The Weekly Share

The HowStuffWorks site has a fun article revealing 10 Quirky Facts of Mass Produced Food.  To be fair it is not all bad.  Using seaweed extract to keep ice cream creamy sounds like an ingeneous idea, the benefits of frozen vs. fresh, and how Worcestershire is made were pretty interesting.  But then you have the sugar in your french fries, 50 chemicals to make something taste like a strawberry, and how they make things red (shudder).

I’ll take my locally harvested fresh strawberries any day.

Aside from the health benefits of having local, fresh produce in our diet, we joined the CSA hoping to lower our grocery bill for the summer and fall.  As I went through the produce department yesterday , filling out our fruit and veggie needs, I wrote down how much our share items would have cost if I had purchased them at the store.  Here are the results:

PRODUCE STORE PRICE SHARE COST (based on store price)

1 cucumber                                          2/$3.00                                            $1.50

1 yellow squash                                  2/$1.99                                            $1.00

1 zucchini                                              2/$1.99                                            $1.00

4 oz. salad mix                                    $6.99/lb.                                          $1.75

1 head lettuce                                      $2.99                                                $2.99

3 oz. spinach                                       $6.99/lb.                                           $1.31

2 oz. parsley                                       $1.29/pk (4 oz.?)                              $0.65

4 sprigs basil                                      $2.99/2 oz.                                       $1.50

4 garlic scapes                                   N/A                                                     priceless!

1 bunch green onions                     12/$2.00                                            $1.00

4 radishes + 1 turnip                        3-1lb. bags/$5.00                           $0.21

2 lbs. new potatoes                          $2.29 lb.                                            $4.58

TOTAL ………………………………………………………………………$17.48

We figured, based on the cost of joing the CSA divided by the number of share pick-ups, that our share was worth about $20 a week.  This week, our produce fell slightly short of that, BUT the grocery store produce was NOT organic OR, in most cases, local.  I’m guessing none of it had been freshly harvested that morning, either.    We also know that our share-size will double in the next few weeks.  I will continue to compare costs throughout the season.   I will also compare prices with Central Market -  and any other market I happen to get to.  How does your CSA cost compare to the grocery store?  To market?

Our shares are really growing now!  This week, we received:

1 cucumber
1 zephyr yellow squash
1 zucchini
4 oz. salad mix
1 head lettuce
3 oz. spinach
2 oz. parsley
4 sprigs basil
4 garlic scapes
1 bunch green onions
4 easter egg radishes
2 lbs. new potatoes

I used the spinach Tuesday night in Tortellini with Bacon, Greens, and Brown Butter (see 2nd pick-up post for recipe modifications).  Yum!  I had to add greens from our garden, too since we like extra greens in the recipe.  I plan to make parsley-buttered potatoes later this week, using the new potatoes and parsley from the share.  Dave has asked for Basil Chicken over Angel Hair Pasta (see post of same title for discussion) , so that will use the basil and garlic scapes.  Plus we’ll have fresh salads using just about everything else.  I think I’ll make zucchini bread using the zucchini and yellow squash.  I’ll take pictures as I go this week…  I didn’t take pictures Tuesday night – we were too hungry!  And now it’s all gone!

I went to the grocery store on Wednesday for the rest of our pantry needs.  I will follow up with how our share matches up with the grocery store produce section.

OK, the grilled squash did not go over well at dinner last week.  The comments were:  “Yuck!”,  “It’s kinda slimy in the back of my throat…”, and “I don’t really like it.”  I thought the taste was good, but the texture was too soft.  Can anyone give me some recipes?

Here’s how I made the squash:

Squash marinating in italion dressing

I sliced in into 1/4″ planks, marinated it in my favorite dressing for 5 hours (I marinated chicken breasts in the same dressing).  Then I grilled the planks over direct medium heat for 5 minutes a side.  Here is the end result:

marinated chicken and squash

Looks good, but…  (The chicken was really good, just not the squash)

Help, please!  I’m sure I’ll get more squash this afternoon!

My Mother-in-law and I struck out at the pick-your-own cherry orchard at Cherry Hill Orchards yesterday.  All of the rain has caused many of the cherries to rot on the trees.  The cherries that were not rotten or split were either squishy or sour.    It was so sad to see all of those lovely fruits rotting away (OK – it was a little gross, too!).  The gentleman I spoke with at the weigh-in booth said that the harvest season is really only a few days long, so there is no chance of the crop “coming back.” There were still many unripe cherries on the trees, so I will head back out later this week to see if a few days of sunshine can help the last round of cherries.

I forgot to take my camera, but trust me, you do not want to see what a tree full of rotting cherries looks like.  It will make you cry!

We came home with less than a pound of cherries to split between us – here is my take:

So sad!

We’ve had great luck at Cherry Hill Orchards for all kinds of fruit: cherries, peaches, nectarines, apples.  The last 2 years have been great for cherries.  I think we brought home 19 pounds of cherries the 1st year we did it (note to self: that is A LOT of cherries!).  So this is not a good “cherry” year, but nectarines and peaches are right around the corner!  Yay!

Do you go to a PYO farm?  What do you pick?  What was your best crop ever?

I went to Myers Pick-Your-Own Strawberry Farm on Tuesday and came home with 4 quarts of beautiful red berries!  YUM!

4 quarts of strawberries from Myers PYO Berry Farm

The kids and I went there last week and picked 5 quarts of berries.  I’d blog about those berries…but they’re all gone!    Anyway, today I processed the berries.  I washed, hulled, and sorted them.  The nicest berries were dried, then placed on a waxed-paper covered cookie sheet.

Hulled strawberries ready for the freezer

They are currently in the freezer.  When they are partially frozen, I will vacuum-seal them into a bag with lots of extra “bag” on top so I can open the bag, take out what I need, then reseal the bag.  The rest of the strawberries were quartered and sprinkled with turbinado sugar.

Sliced strawberries with turbinado sugar

They are currently in the refrigerator waiting for me to decide what to do with them!  I will probably freeze some, maybe puree some – and I know we will EAT some!

Strawberry-picking season is just about over.  Mr. Myers said he’d only be open a few more days.  The season is only a few weeks long, from the end of May until mid-June.  Mr. Myers said that they had twice as many customers this year than in previous years.  He believes the increase is due to people wanting to save money any way they can these days.  You can spend a hour picking strawberries and pay $1.50 a quart for a product that is so much better than anything in the stores AND you know exactly where it came from, or you can go to a grocery store and pay $2.99 for a quart of  inferior, unripe strawberry imposters!  Pick-You-Own farms support local agriculture in the same way as CSA’s.  Small farms, local produce, better prices = improved economy!

For a pick-your-own farm near you, check out http://pickyourown.org

It was thin picking on Tuesday.  It took me over an hour to get 4 quarts.  But now we can have “fresh” strawberries for the rest of the year… or at least until we eat them all! 

What do you do with fresh strawberries?

I picked up our second share of the 2009 season on Tuesday, June 16th.  We received:

• 1 zepher yellow squash
• 1 head lettuce
• 4.5 oz. Salad mix
• 4.5 oz. Spinach
• 8 oz. snap peas
• 4 radishes
• 1 bunch green onions
• 2 garlic scapes

I love having all of the fresh greens available again! Tonight, we finished off the lettuce from last week as a salad. I still have some arugula from last week that I will saute with garlic tomorrow for lunch. I think I might be the only family member who likes it . Usually I don’t like “hot” or “peppery” greens, but I think the arugula is great! Dave can have all of the green onions, though!

I think I will grill the squash this week. I plan to slice it lengthwise into ¼ inch planks, marinate in italian dressing, then grill it to carmelize the marinade. How do YOU cook squash? I’d love some ideas because I know this ONE squash is just the tip of the squash iceberg coming this summer! We had zucchini coming out our ears last summer. I have a great zucchini bread recipe( see “Z-Word” post) – but there is only so much of it one can eat… I shredded and froze some of last year’s zucchini. I guess I should use that soon, huh? I had planned to make zucchini bread at Christmas time for gifts, but it never happened. I’ll remember this year though – it’s already on my calendar!

Here is my favorite greens recipe. My whole family loves it. My boys even tell me to put MORE spinach in it – how can a mom say no to that ?!  Plus they want more bacon, too – you give a little to get a little, I suppose! Give it a try and tell me what you think…

Tortellini with Bacon, Greens, and Brown Butter

From Real Simple Magazine, May 2007

hands-on time: 15 minutes total time: 30 minutes serves 4

• 1 pound cheese or meat tortellini
• 4 oz. Sliced bacon *My family likes MORE!*
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter *We find 4 tablespoons to be plenty of butter*
• 2 cups arugula (OR spinach OR basil OR watercress) *My family likes spinach – and MORE of it!*
• ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper

With the second week’s share we found ourselves with some ingredients we don’t normally keep around the house. Namely, fresh basil and garlic scapes. Using one of our favorite websites, AllRecipes.com, my wife found the recipe for Basil Chicken over Angel Hair.  She made this for dinner last night and I thought the recipe was delicious.  Using the garlic scapes in place of a clove was a great way to change it up.  The scapes have the taste of garlic but without so much of the garlic ‘heat’.  Thus the garlic flavor, while there,  doesn’t overpower the flavors of the other ingredients and as a whole the final result was savory.

Besides the fresh basil and garlic cloves, the recipe also calls for tomato and onion.  We had already used the most of the tomatoes and onions so we had to go with store bought, but had we planned ahead we could have made use of four different share items in one recipe.

For us the garlic scape was a new food and we asked the basic questions of what is it and how do you use it?  Here are a few interesting links about the garlic scape:

Once unused, garlic scapes a delicacy

Garlic Scape Pesto

Seems like June is best month for scapes and with any luck we’ll get some more in the next share.  The pesto recipe sounds good.