Five Farm Share Lessons

Posted on November 18, 2014 by cooklikekayla

After 22 weeks of fresh, organic vegetables, my farm share is coming to a close next week. I’m not sure what I’m going to do after next Thursday. I might go into shock.

There were a lot of other things I learning by joining the farm share – like what celeriac is* and how to cook beets without looking like you just murdered someone and how to bake a fail-proof quiche and which of my friends truly love vegetables.

For now, here are five things I learned from my farm share:

Identify your go-to recipes. Mine were salad, soup, and quiche. Not sure what to do with a veggie? Throw it in one of those. Other good go-tos are stirfry, frittatas, and casseroles.
Find a vegetable comrade. Having a friend in the share with me with a huge help. We shared recipes and geeked out about vegetables together. It made it less weird to be totally psyched about rainbow chard.
Accept that not everything will be perfect. This was tough for me. I’d get the box and want to make the best possible dish with each item. Sometimes things need to be used like normal to make a recipe work.
When it doubt, freeze it. Sometimes it’s impossible to use everything in a week. If that’s the case, stirfry, steam, or boil the veggie and freeze it to use later. Mid-winter it will feel sooo good.
You’ll feel better. About yourself, about your food, about your wallet, about the world. It sounds corny, but eating locally sourced food is good on a lot of levels, both for the community and for yourself.

If you don’t already participate in a farm share, I encourage you to give it a try. Most farms encourage people to sign up around February so they can plan ahead for the summer, which is just a few months from now! If you’re local to western Massachusetts or Boston, consider Enterprise Farm. A huge thanks to them for working so hard to get those fresh vegetables into my kitchen!

*Celeriac (or celery root) is pictured above. It’s like a cross between celery and a potato. Great in soup!

Farm Share Friday: Vacation & Guest Posts

Posted on August 8, 2014 by cooklikekayla

Happy Friday, everyone! Today is an especially happy Friday for me because it is the first day of my 10 day vacation. It feels luxurious. What’s on the agenda? I’m spending a few days at home in Vermont with my family (lot’s of ice cream, farm visits, and hiking). After that I’m taking off for three days of camping in Old Orchard Beach with my siblings. This should be particularly interesting because 1) I’ve never camped and 2) this is the first time we’ve gone on vacation without a parent present. (I’ll be gathering intel for a future Camp Like Kayla post). Finally, I’m heading up to the Bar Harbor, Maine area to spend the weekend at a lake house with my girlfriends. I’m planning to (try) to unplug, spending as little time connected to social media, the internet, text messages as possible.

Which leads me to some exciting news! Next week, you’ll hear from a few of my friends who will be guest posting on the blog. (CLK’s first ever guest posts!)

Aka will share a couple of her go-to recipes on Tuesday. Aka was my partner in crime at work before she left to go to nursing school (bittersweet!). Aka is super active (she does acro-yoga, surfs, takes circus classes, and runs a LOT) and is a vitamix recipe master.

Jesse, who I introduced you to this week (the beets-taste-like-dirt guy), will be taking over next week’s Farm Share Friday. As I mentioned on Tuesday, Jesse and I get our shares from the same farm and often compare recipes. This week, I gave my share to my friend Naomi and next week I signed up for a vacation hold (meaning I’ll get a double share at the end of August!) so Jesse kindly agreed to step in and keep FSF going strong.

After my vacation next week, I have a crazy two weeks that include jury duty, moving apartments, grad school orientation, and classes starting. I’ll be taking a two week vacation from blogging during the weeks of August 17^th and August 24^th, returning in September. You can look forward to posts about: the triathlon I completed last month, camp recipes from Maine, and my new kitchen at my new place!

After that long-winded update, below is what this week’s share turned into:

Salad of mixed greens, shredded carrot and beet, and cucumber with shrimp
Kale and red cabbage coleslaw (a variation on this recipe)
Green chard breakfast smoothies (steamed chard, pineapple, banana, apple, milk, ice, and walnuts)
Oven roasted eggplant
Carrot green pesto (using greens from the last 3 weeks)

I still have a head of romaine lettuce, onions, and some of the red cabbage left. I guess they’ll be making the trip home to VT with me! Have a great few weeks everyone!

Farm Share Friday: Calla-win!

Posted on July 18, 2014 by cooklikekayla

Welcome to July – when everyone in New England regrets all of those winter wishes for warmth (realizing that with warmth often comes humidity). It has been hot and sticky around here all week with scattered thunderstorms. It’s the time of year when turning on the oven is painful (doesn’t stop me though).

I’m happy to report out that my first encounter with callaloo was a win! I sautéed the leaves with carmelized onions and topped it with freshly grated parmesan cheese – YUM! (To be honest, pretty much everything tastes good with carmelized onions and parmesan cheese, this was no exception). The callaloo felt like a mix between spinach and kale – a mild flavor but a heartier texture than spinach. I made a Jamaican inspired chicken by marinating a chicken breast in a blend of jalapeno and green onion (just throw the veggies the blender with some salt, pepper, and vegetable oil, marinate overnight).

Here’s what I came up with this week:

Italian sausage and quinoa stuffed summer squash (recipe coming soon!) served with a mixed green salad.
Beet and beet green flatbread (recipe coming soon!)
Sauteed callalloo with carmelized spring onions, served with chicken marinated in a blend of spring onion leaves and jalapeno.
More basil pesto, which I froze to use in soups, pastas, and other dishes.
There is still a leftover cucumber in my fridge – not sure how it will go to use, right now I’m thinking more pickles.

Coming up next week: carrots, green chard, and the return of the not-so-baby bok choy. Suggestions welcome!

A Farm Share for One

Posted on April 17, 2014 by cooklikekayla

At the suggestion of one of her close friends, my Mom enrolled in a farm share* last year. I instantly became insanely jealous. My Mom was in produce heaven, bringing home bags full of fresh, organic kale, arugula, tomatoes, radicchio (you name it) – in the brightest and realest reds and greens and purples. I anxiously dreaded and anticipated her picture text messages of their haul each Tuesday or Thursday – amazed at the amount of produce she brought home for the low price of about $35 per week. A typical week might include a pound of tomatoes, two heads of kale, four beets (with the greens), a bag each full of spinach and arugula, 2 large eggplant and bunches of fresh herbs. All organic. Suddenly, carrot green pesto and sautéed beet greens and kohlrabi fritters were on my mom’s dinner table, me far away in Boston begging to experiment with the fresh new vegetables from the farm.

I heard of people (mostly my Cambridge coworkers) enrolling in farm shares but never thought it was something I could do. “The vegetables are so weird” they’d say, “So much goes to waste.” I thought I’d need a huge freezer for the veggies I couldn’t eat in time, or a car to pick up the box from the farm, or a juicer to turn the kale into something other than chips – something I didn’t have to make it work.

Watching my Mom go through it on her own (and starting this blog) inspired me to take the plunge. So this year, I did it – I enrolled in my first farm share. Who cares if only cook for myself, or that I’m moving into a studio apartment at the end of the summer sans huge freezer or juicer**, or that I will have to carry a (probably heavy) basket full of produce home with me via public transportation. I LOVE VEGETABLES. Especially those that are organic, fresh, and inexpensive.

I chose to join Enterprise Farms, a family farm in South Deerfield, Massachusetts. My primary decision factor was a convenient pick-up location. Enterprise has a drop off just a few minutes from my office (convenient to me now and when I move into aforementioned studio apartment come this fall). They also have three share sizes – small, medium, and large – to accommodate the wide range of vegetable eaters and family sizes. I elected for a medium share (as I said, I love vegetables), for just under $500 (with an early bird discount). It comes to about $16 per week from June-November – very manageable!

It was hard not to choose Picadilly Farm (pictured here), where my mom gets her share. They have a “Mix & Match” system where you get to choose what goes into your box each week (only if you pick up at the farm) and a great PYO (pick your own) garden. Although they’re located in New Hampshire, they also deliver traditional (pre-selected) shares to the Boston-area. Unfortunately it was just a tad bit too pricey for me, although I know from experience that the quality is amazing and you get more than what you pay for each week. Fortunately I know I’ll be able to visit Piccadilly with my mom (and now my grandma, who caught wind of this amazing farm and signed up for a share this year) when I visit home this summer.

Needless to say, there’s going to be a lot of vegetable experimentation happening in my kitchen starting in June. I’m looking forward to sharing it with all of you! This summer I plan to start a new feature on CLK called Farm Share Friday, where I’ll share what I received in my box and how I put it to good use (or not). If you want to join me on the vegetable adventure, please do! Farm Share enrollment starts early (I sent in my deposit in February, while Boston was buried in a foot of snow), so if you’re interested in joining I suggest finding one soon.

Are you a share holder at a farm? What has been your experience? If you want to join but haven’t, what’s holding you back?

*A farm share, or CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is an arrangement where you pay up front to become a member of a farm and receive a portion of the crops each week. The farm does the hard part – planting, tending, and harvesting the crops – and each week, you get a box of vegetables. It protects the farmers by allowing them to sell directly to the people who eat it and plan ahead to farm just enough produce. It brings fresh, organic vegetables to your kitchen.

**I might get a juicer, though. Suggestions welcome.

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