CSA 23 and 24.... Spot the differences

Here are our last two CSA boxes... very similar boxes, which is why part of the title is spot the differences.

The challenge is to spot the three items in each picture that are not in the other picture.

Try it!....

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The items that are present in both are: Swiss chard, oranges, celery, green onions, green beans zucchini, and lettuce.

In the top picture (i.e. CSA 23) we received dandelion greens, cilantro, and rosemary.

In the bottom picture (i.e. CSA 24) we received apples (so good!), sprouts, and feijoa (the oval green things in the back that I identified by searching "oval green fruit").

I'm having trouble remembering exactly what we ate last week... but I know I used some of the vegetables last week in a shrimp stirfry, and in a pumpkin stew. The swiss chard was used in the sausage, tomato, pasta, swiss chard recipe that I have made before many times.

This week we have another pumpkin dish coming up, green beans will be used in a chicken salad, and I plan on attempting zucchini bread as something different with the zucchini.

When I think of fall dishes/ October/November dishes, I always think of pumpkins!


So last week I made a pumpkin dish (really good, everyone that saw the leftovers in my lunch during the week wanted a copy of the recipe) and I also went to Starbucks one day, and got a Pumpkin Spice Latte, a piece of Pumpkin bread, and a pumpkin muffin! Did I mention I enjoy pumpkin?

Blake enjoyed the pumpkin seeds last week enough that he asked if we could have more pumpkin dishes, and I was more than happy to comply.

In other news, we got our chest freezer for our bison! Two weeks from today we are picking up half a bison worth of meat and need a place to store it! We looked at Best Buy, but they didn't have any in the size we wanted, and the next size up was more than we wanted to spend.

So we kept looking, and ended up at the Sears Outlet. They had a model almost identical to the bigger, more expensive one at Best Buy, but a hundred dollars cheaper. It has cosmetic damage... but what do we care about the looks of our freezer in the garage?

Csa 22

So... we get the next box Wednesday... in two days... and I am just now talking about last week lol.

However, the benefit of taking this long to post is that I know more about what happened with the food and my commentary on it.

The zucchini and the green beans went into the Emerald Green Risotto I talked about before, and is a great go to recipe for almost any green vegetables that come (snap peas, asparagus, broccoli etc. all good in it).

The black eyed peas (two bags of them this week) went into Texas Caviar which was SO good, Blake and I ate way more of it than we intended. It sounded good in the recipe... tasted better!

The dandelion greens (hard to see in this picture, one of the greens in the top right corner) joined an onion, bacon, and molasses as a baked potato topping. We combined this with a side salad that featured a purple heirloom tomato from our garden (a plant that is still doing great well into Oct. now!). This dinner sounded great, smelled better than it sounded and tasted as good as it smelled!

Tomorrow we are going to have a soup with the swiss chard and sorrel (which worked out great because in this rainy gloomy weather now soup sounds great!)

That leaves a little lettuce, which always disappears, and the oranges which I am pretty sure are already eaten or will be soon.

Maybe I'll keep waiting to post my box until I can add commentary to what delicious dishes we cooked up this week.

When life gets busy... you fit things where you can: CSA 20 and 21

CSA 20


Its sad to me that I didn't even feel like there was time for me to blog last week about my little CSA box. It doesn't take THAT long to do... But its not that I didn't have free time in there... I just had different priorities with it... like spending many hours this weekend reading a novel. Time well spent... but not on this blog. Oh well... better late than never.

Last week's box was somewhat light and unexciting. Swiss chard, which we enjoy, but have had a lot lately. Tomatoes, lettuce, sprouts, cilantro and oranges, same thing, they taste good, we are happy to have them, but not that exciting. Cantaloupe, Blake loves, but I don't really enjoy any melon, and the one I like the best is watermelon, so I didn't really care about it.

The swiss chard went really well into a tomato/ swiss chard saute, and the carrots and tomatoes were combined with chicken and chickpeas (and a few other things) for a Moroccan chicken stew.

I think the point is that last week's box was so terribly unexciting, I didn't feel like it was worth a precious chunk of my time to write about... but it can be a part of this week's post... which is an AWESOME box!



This week had all kinds of exciting (i.e. new, different, unusual) items!

But first, the standards- lettuce, tomatoes, oranges, sprouts (although, noteworthy that these sprouts were broccoli sprouts which Blake likes as opposed to the radish ones which our pet worms eat).

Somewhat less than standard, delicious and tasty but not the "featured items" - swiss chard, green beans, and zucchini.

We got sorrel again this week, which is great! If you have never tried it, I wholeheartedly recommend it! It tastes like lemon... seriously! I would never guess it to look at it, but its lemon spinachy tasting. Very nice in salads and sauteed, and actually I made a nice salad dressing with it too.

Only once before in our box have we gotten passionfruit (those are the 4 wrinkly red things in the front), and we were so excited to see that not only did we get it again.. but we got 4 this week! Yay, so good!

AND we got two totally new things this week! We got black eyed peas (we have to shell the dried out green bean looking things in the back) and dandelion greens! So I'll get to try those.

Fabulous, big, full week. I am excited to plan with it.

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On a totally different note, I wanted to talk about coffee. I LOVE coffee. (Although Blake chides me because I like cream and the sugary Starbucks drinks and says I don't really like coffee if I have to have it one of those ways... anyways...)

I didn't grow up liking coffee, neither of my parents really drink it. My mom would rather have a soda in the morning if she HAD to have caffeine for some reason and my dad drinks a few sips in the morning to wake up... not coffee drinkers.

Then in high school, there was a coffee shop that we went to for study hall (long story) and I got introduced to the world of coffee with a vanilla frappuccino (I know... not really coffee lol). Then I tried a sip of my friend's mocha, and I started having frozen mochas frequently at many places. From there I started having hot mochas at places like Starbucks (and still my favorite, regular drink is a non-fat white chocolate mocha, no whip cream at Starbucks... and they know it... and me... by name... every time I come... its bad... lol).

I still remember when I first had a "regular" (home brewed with cream and sugar) coffee. I had slept over at my friend Erin's house, and her sister Heather offered to make me a coffee with cream and sugar since I had never had it, and I enjoyed it.

When I first started brewing my own coffee at home, I was a total Starbucks snob... only their coffee was good enough. Then I got practical, and started trying cheaper brands, and would buy any coffee that tasted good that was relatively inexpensive.

Fast forward to when Blake and I started shopping at Sprouts. We would always buy from their bulk section. Especially it was on sale. That is... till we watched Food, Inc. (it seriously impacted us). So then we started shopping their organic section. Good stuff... but expensive. We also bought one pound from the San Diego Zoo when we went there because some of it goes to the animals, as well as being organic and free trade.

That got me thinking about this awesome website- Greater Good Network. It is a store with many great items, but every purchase ALSO goes to help something as well. The link above is the rainforest store, where each portion helps a certain amount of feet of the rainforest, but if you change the tab at the top of the page, the store will be the same, but will have a portion that gives cups of food, mammograms to women in need, healthcare for kids in need, books to kids, or food to animals in the shelters.

I looked, and sure enough they sell organic coffee, so I ordered a bunch. Check it out for gifts this Christmas, or birthday presents, or your coffee needs etc. because you will buy stuff anyways... why not have it do some extra good?