Monday, June 2, 2008

Community Supported Agriculture

Gary and I have been on a waiting list for over a year to join a community supported agriculture program that is organized by the Heifer Project. It's not a cheap venture, but it is highly worth it to get vegetables that are both organic and locally grown. Every Friday after work I drive to the drop off point to pick up our share of the veggies. It has been an interesting experience because I am getting some vegetables that I wouldn't normally buy. I don't want to waste any of this beautiful and healthy food, so I am doing some research and finding ways to cook things we are not used to eating. Last week we received the lovely kale pictured below, Swiss chard, fennel, several different kinds of lettuce, beets, sugar snap peas, radishes and bok choy. We eat greens every day so I cooked up the kale and chard as usual. I was clueless about the radishes, bok choy and beets. Sure, a couple of radishes sliced up on top of a salad are good, but what does a person do with 1 1/2 pounds of them??? I ended up making the radish recipe shown below and it was actually quite delicious. The radishes really mellowed out after being roasted. A few other recipes that I tried are also listed. Everything turned out great. We are really enjoying these fantastic vegetables and I'm having fun with the weekly challenge of figuring out what to do with them all.

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