CSA Week 1

I have been away for a few months, and I am sorry about that. My laptop has taken a dive and I have yet to replace it - don't really need one with an iPad and iPhone and work computer, etc. But it does make blogging a bit difficult. Well, since the CSA has started again, I will try to be better about posting more often - don't feel like you all are the only ones being ignored, the spice challenge didn't work out too well either. Will try to incorporate more spices in my CSA this time around...

I started with a different CSA this year - this one is from Fertile Grounds (http://fertilegroundscsa.com/). They start the season off earlier than my last CSA and they have pick ups right up the street from the clinic I volunteer at on my volunteer days, match made in heaven! They don't do half shares, so I am sharing a full share with a co-worker.

What's in the box this week:
spring mix
easter egg radish
rhubarb
green garlic
green garlic pesto

The CSA was nice enough to send notice of what they were stocking in the box, so I was planning on making green garlic pesto, but since that was included in the box (and I'm still working on my batches of pesto from last summer), I decided to make green garlic butter. I had 3 stalks of green garlic, so ended up tripling a recipe I found from the New York Times. Most of it was put in the freezer and I am planning to use it on a shrimp pasta later this week, but it is just wonderful on warm bread and in eggs!! http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017437-green-garlic-toast

The pesto was incorporated into a salad dressing for the greens and radishes (oil, red wine vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper, agave). I also added it to my morning eggs before I made the green garlic butter. Green garlic is baby garlic - when the farmer plants all the garlic in the winter, they are not totally sure what will and will not come up in the spring, so they over plant. Then they need to thin out the beds and thus, you get green garlic. It looks a lot like a green or spring onion but garlicy.

I'm a huge fan of rhubarb. I was so excited about spring that I made a big batch of strawberry rhubarb sauce 2 weeks ago when the rhubarb started showing up at my local farm stand, so this time around I wanted to try something different and I found a recipe for pickled rhubarb. Not quite sure how I'm going to use it now that it is pickled - it may just be eaten alone or incorporated into my salads. http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/05/quick-pickled-rhubarb-lemongrass-ginger-recipe.html