thoughtful consumption

Here’s what I got last week in my CSA box from Farmers Fresh:

blueberries, peaches, and strawberries - oh, my!

dill, Mexican tarragon, par-cel, and thyme

(soft and mild) radishes, (sweet) onions, and (enormous) carrots

eggs and spinach

lettuce and tomatoes!

The tomatoes were terrific, and early summer’s so nice because you get tomatoes and lettuce. For me, one of the shocks of eating local, seasonal produce was that lettuce and tomatoes really don’t overlap that much – even though we eat them together all the time conventionally.

I also ordered some stuff from the store:

strawberries, sorrel, and beets

(By the way, sorrel and roasted-then-chilled sliced beets is the world’s best combination.)

Not pictured: crunchy sprouts.

Lots of salads!

Lettuce, tomatoes, spinach, sorrel, beets, radishes, onions, sprouts, and carrots call for lots of salads. Here’s one:

And here’s another:

The funny thing about this salad is its tiny-ness. This is a 6” salad plate, and those eggs are a half a dozen quail’s eggs, scrambled. It made a perfect little late-night supper. (The quail’s eggs were kind of neat. They’re frustrating to open, and the taste – at least, for scrambled eggs – is not that different from chicken’s eggs. Still, they was cool to try, and they’re supposed to be really good for you.)

Monday, I made fried rice with lots of local stuff. We started with leftover Carolina Gold rice and then cooked up some local eggs and a handful of sustainably-harvested Georgia shrimp. Then we added these veggies:

snap peas, sprouts, onions, beet stems, radishes, and carrots

For sauce, I combined some soy sauce, sherry, dark sesame oil, and some homemade chicken broth. The broth and the Carolina Gold rice made for some rich-tasting rice.

which I forgot to take a picture of until we were almost done eating.

We’ve been eating lo mein for so long that this fried rice was a really nice change of pace.

What’s left over

I still have some beet greens left to sauté with raisins and local pecans. We’ll probably have that tonight for supper. I have some dill left, which is great because I ordered more beets from the store. Fresh dill is really tasty with beets.

I also have some thyme and blueberries. Maybe we’ll have a summery cocktail this evening.

It’s Wednesday, so I’m off to get more CSA-goodness. Enjoy your food!