CSA Week 1

Hello Everyone! I hope your week is going well! Brandon and I are still just waiting for our little girl to get here! She’s running a little behind in terms of due date, but no big deal. It is easy to get stressed about the precise time and date when the rest of our lives are run by the calendar, clock, and schedules. When it comes to babies, I am already learning we have to let go of control and just go with the flow. She will get here when she gets here, and although we are excited,  I am perfectly ok with giving her a little more time.

Now, baby news definitely would have trumped everything in terms of excitement this week…but I can’t contain my excitement over our first CSA box either! (Is it terrible to say that I am glad we weren’t in the hospital and forced to miss out on a week of this beautiful produce?) Yes, I am a big food nerd. Obviously, or why would I have a food blog in the first place?

If you aren’t familiar with the term CSA it stands for Community Supported Agriculture. We paid a one-time fee for the season to a local farm and in return they provide us with a share of their fresh, local crops on a weekly basis from June through October. Our CSA is through Brown Family Farm in Big Lake, Minnesota. You can learn more about them by clicking here. CSA shares come in half or full shares, depending on how much produce you want or can consume in a week. We are splitting a full share with another couple.

Our share this week contained: radishes, rhubarb, strawberries, butter crunch lettuce, garlic scapes, snow peas, and chives.

With the CSA share it is important to clean everything and get a game plan right away. This produce doesn’t last as long as what you buy in the store because it is not treated with anything or coated with waxes. I will give you an idea of what I have done so far to utilize our produce.

Dinner the night we got our share.

Strawberry Pesto Caprese Salad from the blog Heartbeet Kitchen. Recipe here.

Raspberry Rhubarb Crumble Bars from Heartbeet Kitchen. Recipe here. You can tell I love the blog Heartbeet Kitchen, right? She is a fellow Minnesotan and does tons of healthy, gluten free, seasonal recipes so her page is perfect for using up local produce! Instead of raspberries I used strawberries for this recipe.

I am undecided on what else I will make this week. We got a ton of radishes so I may make my Garlic Roasted Radishes. Be sure to check them out!

Do you belong to a CSA? Do you prefer to shop the local farmers market? Stay tuned for more CSA updates!

XO,

Jess