Veggies!

One of the highlights of my summer is our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) weekly box of produce.  We pay an upfront cost for the season and in return pick up a box of fresh from the fields produce once a week.  We start in June and last year picked up our last box the week before Thanksgiving. This year I'm sharing with a friend from work because as the season gets in to full swing there is more than two of us can manage.  To me it is like Christmas once a week.  The box has something different every week as various fruits and vegetables ripen.  Right now we are getting baby lettuce, spinach, green onion and strawberries.  Later there will be corn and tomatoes, potatoes and peaches.  Towards the end of the season, squashes and nuts.  Besides having really good stuff to eat it also sparks the creativity a bit because you don't get to choose what is in the box.  Each week when you open it you have to start figuring out how to use it all.  This week almost all of it went into a spring veggie, chicken stew.  Last year we were overwhelmed with green beans so I dug out an old canning guide and made some excellent garlic, chili, dill green beans that go very well with a pint of ale,cheese, crackers and a Formula 1 race.  We had so many different kinds of potatoes I lost track but they actually all had a different flavor and texture.  I don't really recommend the blue ones.  I thought they were awfully dry but perhaps I didn't have the correct cooking technique.  Sometimes there is something you have never tried like garlic buds, basically the stems and flowers of garlic.  You cook them kind of like asparagus but they have a mild flavor that makes a very different veggie to go with your steak.  After cooking for my family for almost 40 years anything that puts a little fun in the planning is welcome and these boxes of wonderful fresh food definitely adds some fun.  To quote one of my favorite food celebrities, Alton Brown,  "Good Eats".