I had this great idea for a blog post when I signed up for the Minto Island Growers CSA last winter. I was going to take a picture of my bin of produce every week to capture a visual representation of the bounty of the seasons. Look, I would write, how the broccoli trickles in, how the fava beans gather for a party in July, how the tomatoes show up later and take all the glory. It was going to be great!
And then summer finally came and I abandoned this project and threw myself into some new ones instead, namely, trying to find a way to process all of the vegetables that come in with my CSA.
If you haven’t belonged to a CSA, it works like this: You send in what feels like an exorbitant amount of money (in this case, $500), to the lovely people of a farm in your area (here, Elizabeth Miller and Chris Jenkins), and then wait through a terrible, terrible spring for your boxes to arrive. Finally, at the beginning of June, you go pick up your first box. I opened that first box to find lacinato kale, fresh tea, green garlic and black turtle black beans. A few hours later, Elizabeth sends an email relating news of the farm, information about what is in our box, and recipes based on the produce we received. It’s kind of like having someone tell you what you opened for Christmas a couple hours earlier. Now what do I do with all of this stuff?
I have always had serious doubts that CSAs were for me. I have a produce problem. Living in Europe for a few years, and growing up in a house where mom went to the grocery store every day, has made me into one of those people who can generally only have a few items in the fridge at a time. Otherwise, my refrigerator becomes a swamp of moldy green beans and mesclun sludge. I’m very ashamed about it, actually. I know I’m not alone here — I often read reports that Americans throw their weight in food away every year — but it’s something I have to seriously work at to keep from happening.
So a CSA sounds kind of nightmarish, doesn’t it? Random produce arriving at the peak of its freshness, in season and ready to be seasoned? Unplanned? Never knowing what’s coming next other than a vague idea of what is coming in season? As with many new personal challenges, I vowed to do this one the correct way and NOT WASTE A SINGLE KOHLRABI.
Since that first self-recrimination we have seen a lot of great stuff come in through the CSA. We had a month of blueberries delivered fresh, bunches of radishes, delicate greens of all stripe, squash, tomatoes, blackberries, bok choi, broccoli, rhubarb, fava beans and greens, garlic, strawberries, cabbage, cauliflower, spinach, green beans, sweet onions, and more. We even got a couple of those kohlrabi I had worried about.
Has it been too much? No, I would say it hasn’t been enough! A strange transformation has happened in this house. Always having produce in the house means always eating produce. Surprise! If it is local and fresh, it is probably also delicious. We’re lookin’ pretty fine from all those vegetables. I’m pretty sure we’ve aged a year and a half in reverse from all the antioxidants.
There have been some surprises. It turns out, processing even these smaller amounts of produce unleashes in me new waves of nostalgia for my grandparents’ home, where someone was always out on the porch snapping beans. I have been thinking all the time about my grandfather, how he would just slice up a kohlrabi and eat it like an apple.
Yes, the kohlrabi again.
I’ve found ways to incorporate a lot of this produce by exploring new recipes. One of my favorites for the summer was Thomas Keller’s summer vegetable gratinee of eggplant, tomatoes, squash and zucchini. I can’t reprint it here, but it basically involves treating vegetables as if they were precious gems. Dude has killer technique.
But that kohlrabi, it pretty much slew me. When I got it, I ran my hand over its smooth surface and laid it down gently in a produce basket on my kitchen counter. Then I looked at every day, reminiscing about the past. And then I forgot about it. From time to time I would see it again, and get all weepy inside.
Friends, that kohlrabi is there even still. I just checked on it, and it has become something of a shrunken head of a kohlrabi.
My husband would be quick to remind me that this happened once before, when I was living in a student housing complex north of Munich, Germany. I bought some kohlrabi at a grocery store downtown and didn’t use it, not for lack of imagination, but out of a deep longing for home. Is that ridiculous? Beautifully so. When he discovered what I had done — or in this case, not done — he plucked that kohlrabi up and planted it down in the weeds near the building’s entrance. At least there we could visit it. The thing actually grew and was still growing when I left a few months later.
The CSA is still going strong, as you can see from the picture above. Even though the Willamette Valley had a tough spring, and the boxes’ contents are directly affected by the whims of the weather, I would definitely do this again. I’ll probably try not to make any grand statements to myself about using all of it next time around, though. I’ll just do my best and love all of the surprises and let myself weep at the kohlrabi on the counter.
