With two weeks left to go in my 20-week CSA season, I concede. CSA, I am completely defeated.
I come to you today from my kitchen, paralyzed by the onslaught of vegetables from a local farm. There is an acorn squash, two delicata squashes, a pile of garlic, and an unidentified orange sphere (approximately the size of the acorn squash) in the bowl on the dining table. On the counter is a large, dusty turnip, a bag of approximately 20 orange carrots, a baby butternut squash, a wisp of fennel, four peppers, and a watermelon. Those things on the counter all came on Thursday, and I haven’t yet figured out where or how to fit these in the fridge.
Speaking of the refrigerator…
There’s another bag of carrots in there — most of those are the golden variety. I used some in a recipe for Glorious Morning muffins that I took to work, but there’s probably still 20 good-sized carrots in that bag.
There’s another watermelon, three ears of corn, four purple kohlrabi, a cucumber or two — no, wait, those have gone bad — a pound of beets, five more peppers, two heads of lettuce, six or seven leeks, a daikon radish, and several bunches of either kale or chard (or perhaps both). Oh and there’s also a head of cabbage that came a few weeks ago. If I ever get to that part of the refrigerator again, we’ll see if it’s still any good. There’s also a large bag of jalapeños. I gave a whole mess of jalapeños to two different friends who love hot things, but I still have enough to make a restaurant-sized appetizer.
In the pantry is a pound and a half of very small, very dirty, red potatoes.
Last year, I took on my CSA as a fun challenge. Being faced with eating only what is available in the here and now was interesting and eye-opening. But this year, I just can’t bring myself to expend that kind of energy on this. I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s absolutely no point in paying what divides up to $20 a week for a whole bunch of perishable food that I don’t have the energy to prepare or preserve. I sit in my kitchen, staring at all this fantastic local produce, and I really, really want to make this right. I really want to cook it and eat it, reveling in our local bounty. But I’m tired of trying to figure out how to prepare unfamiliar things (like that turnip… and what is that orange thing?), or how to sneak in the familiar that I don’t normally buy much of (like the peppers, including all those jalapeños)! And I have to wonder: even if I were better at throwing things together, and even if we incorporated all these veggies into our breakfasts and lunches, and not just dinner — would we really be able to eat it all? There are only two of us.
When I think about how much of this I gave away this year, and how much went in the trash, I conclude that this is the last CSA year for me. It’s true that at farmer’s market, I won’t get half as much produce for my $20. But if I’m giving it away or throwing it away, what’s the point? I’d rather just get only what I need.
