The CSA is gradually picking up. There was enough this week that Himself declared that, if I'm not with him next week, he may take the cart.

• Multiple heads of lettuce.
  
• Chard and spinach and bok choy, rather than a choice.
  
• More radishes and a nice big bunch of dill.
  
• And, as the fruit share still hasn't started, a throw in of strawberries. (I think I mentioned that we didn't get the fruit share, as we don't really eat much fruit. We'll just supplement from Greenmarket.)

We have, as usual, eaten greens and salads throughout the week. But last night I experimented. I have a recipe from The Tassejara Recipe Book for spinach with strawberries, and tried it. Very interesting - favorably so. We decided that, while I won't make it often, it's something we'll want that two or three times a year - in June, with fresh spinach and the fresh, local, slightly tart strawberries. I personally don't think it would work as well with with the big, sweet, bland supermarket berries.

Then, I used the dill and a mix of sour cream and yogurt to make a dill sauce for catfish (non-local and farmed) and mashed potatoes. Quite nice. And the spinach and berries made a nice splash of color on the plate, next to the white fish/potato/sauce combination.

Second CSA week.

2 kinds of lettuce - larger heads, so much the same amount as last week.

Green garlic - more mature, and this has a scape. I've been reading about scapes, and can't wait to try cooking this.

Spinach and kale. Our half share gives us a choice, and we keep choosing the Not Cilantro, as I dislike it. One of these days I'll get some for Rich, and, I don't know, freeze some or something.

Some more radishes.

We've been having a heat wave, and our dinner was essentially a repeat of last night's. I'd gotten some chicken at Greenmarket the other day, cooked it overnight in the slow cooker to avoid heating the kitchen. We've been eating it in salads ever since. Chicken and (not local) feta cheese over a salad combination of lettuce, snap peas, and radish, with salad dressing I made (of non-local olive oil, vinegar, and Dijon mustard.) Potato salad on the side, and iced tea, both of which I'd also made yesterday. It was rather nice, after a long, hot, unairconditioned work day, to just assemble, rather than cook, our dinner.

The Greenmarket in our immediate neighborhood has now opened for the season. They have a nice variety of vendors, and are well timed if we run out of CSA produce. Right now, as well as the above, I have some bok choy I got last week, along with asparagus and snap peas (our CSA doesn't seem to really do the spring vegetables so much.) Strawberries, also.

Local Food!

We just came back from our very first ever CSA pickup.

Now, around here, local farmers are mostly North of here, in New York State, a couple of zones colder than we are. And it was a very cool May. We had a Meet the Farmer gathering two weeks ago, at which she warned us that they were planting late, as there'd been an unusually late frost, so things would be a bit slim, to begin with.

So - for our half share, we got a nice bunch of spinach, a good amount of lettuce (three varieties,) one green garlic stalk, some radishes, and two apples. The apples were a freebie - we did not join in a fruit share, but these were tossed into the vegetable share.

I know there will be more later... this is still early, around here. I have seen a few things, though, suggesting that we would have done better with a full share.

Most CSAs seem to define a share as enough for a family, frequently defined (for the estimate) as 2 adults and 2 children. This one was very vague about how many people one might feed, so I decided to err on the side of too little. A lot of the people seem to be single, though, and there seem to be many full shares of couples. We'll see what we get!

Meanwhile, we'll eat spinach tonight. I'll cook some of the garlic with our lentils, along with onion and a smoked turkey leg I'd gotten at Greenmarket. And I've already washed the lettuce, and it's hanging in a basket over the sink, drying. That, with the radishes and perhaps some of the spinach, will be the basis of my lunches this week, with enough for some dinner salads, too.

It's a start.