Farm share weeks 4 and 5

Special double post this week! I was out of town last week, so Carl picked up the box at City Feed. When I came home on Sunday night, I got the veggies out of the fridge and took a photo, but catching up on life/work took a little longer than planned and so I didn't get a chance to actually post about the share until now.

So, here's week 4:

In the box:

• Red leaf lettuce
• Collard greens
• Parsley
• Red potatoes
• Grape tomatoes
• Popcorn!
• Strawberries (not pictured due to their having been mostly eaten by the time I got home)

Sorry, no weights given this week... I forgot to weigh everything. Carl did report that the box seemed lighter than 10 pounds, so that's the second week in a row.

It's been really nice to have this fresh parsley -- usually I just get dried parsley from the bulk herbs and spices bins at Harvest Co-op. But fresh has so much more flavor! This week I used it in an omelet and with some fried potatoes and turnips. The Enterprise Farm newsletter highlighted it, as well (PDF).

The strawberries were tasty, and I was disappointed to not get more of them this week. I resorted to buying supermarket strawberries in order to make strawberry popsicles* in my new popsicle molds (thank you, Freecycle).

* Note on recipe: I used soy milk instead of cow's milk, and agave nectar instead of refined sugar. They taste great! But I would probably strain the seeds out next time.

~~~

Week 5:

In the box:

• Green leaf lettuce
• Kale
• Red cabbage
• Zucchini (4)
• Cucumber (giant)
• Yukon Gold potatoes (5)
• Beets (3)

Sorry, I forgot to weigh the things again. But this box definitely felt closer to 10 pounds. (The leafy greens in previous weeks filled up the box, so maybe they should really tell us that they calculate a week's share by volume rather than weight. Obviously potatoes and beets will weigh more than parsley.)

No berries this week, sad.  And upon reading the weekly farm newsletter (PDF), I was super-excited to get garlic scapes in this week's box. But they must have only gone in the larger shares, so disappointing! I've been reading a lot recently about garlic scapes and was looking forward to having them in that omelet I mentioned above.

I think it's time for another update on how well we're managing to consume the food each week, and how long it lasts in the fridge. We are definitely not coming close to eating everything we get each week. But I have to say, this stuff lasts a lot longer than I expected, even the lettuce. I'm thinking it's because it's coming straight from the farm to us, whereas lettuce and whatnot that's bought in the store has generally gone from the farm to a distributor to the store to me. In other words, the produce we're getting is a lot fresher, so it lasts longer once we get it. So far I've only had to toss half a cucumber and some individual leaves of lettuce that were a bit past it. With greens that are going to be cooked (like kale), it's okay if it gets a little wilted. With the lettuce, I generally can get away with trimming the edges off leaves and using the rest.