First CSA delivery

Last Friday was my first Community Supported Agriculture delivery at Madison school in Redondo Beach. Bad Mom invited me to participate. Her daughter attends the school and the PTA gets $5 for each box that they sell. My son's school just has an incessant stream of the standard fundraisers (I've donated or been responsible for collecting donations at his school to the tune of well over $100 this year, so I don't feel disloyal.) Cost for the CSA is $50 per month, with two boxes delivered during that time. That's $20 per box street value, which is probably about right based on prices at the farmer's market.

I jumped at the chance to try it out because I've not been able to get to the farmer's market recently, I wanted the challenge of a box of surprise organic fresh ingredients and perhaps some new vegetables, my previous efforts to find a CSA in the South Bay area demanded longer commutes and longer commitments without the ability to try it out first.

Lisa S., who is organizing the pickups, even sent an email to remind me the day of pickup:

Don’t forget to pick up your produce today! It is in Room 21 at CDC. It looks very nice this week- cilantro, lettuce, spinach, potatoes, apples, carrots, radishes, and strawberries. Please let me know what you think when you get it – our only worry is that the lettuce doesn’t wilt before you pick it up later in the day, so I’m eager to hear what you think when you see it. If you have any issues let me know – since this is our first delivery.

Thanks!

Lisa

I too was concerned that my veggies had suffered from being at room temperature most of the day but when I arrived the most susceptible ones, leafy greens, weren't wilted much at all.

We baked the potatoes that night and had a spinach salad with hot dressing. The spinach was particularly succulent.

I used some cilantro last night in a fresh fruit salsa = diced apples + cilantro + orange + peppers of some sort (I've used chipotle in the past but something else last night)

Strawberries were dipped in chocolate and eaten over two nights. Houston, Juli, and I shared a box last night. One of the two onions was roasted last night at dinner as well.

I like the culinary exercise of getting a box of something unexpected and then seeing how you can stitch it together.

We're not huge fans of radishes, so we've been slow to eat those. I'm thinking that they might go well diced in the fruit salsa. We had some thinly sliced with vinegar as a side dish and found that they are quite mild tasting - I don't know if I would bother with them if they were too harsh.