CSA Box Contents

Dear Friends and Family,

After a four week hiatus, we're getting a box tonight. Due to bad rains, our CSA had to skip a shipment (and tack one on at the end). The last box we got is long gone. We had some snap peas go bad (I forgot about them), but other than that, we ate it all.

According to the newsletter, we can expect:

• green peppers
• cabbage
• carrots
• bottle onions
• garlic
• sweet corn
• melon
• cauliflower
• heirloom tomatoes
• new potatoes
• red tomatoes
• chard
• lemon basil

And, we get an egg share (a dozen eggs).

My plan of attack (in order of preference):

Tomatoes can be used with our crazy basil to make caprese salad. Melon. Fruit is delicious. Carrots, pre-cut into 3 oz portions for easy snacking. Sweet corn will get roasted and then made into a salad with beans and lime and cilantro. Bottle onions will roast on the grill. Chard gets made into soup, I'm sure. Green peppers will most probably get roasted on the grill. Potatoes get eaten randomly. Which leaves cabbage, cauliflower, and lemon basil. Things that make you go hmm.

And, our garden. I've been having a ton of fun with the garden. The tomatoes and peppers are doing great. We've had 54 cherry/grape tomatoes so far. And, each one is a luscious bite of juicy, red, tomatoey sweetness. There's no comparison. Supermarket tomatoes just taste like water afterwards. We've had 16 banana peppers, 11 jalapeño peppers, and 28 cayenne peppers; it's enough to share. I sent some home with B for Chef M. I repotted the peppers this weekend to give them more room to grow. I'm planning on taking them in for the fall and growing them indoors over the winter. We'll see. Very happy with my peppers. Our zucchini, which was supposed to be the easy, sure-fire thing, has turned out to be a total bust. One sad little zucchini fruit so far and the plant is doing this crazy twisty-turny, climb out of the soil, don't fertilize thing. I've just about given up on it. And, our melons? We have two of the most adorable little cantaloupe growing on our melon vines. We'll see if they grow into anything edible. Next year, I may just do a crazy batch of tomatoes. Or, I may try other plants in lieu of the zucchini.

The other thing grand experiment we'll be embarking on this week is trying to harvest the seeds from the CSA box. I want to try saving the seeds from the melon and the tomatoes. We can plant them next spring and see if anything comes of it all.

And, last but definitely not least, our neighbors got in last night! Well, at least the Mom and Daughter did. Dad wasn't scheduled to come in until Friday. They picked me up at work and we headed out for conveyor belt sushi. Today, they're headed out to Lincoln Park today to go to the zoo, do a cupcake crawl and enjoy the neighborhood walks. I hope the weather cooperates.


Cheers!
mouse