The Urban Omnivore

Our inauguration occurred on Thursday, June 7th at the Jamaica Plain Co-Housing pickup location. Now in the third week of our CSA with The Food Project, we’re gradually adjusting to eating locally and seasonally. My expectations were high and I was excited as we nervously pulled up in our car, double-checked the address, and headed into the courtyard. I was expecting to see lots of people handing out or picking through boxes overflowing with vegetables… Needless to say, I was disappointed that there was only a stack of boxes and a sign-up sheet available to greet us.

Still excited, we checked our names off with gusto, grabbed a choice looking box and headed back to the car. Being as impatient as I usually am when I get worked up, I had to take a peek at the “haul” before we left. My quick glance revealed lots of greens and some corn. Satisfied, we closed up the trunk and made the short trip home. Upon our arrival, we quickly opened the box, extracted the veggies, and took stock. We had a head of swiss chard, two heads of lettuce, a bunch of radishes, and dried corn.

I was personally a bit disappointed in the quantity but chalked it up to the fact that it was early in the season and our CSA was starting a full week or two ahead of my friends’ CSAs… And, hey, we’re in this for the quality not the quantity right? We easily finished up the greens and radishes before week two, but were a bit stumped by the corn. In the end, we decided to scrape off some of the kernels and pop them! We sat down with a somewhat chewy, but very “popcorny(?)” bowl and watched a highly appropriate, informative, and enjoyable movie, King Corn .

The next week’s box was similar, containing a few more heads of lettuce, some white radishes, and a zucchini. The real fun started this week when our box was plentiful and contained a few vegetables that we couldn’t identify. I bit into a small, stringy plant not really sure what to expect. I wound up with a taste explosion of garlic (garlic scapes actually)! The box also contained a bag of mixed salad, a huge head of red leaf lettuce, more radishes, a summer squash, a head of colorful swiss chard, and two heads of mystery green. After checking my email for our newsletter, we found out that the mystery green was actually small bok choy… we’ve eaten plenty of bok choy in our time, but have never seen one at this stage of growth.

Now that we’ve experienced a bountiful box, our spirits are higher than ever with regards to the CSA choice that we made. I suspect that the quantities will vary over the season and we’re ready to embrace the suspense. Not surprisingly , its quite satisfying (borderline thrilling) to pick up our share each week without knowing what’s going to be in it… Its like opening a present every week.