Hooray for Tuesday!

Oh, how I love summer!  It's wonderful to be able to go to and from work with the sun still out, and I adore the hot weather (especially since we have AC).  Best of all, it means CSA time!  Today is the first pick-up day for our CSA, and I'm super excited.  CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and it works like this: we buy a share from a local farm (we get ours from Grant Family Farms) for the season, and every week we get a huge box of veggies and fruits, as well as a dozen farm-fresh eggs.  Obviously, the produce we get is seasonal, and so the contents of the box vary each week.  This week, we'll probably get a lot of lettuce, other leafy greens like kale and spinach, and some dill.

Because you never know what you're going to get, it's always a fun challenge to figure out what to make with all the veggies.  It can be overwhelming sometimes, especially when you get no fewer than four heads of lettuce each week.  Last year was the first year we participated, and we sometimes had trouble using all the veggies in a timely matter; one can only eat so much salad, you know.  But this year, we know what to expect for the most part, and I have armed myself with lots and lots of recipes that incorporate the veggies we are likely to get.

I'm also especially excited for our CSA this year because it means Chubbs will get to try a wide assortment of vegetables, and he will be another avenue to use up the copious amounts of summer squash (among other things) we will get.  This is because I make all of Chubbs's baby food; I cook a big batch of whatever veggie happens to interest me, blend it up, and then I freeze it in ice-cube trays.  The only foreseeable problem is that we will run out of freezer space.  (Hopefully we are in a new house in the near future, and we can put a big freezer out in our new garage.  So send me some good house-selling vibes.)

I will have to see what our box offers, but I think tonight we will have portobello mushroom burgers with arugula-walnut pesto, and a side salad of spinach with a lemon-garlic dressing.

If you'd like to learn more about community supported agriculture or other ways to get local produce, go to www.localharvest.org.  You can search your area for CSA's, farmers markets, farms, and restaurants using local produce.