community supported agriculture

 My most recent local food discovery commences at the Wilder Forest located in the Marine on St. Croix. From within the forest, one will find a quaint non-profit organization known as the Minnesota Food Association (MFA).

I had a potato convergence last week. There were potatoes in my community-supported agriculture (CSA) box; we have a share at Foxtail Farm. A friend gave me some potatoes from her grandmother's farm. We visited our CSA farm and got to dig potatoes. All of a sudden, I had a LOT of potatoes. Fortunately, I also had a potluck to attend, and a potato salad would be perfect to bring.

When I got the press release announcing Gardens of Eagan's unique new Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program last week, I was excited. Was it possible that Gardens of Eagan had found a way to address customers' primary concern -- that they're signing up for a box of foods they don't know what to do with -- while still directly supporting the farmers who grow local food? Here's a look at the press release:

Gardens of Eagan - the popular organic produce farm in the south metro - is debuting a unique CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program that enables shareholders to select their produce items at their convenience throughout the 2011 growing season.

My husband and I first joined a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program about 14 years ago. We shared a membership with friends and split the box of vegetables each week. It was the early days of CSAs in the Twin Cities, and the variety in the box was, well, not very various -- a three week stretch of nothing but bok choy pretty much ended our interest. But then, four years ago, circumstances conspired to bring us back into the CSA fold. Just when my husband and I were ready to reconsider, we visited some relatives in Madison and happened to be there when they received their CSA share from Harmony Valley Farm, located in Viroqua, WI.

Although it's a year old now, I find myself returning to Micaela Preston's excellent book, Practically Green, on a regular basis. Subtitled "Your Guide to Ecofriendly Decision-Making," Practically Green is a small, handy, good-looking book intended to make it easy to be green (sorry Kermit, couldn't resist). The book doesn't pretend to be a comprehensive guide to green living, local food, recycling, or anything else. It's not political or didactic; it doesn't preach or make me feel bad about what I'm not doing better. Practically Green includes broad, easy-to-follow sections (Eating, Living, Cleaning, etc.), with loads of specifics suggestions for things to buy and make. 

When I opened my most recent CSA (community supported agriculture) box, an adapted version of the old Sesame Street song went through my head:

Each of these things is not like the others
Each of these things just doesn't belong...

Here's what I got: turnips, radishes (both with their greens), spinach, broccoli, garlic, squash, lettuce mix, a few raggedy tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, potatoes (just a few this week, not like last time), and onions.

As I stared at my vegetables, and they stared back at me, I felt dread creeping in. Would I have to make separate dishes for all these ingredients? Calm down, I told myself. Take a few deep breaths. Walk away.

There were other things in last week's Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm-share box: basil, green beans, turnips, chard, tomatoes, onions. But the giant pile of potatoes kind of eclipsed everything else. The suddenly cooler weather plus those potatoes seemed to cry out for something warm and comforting. I glanced at my cookbook shelves, in search of recipes that would honor these humble midwestern spuds. Eureka, I thought, stew! Or, as it transpired, stews! Bland? Mushy? No way. These stews were going to be stars.

In my last article, I wrote about Brassica vegetables, which aren't the most popular items in the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box. This week, I've spent time with more widely loved summer vegetables, red potatoes and yellow squash.

I was talking with someone at a party last week about how to manage the weekly load of vegetables from the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box. His approach is to identify the vegetables he likes the least, and eat them first.

"Otherwise," he intoned, “there's no hope for them."

On Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, a common complaint about eating healthfully was that people didn't want to eat “rabbit food” all the time. But, as Oliver demonstrated on the series, there's more to eating well than munching on lettuce and carrots. So with the ingredients from this week's CSA (community supported agriculture) box, I will showcase salads made without lettuce.