Salad Days

My family and I are members of a local Community

Supported Agriculture program at

Honey Brook Organic Farm in Pennington, New Jersey.

For a few hundred bucks a year, we get weekly shares of

incredibly fresh, organic, and local vegetables and herbs

from May through October. Vegetables that are harvested

 are separated into bins and displayed in the farm shed (above).

  There you learn your allotments for that week..There are

 pick-ups seven days a week, it's so popular.  We've

 got Sunday morning, which sort of forces us to get up

 early if we want to sail that day!

We actually have an individual membership, but still

come home with a ton of stuff.  We've only just begun.

Sometimes they give us a choice of two items.

This morning was either a bunch of gorgeous

scallions, or a bunch of these super breakfast

radishes.  Which do you think I chose?

Early in the season, we get alot of lettuce  like red leaf,

bibb, red bibb, and then other greens like arugula, spinach,

chard, collards, kale, and bok choy to name a few.

Fennel.  My mouth is watering.  Sliced paper thin and

added to salad,  sliced in 1/2 inch discs and

then drizzled with olive oil and roasted until browned.

Even the fronds lend flavor to any dish, and look cool to boot.

Some of the U-pick items include snow peas.  You need

to train your eyes to detect the pods, because they so handily

blend in with the leaves and vines.  I eat the large pods when

I come upon them so as not to waste the time of the pickers

after me.  No doubt they would leave them to become

tough and stringy.  They can all thank me later.

In the super-heated wind that washed over us on Sunday,

my wife and I persevered and managed to pick the absolute

last strawberries of the Jersey strawberry season.  No need

to venture out in those patches again this year. They gone.

I must admit, I'm proud of myself for sweating my butt off

and searching out every last berry.  Twenty years ago, I 

would have said, "U-pick?", Nah...YOU pick.  I eat.

It's amazing how patient I've become with certain things.

24 years, remember?  Didn't get there by accident. 

We ended up with a gallon (4 quarts) of strawberries.

Our prescribed amount was supposed to be 6 qts,

but the ones rotting on the plants were not making the

trip home with us.  Can you guess what we're having

for dessert tonight?