CSA Fun!

This fall Rob and I signed up for a CSA (Community Shared Agriculture) with Genesis Growers, an organic farmer in Illinois. We did it for the fall/winter starting in November and ending in mid December. We tried SO many new things! We got lots of sweet potatoes, beets, cabbage, greens, carrots, apples, pears, cranberries and parsnips. We also got TONS of different kinds of squash. We got butternut, delicata, carnival, acorn, queensland blue and some giant one that rotted before we could use it. We got some weird crap we'd never even heard of like kohlrabi and white carrots. We really loved the sweet potatoes, making fish tacos with cabbage and carrot slaw and trying new squash recipes. I baked pumpkin pies from real pumpkins and I made 3 batches of cranberry brownies. I cheated though - store bought crust and box brownies. Rob learned how to make kale and beet chips. Each week we had to go and pick up the box from a nearby restaurant. The farm would email me on Tuesdays to let me know what to expect in our box which really helped me plan out our menus. I mostly utilized Pinterest for recipe ideas and sometimes we just would have to wing it. The only downside - besides finding time to pick it up every Wednesday - was we wasted some of the food. Even though we really cut back on what we were buying at the grocery store, we just couldn't get through everything! We had to throw out cabbage, beets and a squash that went bad before we could use them. This really broke my heart, but I'm also really proud of us for getting through as much as we did. By doing the CSA we really had to adapt our normal diets and it definitely left lasting results. I'm now eating a mostly vegetarian diet and Rob discovered he actually loves some veggies he didn't think he would. I don't think I could commit to doing a CSA all year round, but it was great for 5 weeks. I hope we can do it again in the future!