CSA Spring Cooking Class

We’ve been holding seasonal cooking classes for awhile now, and we’ve loved sharing knowledge about the bounty of Nova Scotia.  Spring can be a tough time to eat local though – a lot of farmers are almost at the end of their winter root vegetables, but it’s still too soon for springtime favourites like asparagus, fiddleheads or strawberries.This last Monday, we decided to embrace the season head-on by building a menu around a CSA (or Community Shared Agriculture) produce box from Taproot Farms.

A lot of folks who get a CSA share for the first time are occasionally at a loss as to how to work with the veggies you GET, rather than the veggies you FEEL like buying.   We thought we could try to promote truly creative meal planning by building a cooking class around using the veggies in a typical CSA produce share.   This was out of necessity as much as it was an exciting plan… it can be hard to plan a menu in March for a class in April when you don’t know what produce is going to be available to you!

Our intrepid volunteer instructor, Lori Cadelli, came up with a few basic vegan, gluten-free recipes that would be easy to adapt to whatever deliciousness we’d find in our veggie share.  The menu would feature a lentil stew with seasonal veggies, a shredded salad, and some gluten-free scones.  We figured that whatever we’d end up getting in the box would be easy to incorporate into our menu.

When we picked up our box last Saturday, here’s what we got:

2 cabbages, a bag of small beets, two cucumbers, about a dozen apples, about 3.5 pounds of potatoes, about 2 pounds of carrots, and a bag of spinach.

After we saw that we’d have exotic things like greenhouse cukes and spinach, and a whole bunch of lovely apples, we decided to switch things up a bit so we could highlight these things a bit.

Cucumber-Apple Salad:

Grating beets with a food processor keeps your hands stain-free!

We had planned on making a shredded slaw-type salad, but those cucumbers were too good to pass up.  We ended up making a Cucumber-Apple Salad with a honey vinaigrette, on a bed of shredded raw beets for colour and contrast.

Dressing:
¼ cup Olive Oil
¼ cup Apple cider Vinegar

2 tbsp honey
Salt & Pepper to taste

Salad:
6 or 7 Apples
2 seedless cucumbers

10 little beets

Directions

Whisk together dressing ingredients up to 2 days ahead of time.

Scrub beets well, and grate with the peel on. Toss with ½ the salad dressing.  Finely chop apples and cucumber.  Toss with the rest of the dressing up to 2 hours prior to serving.  Lay the grated beets on a serving platter and scoop salad on top.

Main Course:

Our lentil stew recipe was ready to incorporate our carrots, spinach and cabbage, and we decided that making some garlicky mashed potatoes to accompany it would be divine.

Lentil Stew

- 2 cup lentils
- 2 diced onion
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 2 tablespoon olive oil
- 5 carrots
- 1 small cabbage, coarsely chopped, core removed

- 4 bay leaves
- 1 cup rice
- 4 tablespoons miso

-1 bag spinach, chopped and stems removed
- salt and pepper

Prepare lentils according to package instructions.

Saute onion and garlic together for 2 minutes in a large skillet. Add remaining vegetables and bay leaves and continue to cook for another 5 minutes.

Add rice and 1 cup of water and continue to cook for 30 minutes. Add more water if required.

Add lentils and miso to the stew. Cover and simmer another 15 minutes.

Add chopped spinach 5 minutes before stirring, and let wilt.

Add salt and pepper to taste.  Serve over garlic mashed potatoes.

Mashing potatoes is vigorous work!

8 big potatoes, peeled and halved

4 cloves garlic

Almond milk

Boil potatoes in plenty of salty water with garlic.  Process cooked potatoes and garlic with potato ricer.  Add a splash or two of almond milk and a few more cloves of minced raw garlic.  Add freshly ground pepper and minced herbs.

Finally, for dessert we made some gluten free scones made with brown rice flour with raisins and pumpkin seeds.  The recipe for the scones needed applesauce, and luckily we had lots of fresh apples to make some up!  The leftover applesauce was delicious on the warm scones for dessert!

Pumpkin Seed and Raisin Scones
- 4 ½  cups any gluten-free flour (we used brown rice flour)
- 1 ½  cup soy, almond, or rice milk
- ¾  cup applesauce (two small apples, diced, with ¼ cup water. Simmer until soft, then mash. Eat any leftover sauce with baked scones!)
- 1.5 teaspoon salt
- 6 teaspoons baking soda
- 6 tablespoons sugar

- 1 cup raisins

- ½  cup pumpkin seeds

Preheat oven 350 degrees Fahrenheit /180 Celsius.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, sugar and salt and mix well.

Add milk, applesauce, and raisins and pumpkin seeds. Knead until dough forms.

Drop spoonfuls of dough on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  (Scones will not expand too much during baking, so the size of your spoonfuls will determine the size of your baked scone.)

Bake for 15-18 minutes or until scones are golden brown on top.

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If you’re interested in joining a CSA for summer, now’s the time to sign up!  Check out this blog post for a list of Nova Scotia CSAs:

2012 CSA List

For some more tips on how to plan menus around your CSA box, check out these blog posts from our archives:

The Little Box That Could

Making the Most of Your CSA Box

A Week of CSA Meals

CSAs & Workplace Drop-offs

So, you’ve been curious about CSAs and decided that it’s something you’d like to sign up for, and you’ve checked out the 2012 CSA list, but what if there’s not a drop-off location close to your home or work?  Maybe you’d be interested in starting a drop-off location at your office.

How do you know if this might be a good option for your workplace?  Ask yourself the following questions:

1) Is there someone (hopefully you!) who will champion the initiative?  In my experience, the first thing you need to get a drop-off started is an enthusiastic organizer.  This person will lead the group through the exercise of choosing a CSA farm to join, contact the farmer to see if a drop-off is possible, and generally keep things organized from week to week.

2) Are there people in your workplace who are interested in signing up too?  Most farmers are looking for a minimum of 5-10 customers in order to make a drop-off worth their time and effort.

3) What’s the physical location like? Is there a space where the farmer can park the truck and unload boxes? Is there an out of the way spot where 5-10 (or more) boxes can be stacked until people take them home at the end of the workday?

If the responses to the above questions are favourable, your next step is choosing a farm.  Here’s a list of CSA farms in Nova Scotia.  Look through the list and see who has products, delivery routes and delivery days that fit your needs.  Then contact the farmer to see if they would be willing to drop-off at your workplace.  Sign up!

Once the deliveries have begun, here are some tips to make sure things carry on smoothly.  I asked a number of workplace CSA members to share their tips with me.  Here’s what they said:

1. Get a list of participants from the farmer.  Have people initial when they pick up their box.  Then you know who owns any boxes that are left behind at the end of delivery day.

2. Have a plan in place for when people are not able to pick up their boxes on delivery day.  In our office, delivery day is Wednesday. Because our root cellar is unused in the summer, and it’s a relatively cool space, we stash boxes down there until mid-afternoon Friday.  Any vegetables still left by mid afternoon on Friday are given away to staff.  If you don’t have a place to store vegetables, you may want to make the pick up time window shorter.  Make sure all participants know the policy.

3. Remind people to return their empty box/bag/bin each week.  Store them out of the way each week and have them ready for the farmer when he/she drops off the (full) box/bag/bin the following week.

4. For people who are hesitant to participate, help pair them up.  Then two people can split a chare.  A full share can be daunting, especially for smaller households.  This offers an easier way for people to participate.

5. Share recipes to encourage those who have difficulty incorporating new items in to their diet. For example, greens, like kale, can be challenging if you’re not used to eating them.  There are lots of great local food blogs with recipe suggestions.  You can also check out Select Nova Scotia or the Food Action Committee’s cookbook, Eating by the Seasons.

6. Provide your feedback to the farmer. Let him or her know what’s working well and what’s not.  One Community Supported Bakery customer told me: “One thing I loved from the experience was the surprise of discovering which bread I would get weekly. I certainly tried bread I would never have known without the CSA experience. It was also really cool to talk to the baker who was delivering the bread herself (on her bike) and ask her questions. Made eating bread a very personal experience!“  That’s exactly how I felt about getting a vegetable box each week!  Each week it was exciting to open up a surprise box of vegetables.

Yours in Food,

Marla

2012 CSA List

It’s still winter, but the ever growing pile of seed catalogues at my house suggests that spring is around the corner.  Another sure sign that it will eventually be spring: CSA sign up time!

What is a CSA or Community supported Agriculture? Read about it here. Curious if a CSA is right for you?  Here’s an article about the pros and cons.  Ready to sign up?  Here are some links to some great CSA farms and other community supported food businesses around Nova Scotia.  (A few CSAs have neither a website nor a facebook page, in which case, I’ve linked to their email address.):

Vegetable CSAs

Abundant Acres – Located in Hants County, drop-offs in the Halifax area

Avon River CSA – Based in Centre Burlington that focuses specifically on winter veggies. (Box delivery from October to March)

Cochrane Family Farm – Located in Upper Stewiacke, drop-offs in Brookfield, Truro, Stewiacke

Horse and Garden Farm – Drop-offs in Halifax and Windsor

Hutten Family Farm - Located in the Annapolis Valley, drop-offs in Halifax. Shares offered year-round.

Lafrayere Gardens – Located in Antigonish County, drop-offs in town, at the garden, delivery along Highway 337, Cape George.

Ironwood -Located in Hants County, drop-offs in the Halifax area

Local Motive Farm Drop-offs in Stewiacke, Elmsdale, Fall River, Dartmouth, and Halifax

Moon Fire Farm – Located in Hants County, drop-offs in Halifax area

Scenic Valley Farm – CSA in Central Cape Breton

Snowy River Farms – Vegetable CSA, with meat and egg add ons. Located in Shubenacadie with deliveries in Halifax and Dartmouth

Southfield Organics – Located in Hants County, drop-offs in Tantallon, Timberlea and Bedford

Taproot Farms – Year round Veggie, Meat and Fruit CSAs that has an extensive delivery drop-off  route

Vista Bella Farm– Drop-offs in Tatamagouche, Truro and Halifax

Waldegrave Farm– Based out of Tatamagouche

Watershed Farm – Based on the South Shore, drop-off locations on South Shore and as far as Halifax.

Waxwing Farm – new for 2012.  Will be offering a winter CSA. Drop-offs in Kings County and Lunenburg (and perhaps other south shore locations)

Whippletree Farm– Based out of Annapolis Royal, drop-offs in Annapolis Royal, Bridgetown and Middleton

Wild Rose Farm – Located in Digby County.

Wysmykal – Located in the Amherst area

Meat

Bruce Family Farm – Beef CSA that delivers to Halifax

Nature’s Script Farm – Located in Great Village, delivers to Truro

Shani’s Farm–  Produce, Meat and Preserves CSAs available, drop-offs in Halifax

Wild Mountain Farm – Drop-offs in Halifax

Fish

Off the Hook Community Supported Fishery– A Fish CSA (or CSF) that provides hook and line caught haddock, and delivers to Halifax, Wolfville and Annapolis Royal

Prepared Meals

Impossible Pie – Located in Hants County, with drop-offs in Halifax

Bakery

Gold Island Bakery – Halifax-based bread delivery (done by bike!).  Option to add cheese and baked goods.

Kingsville Farm – Cape Breton based bakery supplying weekly breadbags to local customers, and at Mabou, Sydney, Antigonish and Whycocomagh Farmers Markets.

Check out ACORN’s website to look for CSAs all over the Atlantic provinces:  http://acornorganic.org/acorn/databaseregional.html.

Am I missing any?  Leave me a note below and I’ll add them to the list.

Yours in Food,

Marla

Curious about CSAs?

First delivery of the 2011 season

I’ve been asked several times in the last  week about CSA food boxes.  (Clearly the cold, gray days of winter have us all thinking about summer veggies.) So, I thought it was time to get some discussion going about this alternative method of buying food, as CSA sign ups are starting.

What is a CSA you ask?  Well, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  It is a system through which customers sign up for a share in the farm at the beginning of the season, and receive a weekly (generally) basket of food from the farm.  Boxes vary depending on the season.  While most CSAs in Nova Scotia are for vegetables and fruit, there are some people doing meat, fish, bread and full meal CSAs.

We talked a lot about CSAs on the blog last season.  In order to avoid repetition, here are some highlights:

The Little Box That Could
The First CSA Drop off of the Season
Vegetables of Spring, Unite!
Making the Most of your CSA Box
A Week of CSA Meals

I, personally, love getting a CSA box, but it’s not for everyone.  How do you know if a CSA is for you? Ask yourself the following questions:

- Where am I on Saturday morning (or whenever the farmers market is in your city or town)?  If you love going to the farmers market, keep going to the farmers market.  If you work on Saturday morning or it’s not feasible to go to the market or if you prefer to spend your Saturday with a cup of coffee and the crossword puzzle, then maybe a CSA is a good option for you.

-How do I cook?  If you follow recipes to the letter and plan out every meal far in advance, CSA might not be for you.  If you’re cooking style is more laid back and you’re creative in the kitchen, then CSA might be for you.  I love peeking in a veggie box on Wednesday afternoon and seeing what’s new for the week.  Most farmers do include regular items each week.  The CSA I subscribe to almost always had greens, carrots, tomatoes, and potatoes.  Then there were another 4-5 vegetables that changed week to week.

-How much do I cook?  According to a survey of CSA customers done by the Atlantic Canadian Organic Regional Network, the main reason that CSA customers don’t sign up for a second year is because the box contained too much food.  And people don’t like to waste food.  If you eat out multiple nights of the week, a CSA might not be for you.  If you generally cook at home, it’s a good option.  Another option is to share a box with another household.  Last year when my roommates were out of town, I would split the box with a friend.

Other things I love about CSAs:
- My workplace is a drop-off location.  Wednesday afternoons in the summer & fall, my weekly vegetables arrive at the office.  Easy-peasy.
- The price. Last year I paid $560, which worked out to $28/week.  This was enough vegetables and fruit for myself and 2 roommates (though we would occasionally supplement with additional veggies from the market) and later in the season, myself and my partner (and we had to freeze a few things). I don’t know what the price will be this year, but I plan to sign up again.
- Vegetables I might not have otherwise purchased.  Some might see this as a drawback, but I like trying new foods.

CSA drawbacks, because it’s not a perfect system:
- Sometimes I miss going to the market.  It is pretty fun in the summer.  And sometimes I still end up at the market anyway (on weeks I didn’t intend to) because I still need cheese, tofu, meat, herbs, etc.
-Sometimes you want more or less of something.  I can eat seemingly endless quantities of tomatoes and basil, but I sometimes get sick of lettuce.

Want to know more about CSAs?  Leave me a comment below. And stay tuned for additional CSA posts, including “How to Set-up a Workplace CSA Drop-off” and an updated list of CSAs for 2012.

Yours in Food,

Marla

A week of CSA Meals

My roommates and I share a weekly CSA box from Ironwood Farm. With three of us in the house, the veggies get eaten quickly and sometimes we have to buy a little extra from the farmers market. However, they have both been out of town lately.  Plus my garden has started produced cucumbers, beans, and tomatoes.   This has left me with a fridge full of veggies and a lot of creative cooking to do on my own.

When my veggie box arrived this week, it occurred to me that perhaps there were others who felt overwhelmed by their produce.  In fact, one of the main reasons people don’t sign up for a CSA share a second time, is that they can’t eat all the veggies or don’t know what to make with them and they feel bad for wasting food.

So, I decided to share with you a week of meals cooked from my CSA box.

Wednesday afternoon, the box arrived:

It contained the following: parsley, green onions, a head of lettuce, 5 tomatoes, a small bag of beans, several potatoes, a bunch of carrots, a cucumber, kale, and a box of blueberries.

Thursday:  Several blueberries, along with some raspberries from my garden, went into my morning oatmeal (with maple syrup and a spoonful of yogurt).  I also had a boiled egg.  For lunch, I made a greek salad of tomatoes, cucumber, feta, olive oil and dill and ate it with a lentil & rice dish that I bought at the Middle Eastern restaurant around the corner from the office.  At dinner time, I informed my boyfriend, Adam, that he was now part of my CSA blogging experiment and that he was recruited to help me eat all the veggies this week.  He’s easygoing, and together we cooked up our Off the Hook hake into Noli Baked Fish (fish fillets baked with tomatoes, parsley, and spiced bread crumbs), with tabouleh, and hummus and pita on the side.  By the end of the day, I had used 4 of the tomatoes, all the parsley, half a cucumber, and some green onion.  I also decided to blanch and freeze the beans, as I have lots in the garden, and beans tend to go bad quickly.

Friday: My usual breakfast of oatmeal with fruit and boiled eggs.  Lunch was leftovers from Thursday’s dinner.  Dinner involved barbequed sausages and veggie dogs after a long afternoon of pickling with my friend Nicole.  Also, for dinner was a salad of lettuce, cucumber, grated beets and grated carrot.

Saturday: I was feeling inspired by the blueberries and the raspberries (that I was still picking from my garden).  Adam & I cooked up a batch of fluffy berry pancakes and roasted some potatoes.  Lunch: leftovers from Thursday & Friday.  (You’ll notice that leftovers are a common theme.  I always make lots in order to have leftovers.  It makes life easier on busy days.)  On Saturday afternoon I was puttering around the garden.  My arugula looked like it was going to bolt, so I decided to pick it and make pesto.  I also had brought some basil at the farmers market and was going to make that into pesto.  And then I had a idea – my garden is covered in nasturtiums, which have a similar flavour to arugula, and after a quick google search I learned that you can make pesto with nasturtium leaves too.  And then my CSA related dinner ideas went out the window, as I found myself food processing gobs of leafy greens into pesto.  I had two giant bowls of pesto pasta for dinner.

Salad Plate

Sunday: Breakfast was leftover pancakes and potatoes before heading back to Nicole’s house for a peach canning extravaganza.  For lunch I brought along lettuce, cucumber and tomato from my CSA box, as well as the last of the tabouleh.  While, I was finishing up the peach peeling, Nicole whipped up lovely salad plates (see right).  And for supper, Adam and I made a quiche of leeks (leftover from the previous week’s CSA box), beet greens, and goat cheese, as well as carrot beet salad, and some very burnt kale chips. (I had the oven turned up too high and kale chips were inedible.  Boo.)

Monday: Oatmeal & blueberries for breakfast and leftover quiche for lunch.  For supper, the second fish from our Off the Hook delivery got turned into a spicy, tomato-y fish soup with carrots and dill.  Yum!

Tuesday: Polenta with cheddar and salsa for breakfast.  (This didn’t involve any CSA veggies, but it is a recent addition to my culinary adventures. Very filing and delicious.) Lunch: More fish soup with biscuits from the bakery down the street.  I made a batch of kale chips for an evening meeting (and didn’t burn them this time).  And for supper, we barbequed some veggie burgers and made another carrot, beet, cucumber, green onion salad.

And now we’re back to Wednesday again.  Breakfast of biscuits with fruit and boiled eggs.  Lunch is leftovers.  Dinner will be pesto pasta. (I froze some pesto on the weekend.)  And this week’s CSA box will arrive any minute.

A quick check of my fridge this morning revealed the following uneaten (but still edible) CSA veggies:
2 small carrots
a handful of blueberries
1 green onion
2 potatoes

As I tallied things up over breakfast, Adam informed me that had he known about the potatoes, he would have eaten those.  All in all, a delicious week.

Yours in food,

Marla

Making the most of your CSA Box

Megan Gray is back with another post for Thinking Inside the Box.  She’s a member of the TapRoot Farm CSA.

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It finally it seems that we have suddenly landed in the middle of summer, and the long sunny days have meant my that my weekly veggie box is bursting with peas, carrots, potatoes, zucchinis, greens, greens, and more greens, and other in-season treasures. So how to make the most of this abundance?

I’m a meal planner, a menu-maker. Every week I sit down with my cookbooks and plan the week’s meals, scoring satisfaction when I find varied recipes that utilize the same grocery items (points for ingredient efficiency!), and seeking to make my week deliciously diverse. I am a food nerd and cooking is my therapy; I seek to try new tastes and techniques but also crave the soul-satisfaction of stand-by comfort foods. When I started getting my weekly veggie box I got excited about the added challenge to my weekly meal planning – it’s like being on one of those cooking shows where they give you three ingredients and you have to come up with something exciting! After awhile, though, I realized that in order for Community Shared Agriculture to work for me, it couldn’t always be an adventure: it had to fit into my everyday life. So now when I open my box I approach it with an eye that looks for ways to include new veggies into old favourites and seeks to find something new. I’ll give you a couple of examples.

Pesto has long been a favourite of mine. Simple, impressive, delicious, and so many things to do with it: drizzle over grilled vegetables or fish, use as a pasta sauce, mix into scrambled eggs, or spread it on pizza or sandwiches. I’d always make pesto when basil was in season and easy to get in big bunches. An abundance of kale in my veggie box one week got me thinking, could kale pesto also be delicious? Just as basic formulas in mathematics seem to work, perhaps pesto is a reliable formula too: a handful of greens, plus olive oil, nuts (I like walnuts – similar taste to pine nuts but cheaper), garlic, and parmesan, equals delicious. And it was. With kale, with spinach, with garlic scapes (omit the extra garlic here, unless you’re fending off vampires), and any other green variable that I’ve tried. When my box contains more greens than I can sauté or steam in a week, I make pesto in batches big enough to freeze. I fill my ice cube trays and pop them in the freezer; the individual cubes are quick to thaw when I need a fast meal (pesto pasta and a side salad celebrating the week’s bounty is a fifteen minute meal that’s fit for a bistro). And it never disappoints.

Another staple in my repertoire has become couscous and chickpea salad. A great side for any Indian style meat, fish, or tofu dish, or a great lunch on its own, it’s another formula that I can depend on no matter what’s fresh. The basic formula is couscous, chickpeas, and a dressing of garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, parsley, and pepper. Add to that whatever combination of vegetables you choose: lately it’s been zucchini, cucumber, fennel, green and yellow beans, snow peas, sugar snaps, broccoli, kohlrabi, shredded carrots – the variety is limited only by what’s available, and using the vegetables raw or lightly blanched means making the most of their fresh flavour as it’s meant to be. And because the combination differs each week, my taste buds don’t get bored.

I’m always excited to find something new I haven’t tried before, such as last week’s callaloo, a leafy green less substantial than kale but heartier than spinach. But I was equally as excited to try it as it’s traditionally prepared (sautéed with spices a la Jamaican cuisine) as I was to find a place for it in my favourite comfort food – pasta (sautéed and mixed with ricotta, lemon juice, pepper, herbs, and penne). Yum.

Community Shared Agriculture works for me because it hasn’t meant a big change in my food lifestyle, but also satisfies allows me to experiment and explore. It’s a fit – which makes supporting local agriculture an easy – and tasty – thing to do.

Kale to the Chief

Welcome to the latest installment of ‘Thinking Inside the Box’ from Jon Geneau. Great minds think alike, and clearly kale and strawberries are on everyone’s minds these days. Jon, who hadn’t attended, or seen the menu for, our cooking class, sent me the following blog post featuring kale chips and pickled strawberries, which he made with his Hutten Family Farm CSA box. So, if you’re looking for variations on the theme, look no further…

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When kale isn’t swimming in butter and onions it sometimes likes to take a bake in the oven giving it a nice crunch. With a little salt and some spices it delivers a lot of flavor in a little snack.

Strawberries usually don’t last too long in the fridge so here’s a way of extending their life while bypassing the freezer stage. Giving a light pickle makes a great sweet & sour punch to salads, sandwiches, sauce for fish or just munchin’ on the side.

Kale Chips

1 bunch Kale Leaves, Washed and Dried Well
2 tbsp Canola Oil
1 tsp Chili Powder
1 tsp Ground Pepper

Preheat the oven to 350oF.

Toss the kale in the oil until evenly coated. Lay out on a baking sheet (or 2) so that the leaves are separate and flat.

Sprinkle with salt, pepper and chili powder. Bake for 10 minutes or until crispy.

Enjoy by themselves or with a little yogurt for dipping.

Pickled Strawberries

A Handful of Clean and Hulled Strawberries
1 c Apple Cider Vinegar
2 tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
4 tbsp Sugar
½ tsp Pink Peppercorns
¼ tsp Fennel Seeds
¼ tsp Coriander Seeds

Place the vinegar, sugar and spices in a small pot and warm up to melt the sugar.

Poor this over the clean strawberries and let them cool to room temperature.

Eat them up or put in the fridge for another time.

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If you’d like to send in a submission to the Thinking Outside the Box column, please contact Marla.  For a list of CSAs in Atlantic Canada, visit the ACORN directory.

Winter Veggies & Creative Cooking

The latest installment of the Thinking Inside the Box column from Jennifer Publicover, member of Avon River CSA.  Avon River is now signing up members for the fall.

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I like to throw my consumer dollar behind local sustainable agriculture, organic practices, the lowering of transport greenhouse gas emissions, and the preservation of valuable farmland. Food is intrinsic to life itself; there are so many good reasons to pay attention to food – and yet, with all that foreknowledge, the most meaningful reason for me crept up on me by surprise as I signed up for a half share of a winter root-crop CSA.

We in our household putz happily around in our own little urban vegetable patch, visiting every day in warmer seasons to see what might be available for supper. However, we have neither the ambition nor the time to look towards winter storage at this point, which is why I am glad to have a friend in the CSA business. I met Amy Lounder of the Avon River CSA through traditional music circles – she is a talented fiddler and I am a flute player. I admired her chutzpah as I watched her set up her new farming enterprise. When the bags of produce and preserves started to role in, it was great fun to rummage and see what surprises she had in store for us each week. Sometimes they contained wacky and wonderful items to which I’d never really been exposed before, but after figuring out how to use them, I quite liked them. It felt great to fill up on such healthy and delicious food and serve it to my children. My kids also got into the spirit, helping out in the kitchen, coming along on the pick-up trips and meeting “our farmer” Amy. The fact that our farmer was a woman was an added bonus as far as I was concerned; in generations not long past, a farmer was often assumed to be a man and the woman of the household was known as the “farmer’s wife” rather than a farmer herself.

These are all great and fairly typical outcomes when one signs up for a CSA share. What is not so typical is that I have celiac. I cannot digest wheat, nor anything containing wheat gluten, which strikes out a huge share of commercially prepared food. Not only are conventional baked goods and pastas off limits, but such mundane flavouring items as ketchup, soy sauce and mayonnaise are often made with either white vinegar or gluten derived from wheat. As the celiac crept slowly upon me in my thirties, I first had to figure out what the problem was and then learn new ways of eating – which I am still learning. There are ways of baking with other non-wheat grains, but it takes skill and experience to produce something edible that does not have the consistency of styrofoam. This is why wheat and wheat gluten are so pervasive as ingredients and additives, as it is the gluten which makes for the pleasing texture. I am also one of those celiacs with an accompanying secondary lactose intolerance, although I can take enzyme tablets to aid in the digestion of milk products – but no such pills exist yet for the digestion of gluten.

In the early stages of my gluten-free journey, I was relieved just to have figured out what to avoid in order to stay healthy, as it is no fun to double over in pain after eating a plate of pasta. I learned to read labels and ask questions. However, it was also a bit daunting. It was downright depressing to remember the taste of all the different foods that I could never again enjoy. I have a slender build to begin with, and it has always been a challenge to keep my weight up. I could no longer eat impulsively; I always had to think it out first. My busy lifestyle and the demands of feeding my children came before looking after myself much of the time, when I should have been learning to make my own foodstuffs from scratch. Eating was no longer pleasure; it became a chore to consume just enough to keep me going, regardless of what it tasted like… until the vegetable surprise packages started rolling in.

It became a fun game to figure out how to use up all these legumes and tubers so that they would not go to waste from week to week, a challenge that kick-started me into taking pleasure in preparing my own food again. I decided to not mourn the things I could not have but to celebrate the things I could have instead – a metaphor that can extend into other areas of life too, including some of the choices we make in favour of sustainability. I do still enjoy some gluten-free baked goods, but my diet has shifted away from them and more onto vegetables, fruits, proteins, and the grains and starches that I can have. I have great respect for vegetarian philosophies but feel that I cannot afford to limit my nutrient intake any further, and so I try to source my fish, meat and eggs intelligently too. I would love to see more wheat-alternatives grown locally; for example, quinoa is a South American staple that is becoming a new North American crop too. It is an extra challenge for some one like me, with dietary limitations, to eat as locally as possible; but participation in a CSA has been an important part of that process and also a very positive step towards better health – for my children, for the local economy, for the environment, and last of all, for me.

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If you are a CSA member and would like to write an article this blog, please email Marla.  If you are looking for a CSA to join, see the directory of Atlantic Canadian CSAs on the ACORN website.

Vegetables of spring, unite!

As the sun finally makes it way out from behind the looming rain clouds, spring vegetables from Hutten Family Farms have been shinning strong in CSA boxes for weeks. With the arrival of shelling peas it was time to bring them together with their garden comrades, the radish.

Radishes usually find themselves entertaining parsley on the side of your entrée but cooking them can yield some interesting results. No more is the bitter snap of the breakfast radish but at last a whisper of sweetness.

Flax Crusted Haddock with Spring Vegetables, Quinoa and Honey Dijon Dressing
Serves 2
250 g Haddock Filets
2 tbsp Flax Seeds
½ c Quinoa, Cooked
2 tbsp Parsley
2 tbsp Toasted Almonds
1 Small Handful Arugula, Chopped
4-5 Radishes
¼ c Shelled Peas
1 Small Carrot, Make Paper Slices Using a Vegetable Peeler

Dressing
1 tbsp Dijon Mustard
2 tbsp Honey
1 tbsp Shallot, Minced Fine
¼ c Apple Cider
1 c Sunflower Oil

To make the dressing simply combine all in a mason jar and shake. Use only what you want, the rest can be stored in the jar in the fridge.
Spread the flax seeds on a plate and lay out the haddock on one side, covering with flax seeds. Heat a frying pan with a little butter and add the fish, flax side down.
When it starts to get golden in color, 2-3 minutes flip the fish and finish cooking for about 3 minutes.
Fill a small pot with water and add the radishes. Bring to a simmer until the radishes are almost cooked. Add the peas and carrot slices and cook for no more then a minute. Strain and mix with the quinoa, parsley, almonds and dressing.

Mason jar dressings are so easy to make, fill ¼ with vinegar and the rest with oil; add some flavorings and shake. They’ll last in the fridge for about a week and just as easier to make then just a few servings.

5 Spice Rhubarb Crumble And Sweetened Whipped Quark
Serves 4
1 CSA Bunch of Rhubarb Cut Into 2 cm Pieces
1 tbsp 5-Spice Powder
½ c Brown Sugar
1 tsp Corn Starch

Crust
1.5 c Oats
½ c Butter
¼ c Flour
¼ c Brown Sugar
1 Pinch Salt

Whipped Quark
¼ c Quark
¼ c Whipping Cream
2 tbsp Icing Sugar
½ tsp Vanilla Extract

Toss together the rhubarb, 5-spice, cornstarch and sugar until well combined. Fill up a small baking dish with a minimum 3 cm thickness.
Knead the flour and butter together until course. Mix together with the oats, sugar and salt. Cover the rhubarb with this topping and place in an oven at 350oF. When the crust is golden brown and rhubarb juice is bubbling take it out and cool.
While crumble is cooling, whip the cream until it starts to get thick. Toss in the quark, sugar and vanilla and keep whipping until its thick and would look good on some warm crumble. Apply to some warm crumble and enjoy!

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Jon Geneau is a member of the Hutten Family Farm CSA.  If you’d like to send in a submission to the Thinking Outside the Box column, please contact Marla.  For a list of CSAs in Atlantic Canada, visit the ACORN directory.

The first CSA drop off of the season!

Beets greens, tiny yellow zucchini, baby turnips, radishes, red currant jelly, swiss chard, lettuce… Rupert has just delivered the first CSA boxes of the season to the Ecology Action Centre office.  This is my first vegetable CSA box, and I’m quite excited.

Rupert Jannasch and Heather Johnson of Ironwood Farm have been farming for many years, but this is the first year of their CSA.  Ironwood Farm is located at the mouth of the Avon River in Hants County.  You can check out beautiful photos of the farm on their website.

The cold, rainy spring has meant that the season is off to a slow start.  Rupert told us that he had hoped that the beans would be ready and the zucchini more plentiful.  I’m not concerned – they’ll come when (if?) the sun comes out – I’m already thinking about dinner.

The greens could be made into a quiche, or perhaps a stir fry with peanut sauce.  Yesterday at a catered lunch meeting, I had a delicious sandwich made with cheddar, peach jam and homemade bread.  Could I recreate it with the red currant jelly?  (It had never occurred before yesterday to me to put cheese and jam together.)  Or maybe I’ll keep things simple and make a hearty salad with the greens, adding some other odds and ends already in my kitchen, like asparagus, grated carrot, nuts, boiled egg, maybe some cheese… Oh, the possibilities!

Yours in food,
Marla

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Do you have a subscription to a CSA?  Want to write about what you’re making?  Drop me a line.  We’re always looking for submissions to our Thinking Inside the Box column.