It's Photo Essay on Organic Fruit and Veggies Time!
Or
Guess who's been too busy writing too many papers for too many classes to cook, much less post.


Have I told you about the CSA? I think I may have told you about the CSA, only several dozen times, at least if I see you socially. And I'm about this close to becoming a street-preacher on the fineness of the CSA.



CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and the acronym has become a noun for the types of programs by which communities support local agriculture. Here's how the one I'm in works: You pay in advance, either by the week, or by the season for a discount. Every Wednesday, our farmer drives a refrigerated truck down from Northeast Georgia, and drops boxes of produce at various locations around the city. I'd had to go without during the spring, having no time to pick up my boxes. But summer has brought a new season, and honey's job is in close proximity to a drop off.



The box is a mix of whatever's ripe that week. The food is incredibly flavorful, and keeps surprisingly well; during the past week I was writing the aforementioned papers, and had no time to cook. I stuck the tomatoes, squash, and okra in paper bags on the counter and lost a single tomato in a week. The rest got roasted yesterday. Muskmelons (Cantalopues come from France, are less aromatic and sweet, and slightly flavorful; these might in fact be cantaloupes, as you can buy heirloom seeds, but given that this is the South, it's more likely that I've got muskmelons.) have to be cut immediately, but once you refrigerate the pieces, you're good. Oh, and even though my copy of the Food Bible says that you shouldn't refrigerate okra, my okra in a paper bag on the counter grew mold.



As delicious and long-lived as the produce is, this is not supermarket produce. My early corn had a snaggle-toothed ear; the cores in the tomatoes don't grow down, but out, and occasinally in the late spring, I get to learn what the phrase "bolt" means in regards to lettuce. The corn is particularly tricky, often harboring grubs. I don't even attempt to deal with them while alive: the corn goes into a sink of water for a few minutes, then into a 300 degree oven until it smells like roasted corn (usually about 30-45 minutes). Then I shuck it, and cut off the tops, which don't tend to grow kernels, and are where the grubs like to live. Also, topless ears fit into gallon bags.


But I never have seen anything as red as the insides of these tomatoes, or gotten a melon with such pretty striping inside the rind (my friends got the one where the stripes were more pronounced). I know what pink-eyed peas are now, and I may have them for lunch.



This is the time of year for abundance, and it's wonderful to be reminded that there is so much more to our food than the mundane and predictable characteristics we usually assign it. The food is perfect for simple treatments, surprises and this time of year if I'm not coking it, I'm thinking about it. Enjoy the pictures.