Week 3 of the summer CSA: romaine and green leaf lettuces, beets with their greens, cucumber, giant zucchini, mushrooms, cherries, blueberries, and a loaf of plain white bread. There are no eggs, and it’s my fault; I forgot to get the eggs. At the farm, everything is up on a table except the eggs, which are on a pallet on the floor… and I walked right by them. Oh well.

You can see a much prettier picture on Allura’s blog, where she is also tracking her CSA experience.

It was a beautiful day to visit the farm, actually. The littlest members even got to get up close and personal with some of the sheep.

Even though I forgot the eggs, I still stood in line to buy some extra pints of blueberries and cherries. The berry season in Maryland is tragically brief and you have to get the good stuff while you can. I picked up blueberries from Giant and Harris Teeter to tide me over between CSA pickups, and they just didn’t compare. I don’t know what goes into these Maryland blueberries, but they’re ten times sweeter and more delicious than anything in the stores. People, get yourselves out to the farmer’s markets and get those blueberries while you can.

We did pretty well eating the food from last week, too. The lettuce and cucumber went into salad, the kale got baked into chips, the yellow squash went on skewers on the grill, the mushrooms and potatoes accompanied K’s fabulous cast-iron steak, and I boiled the eggs for quick afternoon snacks at work. We finally got around to eating the green beans with lunch today.

(Quick green bean treatment: rinse, trim the ends, toss with olive oil and seasonings (I like salt, pepper, garlic powder), put in microwave-safe bowl and microwave two minutes; remove bowl and give the beans a toss. If you think they’re done (that is, if you like your beans crunchy), stop there; if not, microwave one more minute at a time until done, checking as you go. There are other ways to prepare green beans, but this is the quickest I’ve found by far.)

I’ve also been making good use of the toaster oven in this heat. Almost everything does well in the toaster oven.

This week’s CSA pickup from Breezy Willow: a pound of kale, a head of lettuce, four little broccoli crowns, two cucumbers, a pound of green beans, a pound of yellow squash, a bag of button mushrooms, two pounds of small red potatoes, and BLUEBERRIES. Oh, and eggs and bread (parmesan sourdough).

The blueberries were the first to go. Usually I don’t mind splitting our share with our friends, but I was pretty sad to say goodbye to half that pint of blueberries. They were plump, sweet, and tasty… and now they’re all gone. Maybe I’ll find some more at the farmer’s markets.

I’m happy to see broccoli crowns and little red potatoes again, too, because what I did with them last week was so delicious that I wanted to make it again. Basically I cut the potatoes into quarters, cut the broccoli into small pieces (after peeling the tough outer fiber off the stem), and tossed both of them in olive oil with generous amounts of salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Then I scattered the pieces over two foil-lined trays and put them in the oven at 400 degrees. I took the broccoli out when the florets turned dark green and just a little crisped, and took the potatoes out a bit later when they looked browned around the edges. While they were cooking, I fried up a salmon patty (from a Costco tube of frozen patties made from wild-caught Alaskan salmon; they’re delicious). I split the salmon patty between the two of us. Total time to dinner: about twenty minutes.