Sometimes I want to detail what we do with our CSA vegetables, but when I think about it, it seems so pedestrian. Brussels sprouts: bisected and roasted, with lots of minced garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. Potatoes: treated much the same as the sprouts. Carrots: roasted with cumin, ginger, and honey. Spinach: cooked down and seasoned. Green beans: blanched and seasoned. Parsnips: boiled, then pureed with butter and milk. Apples, oranges, and grapefruit: eaten just as they are. It’s not even like I can provide recipes.

Anyway, week 3 of the CSA brought us spring mix, oranges, grapefruit, parsnips, beets, Brussels sprouts, apples, garlic, fingerling potatoes, eggs, and bread (Great Harvest sourdough).

The spring mix was wonderfully peppery, and I served it with sweet orange segments. I used Spilled Milk’s recipe for the pureed parsnips, except I didn’t bother straining it. Fortunately, the texture worked just fine; maybe my parsnips were just extra-tender. Anyway, the parsnip puree was excellent, lovely and nutty, and rich with cream.

Week 4 of the CSA gave us Swiss chard, green beans, apples, oranges, onions, carrots, red potatoes, a beautiful Savoy cabbage, bread (Great Harvest honey whole wheat) and a bonus item. We could choose between eggs, applesauce, and an apricot butter with ginger. I chose the apricot butter. I had some for breakfast this morning, spread on the wheat bread; it was sweet and tangy.

One good thing about visiting the farm is that you get to see the animals all the time. The llamas were out when I got there, stretching their long necks and batting their thick eyelashes. The farm dogs were out too, and the spotted puppy they’d gotten last year was now a tall, leggy creature. And of course it’s nice to see the farmers and the working shares too.

It’s already technically week 2 of the Breezy Willow spring CSA, and here I am just posting week 1. The time just got away from me, I guess.

But I know where all the time went! Look what we baked (neatly slotting his arrival between the end of the summer/fall CSA and the beginning of the spring/summer one):

He has a very good appetite for someone so tiny, though he won’t be able to partake of the CSA goodness for some months yet. I foresee purees in my future. Maybe he’ll be able to enjoy the fall apples and winter squash. I’ll keep you posted.

Also, I should mention that Howard County General Hospital’s menu choices are not precisely haute cuisine, but the kitchen is generous with the portions, and the delivery is prompt and courteous. I ate very well there.

Anyway, I don’t make the CSA pickup until Thursday, so technically I’m still on week 1. Week 1 of the spring CSA brought us 3 lb potatoes, 2 lb carrots, 2 lb beets (each of those giant beets weighed a pound!), 1 lb kale, 1/2 lb mushrooms, four grapefruit, six oranges, and eight apples (Granny Smith and Red Delicious). Also the usual eggs and bread (Great Harvest challah, which sadly developed mold spots about a week in; I need to remember to keep it in the fridge).

I didn’t ask after the origin of the items, but from what I remember of last year, I’d assume that the citrus is from Florida, the kale likely from Georgia, the mushrooms from Pennsylvania, and the apples and root vegetables from last fall’s harvest, kept in cold storage.

Seeing the potatoes and kale made me immediately long for colcannon, and with St Patrick’s Day around the corner, an Irish dish is particularly appropriate. Colcannon is essentially mashed potatoes, with kale and green onions mixed in. The potatoes are fantastic with heavy cream and butter, and you can fool yourself into thinking you’re eating healthy because of the kale. The green onions add a really lovely tang. It’s a simple, undemanding recipe, easy to put on hold at almost any step if you need to attend to an infant.

I use Elise’s recipe for colcannon, except that when I melt the butter, I throw in some minced garlic. Why not.

Week 2 pickup: tomorrow!

The air is colder, the tree branches are bare, and the CSA summer/fall season has come to an end. So it goes.

When I showed up to the CSA last week, it was already dark (nightfall at 5pm! another sign of the season). However, the llamas (and one of the sheep) were still out and looking determinedly cute. Two boys were busily feeding them grass. I do so enjoy hand-feeding llamas. They’re so happy when they’re fed.

Last week’s penultimate CSA pickup included: kale, a head of cabbage, three broccoli crowns, three types of apples (eighteen total), white potatoes, carrots, a head of garlic, an acorn squash, and the usual eggs and bread (Great Harvest Swedish Rye).

As I recall, we roasted the broccoli, made the kale into chips, made the cabbage into soup, and made glazed carrots. We’ve been steadily eating apples (one a day) for the past few weeks now. The squash and potatoes are still sitting around, but those can sit for ages.

And then this week was the last CSA pickup. It was sad to say goodbye to the farm for the season! I’ll miss the friendly people and the cute animals. As an extra special thank-you from the farm, the pickup this week included a bag of kettle corn from Cacoctin Popcorn.

The rest of the pickup: a half gallon of apple cider from Baugher’s Orchard, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, mushrooms, apples (Fuji and Ida Red), onions, broccoli crowns, a pound of spinach, and the usual eggs and bread (Great Harvest sesame).

…And that’s it for the year! It’s a bittersweet time, but at least we can look forward to Thanksgiving and the holidays. I’m already brimming over with recipes for baked goods.

As if to mock my whining last week, yesterday was beautiful and sunny, with just a nip of autumn cold. Perfect CSA pickup weather.

That’s spinach in the bag, along with mushrooms, brussels sprouts, eggs, 6 apples, a head of garlic, 6 Bosc pears, onions, 3 broccoli crowns, red potatoes, and a head of cauliflower. For this week’s bread I opted for sesame (I was too late for sourdough).

It was nice to see the animals out as I was walking back to my car. The llamas were grazing peacefully, the sheep were sitting off to one side, and the chickens were all over the place. One had even hopped up on the fence as if to emphasize the point that it was only staying in the pen because it wanted to. It could easily have made it out (which probably explains the chickens I see wandering around sometimes).

One of the working shares mentioned in passing that the Glenwood Library farmer’s market on Saturdays was done for the year, so Breezy Willow would have more to sell at the farm. Panicked, I checked online and found that although many of the local markets are done, the markets at East Columbia (Thursdays) and Oakland Mills (Sundays) will be open for at least another couple of weeks. Thank goodness. I would like to stock up on local apples and squash for the winter. There are only two more weeks left in the CSA… harvest season is coming to an end.

On a related note, people who prefer to pick their own fall vegetables should note that the last day to go to Larriland Farm is this coming Sunday.

It was beautiful all week, blue sky and brightly-colored trees… and then CSA pickup day rolls around and it’s gloomy and rainy again. Oh well. The moisture clinging to the CSA vegetables made them look charmingly freshly-washed, except of course they weren’t. Everything from the CSA needs to be washed quite thoroughly; you’ve never seen so much dirt come off a single pear, or a bunch of radish greens. Our Oxo salad spinner gets a lot of use during CSA season (I drown the leaves, swish them around, pour out the water, and repeat the process until the water stops being cloudy — it generally takes two or three repetitions). I don’t miss vegetables from the grocery store, but I do miss how freakishly clean they are when you take them home.

Anyway, for pickup this week, we got fingerling potatoes, a pound of turnips (at half a pound each, that’s two turnips), six carrots, a head of cauliflower, a pound of either spinach or kale (unable to decide, I took half a pound of each), four Stayman apples, six pears, a head of garlic, and a very small butternut squash. Also eggs and bread (I chose “everything” sourdough again; I’m really predictable).

Only three more weeks of CSA to go, and then a long sad drought until the spring CSA starts up in March. Guess I’ll have to learn to shop in the produce section again.

This past week I roasted a ton of vegetables. I cut the broccoli into bite-sized pieces and tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper. Then I bisected all of our brussels sprouts, tossed them in the same bowl (after the broccoli was gone), and roasted them as well. (Some of them had funny off-color leaves near the top, which I cut off. Allura theorizes that it was a mild case of tipburn, and would have been edible. Oh well, they looked weird enough that I played it safe.) Also, K and I having bought a ten-pound bag of carrots from Costco for no apparent reason (fortunately carrots keep forever), I peeled and sliced a bunch of carrots and tossed them in the bowl as well (when the brussels sprouts were gone). I added a pinch of ginger, because carrots like tang. And heck, while I was at it, I put our half of the turban squash (cut side down, brushed with olive oil) on a foil-lined tray as well. And then I put all the trays in the oven.

The vegetables were… okay, I guess. I should have paid each element more attention, or flavored them differently. The broccoli overcooked just slightly, the brussels sprouts got burnt (overly blackened on the cut sides, which was tragic as I love me a good roasted brussels sprout), the squash tasted like, well, plain roasted squash, and finally the carrots were just ordinary. Cooked and ready to eat, but just ordinary. I should have used them to make the glazed carrot recipe out of the New Best Recipe cookbook, which is a fantastic recipe, but sadly I did not. Or, if I’d cut them into matchsticks, I should have done this spiced carrot fries recipe, which is also tried, true, and utterly fantastic. Oh well, plenty of carrots remain, and at least I feel I utilized the oven heat appropriately. (It always feels weird to turn on the entire oven for just a single tray of food.)

Clearly improvisation was not my forte last week. Therefore, for book club on Monday, I executed Deb’s Mom’s apple cake, which is always a winner. Mmm, baked cinnamony-sugar apples. Other people at book club seemed to have caught the dessert bug too, as there were also pie, cookies, and chocolate cakes on offer. Good thing I had all those vegetables to buffer my system.

This week in the CSA: bread (parmesan sourdough), spinach, turban squash, pears, apples, fingerling potatoes, brussels sprouts, two broccoli crowns, carrots, and a half gallon of apple cider. (No eggs this week.)

I’m looking forward to cooking the turban squash. I think we’ll probably just scoop out the seeds, roast it, and enjoy it with curry powder, salt, and pepper (K) or brown sugar and cinnamon (me). I’m happy to see the brussels sprouts, too; I love roasting brussels sprouts in the oven.

Also, apparently I’m now in apple-hoarding mode. We got a bucket full of crispy, sweet Fuji apples from the farmer’s market last Sunday and I’ve been sad to see them disappear one by one from the fridge. I think it’s time to stock up on apples, make a nice crisp, and freeze a bunch of applesauce.

It feels odd to be typing “summer” when outside it’s clearly fall: turning leaves, cooler nights, pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks. Maybe I should have called this series the “summer/fall CSA” (as Breezy Willow does) from the very beginning. Oh well, can’t switch it up now…

Last week at the CSA: spinach, green peppers, broccoli crowns, pears, potatoes (I chose sweet potatoes; you could also get white), apples, mushrooms, and beets. Also, of course, the usual eggs and bread (Great Harvest “everything” sourdough, which is basically parmesan sourdough inside and tasty savory spices outside).

Fall is one of those times that makes me very happy to eat with the seasons. Just as colder weather comes along, so do cold-weather vegetables that just beg to get roasted in the oven. This past weekend we roasted beets and sweet potatoes; radishes with carrots, white potatoes, and thyme; made four quiches (yes, four; we miscalculated our filling) with spinach, ham, and mushrooms; and last but not least, we cooked up a lovely beefy brisket with onions in the Dutch oven. The oven was on from early afternoon until well into the evening. It made the house smell wonderful, and there was no need to turn on the heat.

I can’t wait to bake up the pears and apples, too. Mmm, fall fruit desserts.

Sorry about the long hiatus; I’ve been traveling, so I haven’t been getting the CSA share. (The couple we split the share with has been heroically eating the entire share, but for those who don’t have that option, Breezy Willow donates unclaimed food to a local food bank.) Anyway, stay tuned for adventures in non-local eating…

To make up for missing last week’s CSA update, here’s two updates in one!

Weather is a big factor in the CSA experience; see HowChow’s post on the topic. Fortunately since Breezy Willow’s CSA is a network of farms instead of just one, they’re slightly protected if bad weather takes a toll; still, because it’s all local, heavy rains or a hot summer can hurt them all. This is part of the gamble when you buy into the CSA for the season.

At Breezy Willow farm, it was so sodden and wet that they had to change up their parking situation: instead of parking in the field and walking to the shed, we drove around back and lined up three deep in front of the shed. This means no one has to walk through the muddy field, but on the other hand you don’t feel like you have time to stay and chat with the Caulders and the CSA work shares, because cars are lined up and waiting in the lot. It’s ok though, they’re still friendly enough that pickup is a good experience.

This week brought potatoes, green beans, butternut squash (you could get acorn squash instead but we got that last week, see below), a head of green leaf lettuce, 1/2 pound of mushrooms, four nectarines, four apples, six ears of corn, and the usual eggs and bread (Great Harvest basil parmesan). The basil parm is a new flavor — apparently Great Harvest switches up their bakery schedule every month or so. Casey, knowing my love for the parm sourdough, even saved me a loaf of the basil parm. It’s incredibly savory; I’m planning to pick up some big ripe tomatoes at the farmers market for tomato sandwiches.

This was the pickup for last week (it was raining enough that we still couldn’t pick herbs, but the ground was still dry enough that we could park on the field):

We got watermelon, acorn squash, six ears of corn, an eggplant, onions, garlic green peppers, and four each of nectarines and apples. The farm lost power from Irene, so they weren’t able to offer eggs, which need to be kept cold. We did get bread though (Great Harvest challah).

…after I had put everything away, I turned around and saw the little bag of fingerling potatoes on the counter. So I took a picture of the poor things all by themselves.

I love fingerling potatoes, by the way. They roast up quickly and taste wonderful. For dinner that night, K seared some of our steak from Wagon Wheel ranch in a cast-iron pan; while the pan was still hot, we quickly sauteed some sliced onions and green peppers to go on the side. Meanwhile, the fingerlings baked up in the oven with some garlic and olive oil. It made a fantastic dinner.

We don’t eat giant steaks like that every day, but once in a while, it’s quite a treat.