CSA Overload

In our third year of our CSA, I'm continually stressed, yet challenged, by our weekly box. Every Thursday when I bring home two bags of veggies - some familiar, some not - I have an internal meltdown as I try to figure out what to do with it all.

Hello, overwhelming amount of vegetables!

Our CSA (Harmony Valley Farm, for the record) has a newsletter each week with a small snippet about each vegetable in the box. Between that and The Google, I can usually a) identify what each item is and b) have a general idea about how to use it.

Here are some of the things I've done or made with our CSA veggies:

1. Freeze them! As a general rule, I don't like frozen stuff. It's hard for me to remember it's even there and my Picky Eater habits come out full force with mushy re-heated foods. BUT. But. The freezer is so handy for things like: onions, corn (pre-cooked or raw) and pesto. If I ever had trouble using peppers or beans (I don't) those are just a quick blanch away from being freezeable as well! Doing little things that will get cooked anyway get me over the re-heated food hump.

2. Green smoothies or Green Monsters or whatever you call them. Uses up: kale, spinach, celery.

3. Zucchini, while usually available in overwhelming amounts mid-summer, can be used it pretty much everything. Sauteed by itself, mixed in with eggs, made into bread, made into CAKE.

4. Greens, specifically saute-able ones. I put them in ANYTHING. Kale, spinach, arugula, frisee, red mustard greens, beet greens, whatever! All you need is olive oil, salt and maybe garlic.

5. Root veggies: One of our (too small) counters was overflowing with potatoes before we even got into the squash season. Now that we're here, it's the perfect time to use regular potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, squash (any variety) and chop them up, roast them in an oven and throw them into burritos, mix with rice or quinoa and some kind of beans for protein.

Carrot Love...