Milk Bar Member Diary

Some of the strawberries that live in our refrigerator!

At Milk Bar we know a good snack when we see one! At any given day in our busy office one may find a veritable smorgasbord of potential new treats laid upon our big meeting table for tasting like a Parthenon offering to the statue of Athena. A day’s work is all too often punctuated by the remnants of these delicious creations some of which find their way to our menu while others remain a happy memory in our collective palate perhaps to be resurrected by a culinary epiphany at some future date. If one is not careful, however, by end of day one may find he has quietly amassed a mountain of plates with the evidence of the milky, sugary goodness staring him in the face reminding him he’s substituted chocolate malt for a midday meal once again. Not a bad gig for any burgeoning snackmeister, I must say.

Around the Milk Bar office our CSA share has given us a few new daytime snack options. We store our share in the office refrigerator where most mornings members of our Press team can be found stirring a handful of blueberries and strawberries into their yogurt or oatmeal. Weekly meetings, once dominated by a spread of goodies that would make Marie Antoinette blush, now share the stage with snap peas and berry bowls. Though our tastings remain sacred we turn to our CSA share for much needed midday sustenance and each member of our team is free to visit the fridge at his or her delight. Personally, I’m partial to a cornflake-strawberry-blueberry admixture – great for snacking with multiple pencils tucked behind your ears and an inbox bursting at the digital seams.

 

 

Southside CSA distribution June 16th

MimoMex Veggie Share:
1/2 pound salad mix
1/2 pound bok choy
1/2 pound sweet peas
1 bunch Swiss chard
1 bunch cilantro
1 bunch of 4 pieces of garlic
1/2 pound of garlic scapes

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Greig Farm Berry Share:
4 Qts of Strawberries
1 lb Sweet Peas

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Northwind Farm Meat Share:
Sweet Italian Sauasage
Shell Chicken
Pork Chops
Hot Italian Sausage
Steak

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Yellow Bell Egg Share

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Yellow Bell Chicken Share:

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Meeshka Member Diary - Apples, Strawberries & Squash

greigfarmstrawberry pic by Mo Kim
Meeshka Share Family shares with us some yummy recipes for all those apples, strawberries in the freezer, and squash you have piling up on the counter….

Jacob-Hurwitz Member Diary for Week #8

pick up
I am a brand new member of the Southside CSA this season! After participating in CSAs in other neighborhoods with my boyfriend, we were delighted to find a CSA close to our new home on the south side. We’ve been picking up a half share of berries, vegetables, and soon fruit and we are also getting chicken. We’ve been making lots of delicious recipes from our haul including strawberry shortcake and salmon with asparagus in parchment.
pic by jacob-hurwitz

Member Diary #6: George & Melissa- June 18th Share

This is our third year with Southside CSA and the coming of the new season has become one of the most exciting parts of our year! We are a couple sharing a half monty, including veggie, orchard, and egg share, as well as a half berry and half chicken share. We did do the meat share last year but felt like the chicken share would match our eating habits better this year. A half share for two people seems to be the right amount for us, as we both work busy jobs, but try and eat most of our dinners at home during the week and at least one big meal during the weekend.

This week was the first week of veggie share, which was very exciting. Here is the share in all of its glory on our dining table once we got home on Monday night. Especially impressive this week were the amazing amounts of strawberries and yet another beautiful big chicken from Feather Ridge:

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Member Diary #5A - Crack Fox - June 4th Share

 

This is our 4th year being a part of the great Southside CSA. We usually do a full veggie and egg share, but after witnessing the insane berry bounty last year, we decided to go for the Full Monty Deluxe.

I cook 1-3 meals for us every day, so everything is usually eaten by my husband and I with some small dinner parties thrown in. We eat mainly vegetarian but not exclusively.

This weeks share was 1 pound of fresh green peas, 4 quarts (!) of strawberries and a dozen eggs.

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Week #5 - June 4 [A week]

Miss Mara enjoying the good life at Greig Farm

It was a wet one. Distribution was inside and we forgot the camera…Regardless, the strawberries were sweet. In fact, so were those Sugar Snap Peas. Ate most of those raw with my tamale. Life is good at distribution…

Greig Farm Share

  • 4 quarts Strawberries
  • 1 pound Sugar Snap Peas

Feather Ridge Egg Share

  • 1 dozen farm fresh eggs

Northwind Meat Share

  • Lamb Rib Chops
  • Whole Chickens
  • Ground Pork
  • 95% Lean Bull Burger
Feather Ridge Chicken Share
  • 1 fresh whole chicken


Member Diary #4 — AJ’s

CSA life: May 28th – June 3rd

I chose this week to do a member diary, because I thought it would be a quiet and calm week after my teaching semester had ended, a week with plenty of time for cooking. But somehow I always think that, and I’m always wrong. This week my new class started, I had meetings and site visits everyday and many evenings.

 

That means that his diary ends up being what the CSA usually is in my house…something that has to be flexible and quick, something that is sometimes a chore, but often ends up making for the few moments of calm and pleasure in my running-around life. You will also get to watch the fun game that we play: how to use the random food items that we have collected in our house and turn them into something at least edible if not delicious. At this point, this is one of my favorite games, and I am so accustomed to cooking from a CSA share that have a really hard time figuring out what to do otherwise. You just go to a grocery store and look for things you want? Bizarre. After belonging to a CSA for 4 years, I find that rather overwhelming.

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Member Diary #3B: Tamara

Hi Fellow Southside CSAers,

I’m Tamara and I split a ‘just veggie’ and an ‘empire’ share -which comes to the same thing as a Vegan’s Deluxe ,which in my mind I’ve been calling a vegan’s delight – with my boyfriend and our 17th month old son Meshak. We aren’t strictly vegans but we eat a plant based diet 6 days a week and cook most of our meals at home. We try to keep at least part of every meal raw. Usually that means we are experimenting with ‘salad’. Over the past year, we have been converting to a completely organic diet (having a kid will do that to you). It’s a process. An important part of that was joining Southside CSA this year and we are super excited about what’s to come.

Since the season is just getting rolling our share included:

½ pound of asparagus

1 qrt of strawberries

…both of which were easily carried home on the bottom of Meshak’s stroller.

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