Wednesday, June 07, 2006


leeks and more leeks

dedicated readers may recall that this spring i bit the bullet and joined my local csa. the first delivery arrived yesterday.

so i ran out after 5pm and hopped the lex to borough hall, then flew down court st. to the church where the csa pick up happens. i arrived at 5:25pm, all good.

being myself, i've been following m. pollan's little food pieces in the ny times, which are locked away behind the times select barrier, so i can't even link to them thru rss for you, alas. what annoys me about these is that they don't the least challenge the idea that eating local and organic has to be incredibly expensive.

what did i get this first week for my US$14? 3 bags of veggies, and 1 quart of beautiful ruby-red tiny strawberries.

that's right: local, organic strawberries. my husband took a look at them -- he's used to buying those horrible, swollen, pale monsters from california that mold overnight -- and said "what's that stuff on them?"

"dust," i replied. "these are actually grown in real soil, not hydroponically or whatever, and you have to wash the dust off them."

while it's early in the season, after he had a couple he allowed that they were pretty good. this quart of berries alone was probably worth US$6 this time of year (welcome to new york!).

i also received: 1 bunch curly or pepper cress; 1 huge bunch giant flowering chives (i mean, these had to be 10-inches high, complete with the purple ball of blossoms on top); 1 bunch leeks (3 gigantic leeks, probably 2 inches thick and more than 16 inches long); 1 bunch rhubarb; and 1 very large head of oak-leaf lettuce. all this stuff is organic, so in the grocery store you bet i would have paid a lot more than US$8 for the entire lot.

the very large organic lettuce would have been US$2.79 on its own (altho' in truth it's often on sale in my local supermarket). so i felt like i received a fair value, if a somewhat unusual mix of stuff -- tho' actually i don't think i've ever seen pepper cress in any store and only rarely at the greenmarket. . .

i will be making cold vichyoisse with the leeks and probably a ginger-rhubarb compote with fiori di sicilia. . .

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posted by fortune | 7:05 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments