About a year now, my girlfriend showed me the website for the Southside CSA. Buying and eating local was something that always interested us, but it was sometimes so hard with our fast paced lives here in New York. We thought this may be the best way to do this, and we were definitely pleasantly surprised.
This week was a light week. We normally get an Egg Share, a Veggie Share and an Orchard Share, but with it being the end of the season and a Hurricane approaching we had to seattle for just the Veggie Share. This week we got some fabulous looking spinach and lettuce along with tomatoes, dried corn, and red onions.
Due to the concerns of the hurricane we wanted to get through a lot of the stuff that had to go into the refrigerator. Being from New Orleans, I know how to survive weather like this. We started by making a simple salad wit the lettuce, tomatoes and onions and put some dressing on it. Simple, but when your ingredients are that fresh it doesn’t matter.
The next morning we awoke to the idea of making a frittata using some of the Eggs we got at our previous pick up. We also threw in some of the red onions, tomatoes and spinach. Needless to say, we were quite happy!
The thing we are most excited about is the dried corn. You see we are usually way more adventurous than just a salad and frittata. And to us this is the most exciting thing about the CSA. It has pushed up in so many ways. First, now we work a lot harder at using everything in our pantry. We are more creative with our cooking. We are trying new foods that we too often would just pass up in the grocery because we were either scared or intimidated by it. Not knowing what to do with it. Now we get excited about the idea of figuring out what to do with it.
The CSA has also caused us to figure out how to stretch our food. When we started getting all of our shares it was so much food. We had no idea what to do with so much of it. We were so afraid to throw it away and be wasteful with perfectly good food. So we started learning to Jam, dry, and freeze the food adding to the abundance of our cabinet and allowing us to have amazing fruits well into the winter.
Thus the dried corn. At first sight we saw it and just assumed it would be apart of our decorative cornucopia for Thanksgiving. Upon further research we learned there are more uses to it than just feeding cattle. The little moments have made cooking that much better and in turn turning us into better consumers and eaters.
The Southside CSA has been a great thing to be apart of for the past season and it is absolutely something we look forward to continuing to do for years to come.
And now some food porn…
Southside CSA 