozen pre-chopped ingredients, plus dressing. They’re pretty good on their own, and they add a whole new level of excitement to CSA greens and cabbage.
The last two big accomplishments of Week #3:
1) Thanks to a Mom-internet tag-team, I successfully roasted raw beets. But the real accomplishment? I did so without tie-dyeing my clothing or making my kitchen look like a crime scene.
2) There was more bartering of HBO for cooked veggies. What can I say? I put the “share” in CSA-sharing. And there’s a good chance this will be an ongoing deal. Makes this whole CSA thing a lot more palatable (literally and figuratively).
Photo credit: Darwin Bell
Posted in random thoughts | 2 Comments »
July 10th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
Had to stop by when I saw your tweet – it’s the one reason I won’t sign up for the $750 CSA – I’m darn picky and I would be upset with a ton of kale, most of which I would use in one of my dogfood recipes:/ I’ll stick with the farmer’s market, even though I will likely spend as much and get less. But it’ll be of my choosing.
July 11th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
That’s definitely one of the risks of going with the CSA grab bag.
But the nice thing about sharing it with friends is that I can get the weekly fresh veggies, but without getting totally overwhelmed by, say, pounds of kale. (And also scallions … if I had the full share of scallions to myself, I’d have enough to start weaving floor mats out of it!)