Cooking Away My CSA

When most people hear the term 'CSA' their thoughts turn to fruits and (more likely) vegetables.  That's certainly how we began our love affair with CSA's.  But CSA's aren't confined to produce. Some farms include the option for shareholders to purchase shares of eggs, homemade bread, meat, cheese, fruit, flowers or other farm products along with their veggies. Sometimes several farmers will offer their products together, to offer the widest variety to their members. For example, a produce farmer might create a partnership with a neighbor to deliver cheese to the CSA drop off point, so that the CSA members can purchase farm-fresh cheese when they come to get their CSA share. Or a farm may create a standalone CSA for meat, flowers, eggs, or cheese, etc. 

As I mentioned above, we initially joined a vegetable CSA.  My son was four at the time.  Having grown up in a rural area where my parents raised and preserved every jar of jam and jelly, chili sauce and spaghetti sauce, pickles and applesauce and.... (you get the picture) pretty much everything we consumed, I was overcome with the desire to at least expose him to freshly grown produce.  I wanted him to know where fruits and vegetables really comes from and to taste the fresh goodness of organically grown, local produce. Next stop - Holiday Brook Farm in Dalton.  It wasn't long thereafter that Holiday Brook Farm began their meat CSA and we immediately signed up for a monthly pork share too.  We've had a fabulous experience there (just ask my son who ate half our allotted pint of self-picked snow peas last Saturday before I could even get them home).  

  

Last summer Cricket Creek Farm in Williamstown began a cheese CSA featuring their handmade cheeses and offered the option to pick your share up at Holiday Brook Farm.  Cheese?  Are you kidding me?  Sign me up!  

  

A few months later, I converted to raw milk (that's another post for another day) and began making the trek to Cricket Creek on a regular basis for their sweet, creamy, Jersey and Brown Swiss milk.  So when they expanded their cheese CSA last winter to include raw milk and meat - you guessed it, I signed up!  They've continued to expand and modify their CSA in an attempt to meet their members needs.  They now offer bread, dairy, meat, ground beef and egg options, in addition to cheese, of course!

But enough of me waxing poetic.  Let me show you some of the delicious goodness that abounds in the Berkshires (and quite possibly where you live too!).  These were all taken in the past week.  Yes, we eat good here!

I hope these images will inspire you to eat good too.  And support your local farms in the process.

Bon Appetit!

Strawberry shortcake with berries from Nourse Farm
courtesy of Berkshire Organics

Boneless pork chop from Holiday Brook Farm
and asparagus from Smiarowski Farm

Grilled Burger with ground beef from Cricket Creek Farm
and sauteed snow peas from Holiday Brook Farm

Morning coffee with fresh 'cream'
(off the top of this bottle of raw milk from Cricket Creek Farm)

Raisin bread toast with fresh farmstead butter
from Cricket Creek Farm

Tom's frittata made with farm fresh eggs from
Cricket Creek Farm and amazing breakfast sausage
from Holiday Brook Farm

 

Loving Local

Today may be the official end of Massachusetts Farmers' Market Week, however, it's certainly not the end of Farmers' Market season here in the Berkshires. In fact, late August/early September is one of my favorite times of year as the variety of local fruits and vegetables available is at a peak. (This favorite time of year thing may also have to do with the fact that football season is knocking at the door and night temperatures begin to plunge, but I digress.)

My friend Tinky over at In Our Grandmothers' Kitchen hosted a Loving Local blogathon this past week in an effort to increase awareness of the bounty all around us and celebrate the flavors of the Bay State.

I'm a bit late to the party, but would be remiss if I didn't join in with a shout out to the local farm that provides a large amount of the food on our table. Our dinner last night was simple - grilled pork tenderloin, with a lemon pepper rub, mashed new potato "patties" (made from leftover mashed potatoes) and a medley of green, yellow and purple beans sauteed in a bit of sesame oil (YUM). Aside from the seasonings and oil, everything on our plate came from our friends at Holiday Brook Farm.

Whatever YOUR fancy - succulent peach crumble, or a slice of fresh blueberry pie, corn on the cob, an heirloom tomato salad, roasted new potatoes or farm fresh eggs - your local farm(er) is your freshest source. Buying local is not only better for you, it's better for your local economy too and you'll be doing your part to help preserve open space as well as our cultural heritage.

If you would like to spread some love to local farmers by donating to the Mass Farmers' Market, you can do so here.

Bon Appetit!

Bean Soup

I was reading the winter issue of Edible Boston, and there was an article about Baer's Best, a local grower of dried beans. And even better, it mentioned they're sold at Idylwilde Farm, a place I frequently shop! So I headed out and bought myself some beans. There were plenty of varieties to chose from, and I decided on the mixed bag of Heirloom Bean Soup.



Isn't it pretty? How could I resist?

There was a recipe on the back of the bag that I used for a jumping off point. I added some ingredients based on what was in my fridge. Here's my version of the recipe:



Heirloom Bean Soup

Ingredients:
1 lb mixed dried beans
Lots of water (see recipe)
1 Tbsp salt
1 ham hock or 1/4 lb finely diced ham
1 large onion, diced
1 or 2 15 oz cans of diced tomatoes (I used two cans, but thought it turned out a little too tomato-y, so you might just want to start with one can)
1 parsnip, peeled and sliced
3 large carrots, peeled and sliced
Juice of one lemon
Pepper to taste

Directions:
Wash the beans, then place in a pot with 4 cups of water and 1 Tbsp salt. Let stand overnight.

The next day, drain the beans. Return beans to the pot and add 8 cups water. Add the diced onion and ham hock or diced ham. Simmer for 2 1/2 to 3 hours, adding more water as necessary if the water level starts getting low. Over the entire course of cooking, I added about 5 more cups of water, so you might need to add quite a bit more than the initial 8 cups.

If you used a ham hock, take the bone out of the soup, pick off any meat, and return the meat to the soup. Discard the bone.

Add remaining ingredients and simmer until carrots and parsnips are tender, about 45 minutes, adding more water if the soup is too thick for you.

______________

The end result was outstanding! Bean soups take a lot of time, but my husband and I both love them so every once in a while, it's worth the effort. One of my kids even ate quite a bit of this soup, and since neither of them ever eat anything new, it was pretty exciting!

And I went back to the store and bought 3 more bags of beans: one bag of black beans, one bag of split peas, and of course another bag of the Heirloom Soup beans. Delightful! Plenty more soups in our future!

Locavore for a Day

On Wednesday, What a Card wrote about Reduce Footprint's weekly challenge which just happened to jive with we do over here: eating locally! The challenge was to eat only local for one whole day. I'm a newbie on the locavore scene so I knew taking on this challenge would be tough as my cupboards and fridge have only just started their transition to local foods. I picked Sunday as our day so that my husband could join in the fun.

This week, my CSA share included sugar snap peas, strawberries, salad mix, tomatoes and asparagus so I wanted to revolve our meals around those foods - not really hard! Here is what we came up with:

Breakfast: Tomato, basil and chevre omelet (tomato from the CSA; basil and chevre from Winchester Farmer's market; local brown eggs from Whole Foods)

Snack: Stonyfield Yogurt with strawberries

Lunch: Sugar snap peas sauteed in butter and salt, pan-seared asparagus and marinated steak tips (Peas and asparagus from CSA both cooked with local dairy butter; steak from Stillman's, Cilantro Lime Vinaigrette dressing for marinade by Appalachian Naturals)

Dinner: Toasted tomato, basil, mozzarella sandwiches with salad mix (tomato and salad mix from CSA; basil from Winchester Farmer's Market; hand-made mozzarella from Fiore di Nonna Cheese; salad dressing same as for steak marinade; bread from Mamadou Bakery in Winchester, MA)

Dessert: Crescent Ridge Dairy vanilla ice cream

We did cheat a bit by using salt and pepper on the peas, asparagus and steak. Not that you can't get local sea salt (you can!) but I just didn't plan that far ahead. Overall, I would say it was a great learning experience to see how easy and tasty it can be to plan your meals around local, in-season produce. I also realized that when you are eating the freshest produce available, you don't need a lot of other stuff to dress it up. Everything we ate was simply prepared and so good.

Try it out for a day (or more!!) and see how delicious it can be - New England in summer gives us so many wonderful choices! You can't go wrong.

Top Ten Reasons To Buy Local Food from your Neighbors

Courtesy of http://www.buyfresh.org/

1. Freshness & Taste - Locally grown fruits and vegetables are usually harvested within hours of being purchased by the consumer. Whether you buy them at a farm stand, Farmers Market or visit a farm and pick them yourself, you will be getting food with exceptional taste.
   


2. Local farmers raise and sell wonderful unusual varieties of products that you will never find on supermarket shelves. That is because local farmers grow for taste not the ability of the product to be shipped great distances.
   


3. Nutritional value declines, often dramatically, as time passes after harvest. Because locally grown produce is fresher, it can be more nutritionally complete.
   


4. With local produce, you can visit farms or meet the farmer face to face at the market. You get to look them in the eye and ask them anything you would like to know about how they grow the products that you are buying. Farms also offer hayrides and festivals to encourage people to spend a day in the country finding the perfect pumpkin, picking the best apples, or just relaxing while munching on a warm cider donut, sweet apple pie and a cup of ice cold cider.
   


5. Local growers live in your community, spend their dollars in your community, hire local workers and their farms help make communities livable. Regional farmers paid over $9.3 million for labor and $1.3 million in real property taxes in 2002.
   


6. Local food supports a clean environment - A well-managed family farm has been handed down from one generation to the next. These farmers value their land, clean water and fertile soil. It takes 87 calories of fuel to move a single calorie of fruit from CA to NY.
   


7. Farmland benefits wildlife - residents get a thrill when they see wildlife that live in the patchwork of fields, meadows, woods, and ponds that farms provide.
   


8. Buying local food preserves open space - You have probably enjoyed driving out into the country and appreciated the lush fields of crops, the meadows full of wildflowers, and the picturesque barns. That landscape will survive only as long as farms are financially viable. When you buy locally grown food, you are doing something proactive about preserving the agricultural landscape.
   


9. Local food keeps your taxes in check - Numerous studies have shown that farms contribute more in taxes than they require in services, whereas suburban development costs more than it generates in taxes, according to several studies. On average, for every $1 in revenue raised by residential development, governments must spend $1.17 on services, thus requiring higher taxes of all taxpayers. For each dollar of revenue raised by farm, forest, or open space, governments spend 0.34 cents on services.
   


10. Local food is about the future - By supporting local farmers today, you can help ensure that there will be farms in your County tomorrow, and that future generations will have access to nourishing, flavorful, and fresh food.
    

Why not visit a local farm market today and taste the difference? Your taste buds will thank you.