We’re subscribing–I think that’s the word?–to a Community Shared Agriculture program this summer. We’ve decided to go with only once every two weeks, since last year we got a weekly box of produce, and it got a bit overwhelming.
(Kale. I had no idea there could be so much kale. And I pretty much gave up on hand-carrying things back from the pickup point after they started giving us watermelons.)
We got the box last week. Wednesday, I made a concerted effort to use up as much as possible, and made a dinner of garden salad, oil-citrus-garlic dressing, roasted asparagus with Parmesan cheese, and rhubarb crumble. This only used up half a cucumber, the mixed package of spring greens (five plants and seven herbs!), all the rhubarb, and some of the asparagus. (I mean, it used up more, but I’m strictly discussing things which came in the produce box.) There was enough salad for a second meal since then, and we’ve also used up the tomato.
This leaves us with
- half a cucumber
- Lebanese cucumbers
- beets and radishes (I suspect I will make these into the backbone of a lunch at some point)
- spinach
- arugula
- a yellow pepper
- two more asparagus bundles
- a squeezy-bear of fresh honey
- some of a dozen eggs (we hardboiled some right away)
- a beeswax tealight
Pretty sure we can get through that before the next box comes in. (Maybe not the honey, but honey keeps.) And having them around does make it a lot easier to eat well. It’s kind of like the fridge is gently nagging me to empty it, like a cute little inversion of “feed me, Seymour.”