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Saturday, October 31, 2009

CSA Week #3


Week 3 of our fall Community Supported Agriculture share and our fridge is getting FULL! So full that the veggies are starting to freeze. We lost most last week's spinach and kale because of this (what good there was went into a soup).

I'm still dealing with the nausea and lack of appetite from my cold/flu (no I'm not pregnant - I checked) and I'm not back into my cooking/baking stride. With last week's bounty, I made a turkey stock

and a tomato veggie soup.

We also had a salad with the romaine lettuce. Most of the fruit was eaten. Still left: beets (which are piling up - I love them, but they're a lot of work), turnips, pears, apples, parsley, avocado, mushrooms, celery, romaine lettuce.

FrugalMaman's Fall CSA Box Week #3
Carrots (bag) 907 g
Mushrooms 104 g
Leeks (2) 225 g
Pie Pumpkins (2) 1.2 kg
Butternut Squash (1) 1.45 kg
Onions (2) 528 g
Red Kale 455 g
Potatoes (4) 455 g
Pears (5) 920 g
Apples (7) 815 g
Boston Lettuce 201 g
Bananas (4) 925 g
Total - 8.2 kg

Plans for this week's goodies include: soup (yes, more soup!), carrot-zucchini muffins (with frozen shredded zucchini from my own garden), and lots of preserving (see below). We're just 3 weeks in and already I'm a little wiser than when we started.

What I've learned so far:


- Local fall fruit gets boring fast. Every time I come in the door with bananas, which are the first of the CSA fruits to be eaten, my 3.5-year-old (a serious fruit lover) gets very excited. "BANANAS! THANK YOU MAMA!!" he yells. It's really sweet, but a little sad since I feel like I'm depriving him of the other colours of the fruit rainbow. My mom recently brought us non-local strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. It was all I could do not to snatch them from her and devour them greedily all by myself (I'm an even bigger fruit lover than my son).

- One family can only eat so much soup. I've made LOTS of soup already and I foresee more to come. I love homemade soup and so does my husband, but both of us are getting a little sick of soup. I've been freezing over half of what I make and even still we're feeling overwhelmed.


- We're going to have to preserve a lot of what we get because we just don't eat this much food, let alone vegetables. I've borrowed a food dehydrator and I'll be giving it a test run, as I consider purchasing one. I've read that drying kale is a great way to use it, so I'll be starting with that first and then will try the parsley and mushrooms. I've already frozen a bunch of chopped butternut squash and yam, and will probably be doing the same with this week's butternut squash. The apples and pears will get made into sauce and then frozen.

- We most likely will not be doing a winter share (Jan 6 - Apr 2). There will be more than enough leftovers from this share to fulfill most of our needs in the early new year!

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