How to Select a Veggie CSA for the summer growing season

Buying a CSA allows your farmer to start planting for you!

So you've been hearing all of the Blah blah blah blah blah about trying to eat locally and supporting your local farmer?
If the price is right and the service is convenient enough, you can do it too. Here are some things to think about:
1. Amount of food you'll get vs. how much cooking you will actually do. If their growing season is terrific, you could get totally overwhelmed and might need to find someone to share 12 ears of corn with.
2. Whether you care if food is grown organically or isn't certified but uses integrated pest mgnmt. (you'll get less stuff each week for same money if it's certified organic.)
3. Of course, how much it'll cost. Total for whole season and equivalent value per week.
4. If pickup time and sites are within reasonable proximity to house or work...
5. Whether the veggies you get will be familiar to you, like its easy to figure out how to cook the summer squash and white corn, but are you willing to figure out how to cook amaranth greens?

From that list, I prefer to join a CSA because I want to save money, (I cut my grocery shopping bill by 2/3rds last summer and fall by buying a CSA season up front. ) I prefer to eat food that actually tastes like it should because it's in season, and, I am open to trying new vegetables that I wouldn't buy normally. I also bought a CSA is that they are providing a service for me, the eater, and sparing me the annoyance of buying non tasty food at a grocery store. Or spending $50 at a farmers market because I lost my mind!

Pumpkin Seeds!

I brought this recipe to work one day and they were GONE by the end of the day. So I made another batch:
Ingredients
3 cups pumpkin seeds
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 tablespoons chipotle chili powder
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon liquid smoke
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon BBQ 3000 from Penzeys spices
2 teaspoons sugar
1 ½ tablespoons butter

Directions
Boil hot water-
Pour over all ingredients- stir with a fork to melt down the butter/emulsify.
Toss in pumpkin seeds- constantly stirring until some liquid is absorbed.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Spread evenly on a baking sheet and bake for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring once.- watch for burning!
Let cool and store in an airtight container.

Basically, I pretended pumpkin seeds are meat, and I marinated them in meat seasonings. Which makes them taste crazy addicting. I think my coworkers are looking for me to make a sweet/glazed version next, and it looks like they'll even eat the burned ones...

Oyster Pancakes, mom's recipe

My parents go oyster fishing regularly in the Hood Canal in Washington State, and one of the extra special recipes my mom makes is oyster pancakes, and this year, she has really perfected them.(Every few months my mom focuses in on a recipe and makes it over and over and over again. She made oyster pancakes 3 times in one week.)

They are a Taiwanese specialty, made w/chives, oysters, yam starch and eggs, basically, and my mom has achieved the perfect proportions of egginess, starchy gloppines, and oyster blobbiness to make the sooo delicious, soft and perfect, they don't need the sweet gooey sauce you usually make with them.

We ate oyster pancakes w/some corn, beets and a stir fry shrimp dish.

The coolest apple name ever is "Sister of Fortune"

In September, I went to Hutchins farm and selected a bag of apples, mainly from a box labelled "Sister of Fortune" They are all gone and eaten now, but my head has been trying to remember that name for several weeks. Finally looked it up and found a nicely descriptive blog about apples here. Truly a great apple marketing name.

Sea Beans

After eating a dish of crunchy, salty, clean sea beans on a scallop dish at Dante a couple years ago, I've always wanted to eat them again, but I haven't run into them again, until I visited the family vacation home-- they are growing right in the ground, next to wetland! They look sort of like succulent cactus, and have a very salty taste on the inside when you bite into them. The property has a combination of spring water and salt water, brackish water areas, exactly where you would find them. The photos above were taken in the early fall, and they are turning red, but now we know to forage for them during the spring.
My mom actually figured out a dish to make out of them: she soaked them overnight in water, to try to decrease the salt content, then stir fried them w/a garlic/ginger/soy vinegar dressing, very flavorfull and delicous!

Matzutake Mushrooms

May family visited the gracious and stunning home of a retiree couple, who went on a hunt in the forests of Mt. Rainer the day before to forage for the precious Matzutake mushroom! 6 hours of foraging resulted in three delicious, meaty 'shroomy snacks, about to be broiled in the toaster oven.
This mushroom is soo rich, it's no wonder that in Japan they are sliced super thin and infused into a batch of rice.

Veggie Pancakes!

Pancakes made w/rice flour, eggs and zucchini w/some corn and peppers to make it even- It's basically an okomomiyaki recipe w/zucchini instead of cabbage....