Eating the Farm: Our CSA

In an attempt to document and catalog the food we make with our new CSA share, I'm going to try to do a weekly post of "what we did with our CSA".

After many years of wanting to, this is the first summer we've actually participated in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). We signed up with McCleaf's Orchard, a local farm near Gettysburg, PA. The primary reason for choosing this farm was because the pick up is 2 blocks from our house! It was a large upfront cost, so we really wanted to make sure we were committed to using all this produce every week. Every Tuesday, for the whole summer, we get fresh fruit and veggies for about $30 bucks a week, and I'm already getting introduced to new wonderful foods and being challenged to find ways to incorporate it into our menus.

This week, we received:
garlic scapes
green onions
fuji apples (stored from Fall 2011)
asparagus
sweet rainier cherries
summer squash
butterhead lettuce
sugar snap peas
swiss chard

What we made:
garlic scape pesto (incredible! pesto with a kick!)
roasted asparagus
pan fried white beans and chard w/ spring onions and garlic scapes
pasta with grilled asparagus and squash, with fresh ricotta and shaved parmesan
pasta with garlic scape pesto, with tomatoes and avocado
creamed swiss chard with whole grain dijon mustard (really good - adapted from here)
pasta with squash matchsticks, toasted walnuts, and grated parmesan

and we snacked on the (delicious!) cherries, apples, and peas

Goals for this week: take pictures! and try to find alternatives to pasta. (oops!)