Twenty five weeks. 285 items. 130 different items. That is where we ended up this year with our Sandy Spring CSA. We had quite a few brand new discoveries this year. Good ones like cheese pumpkins. Not so good ones like cardoons. Which were woody.
Some interesting observations. We did not get asparagus at all. Strange, but never.
The most delivered item was collard greens, eight times. Followed by broccoli, bok choy and zucchini, seven times each. Like this week with collards, broccoli and a humongous bok choy.
A typical May delivery. Lots of variety. Large amounts. Beautiful organic veggies. Can’t beat what we get. We pay $740 for 25 weeks of veggies and some fruit. All organic. A real bargain. But, you have to like veggies. Which we do. I did some creative swapping this year and ended up with at least 8 deliverables of roma tomatoes, suitable for canning. Organic roma. Huge beautiful tomatoes that now live in my freezer to make winter dinners. All told roughly 35 pounds of romas.
The weirdest thing we got? The African horned melon. At least in my opinion. And, I didn’t find it that appealing. I now know in the future if it ever shows up, it is back into that swap box.
Coolest new thing we got? Edamame on the stalk. I loved boiling them in salted water and eating them like peanuts. They are so good that way. But, cleaning a stalk full of edamame is a little messy and time consuming.
All in all, definitely worth the money. I quit figuring out the savings when we were almost $200 ahead of what it cost to join. Next year we will be back. In fact, since I am doing Breezy Willow’s winter CSA, it overlaps for four weeks and we will be getting double deliveries for three weeks.
The fall CSA from Sandy Spring was supposed to start today, but Hurricane Sandy got in the way. No delivery. They are promising to make it up, and I bet they deliver like they promise. With 80 farmers spread across the Lancaster region, they will pool resources and find us good food to bring down on the trucks next week. Hope their losses were minimal, and recoverable. Thankfully this hurricane hit after summer CSA, which is way larger than the fall.
If you have a little sense of adventure, this CSA is a bargain, and trying new veggies is the challenge that keeps it interesting. After all, corn, tomatoes, green beans and onions get boring. We all need a little kohlrabi, turnips or rutabaga to fall into our baskets and make us think differently about what we eat. My roasted veggies included all three plus a sweet potato.
honey glazed roasted root veggies
hocofood@@@
AnnieRie Unplugged 