Managing Vegetal Riches
Nov. 11th, 2003 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutAs many of you know, I get a weekly box of organic veggies from Terra Firma Farm. I've been doing this since we moved to the Bay Area, making us one of their customers in longest standing -- seven years and counting; they've only been in existence for eight. Its weekly bounty has shaped my approach to cooking in a subtle but pervasive way.
Cooking from the box has its challenges, even after all these years, as astute readers have noticed.
These days, those challenges tend to fall into two categories:
1. pervasive vegetables.
2. problem vegetables.
Pervasive vegetables are vegetables that show up in huge quantities, week after week, when they are in season. Terra Firma works really hard to provide variety in their boxes, so formerly-pervasive veggies like summer squash and broccoli are no longer quite the problem they used to be.
Nonetheless, during the summer, I get overwhelmed with corn on the cob and melon, and believe it or not, it can be hard to keep up with the tomatoes too. Sometimes cucumbers seem to accumulate as well.
And in the winter, it's butternut squash a go go. Often I find sweet potatoes and potatoes backing up as well. And I always have too many carrots.
Right now, I also have a lot more apples and Fuyu persimmons than I know what to do with. Oranges will soon come in quantity, but it's always easy to just juice them. Plus, last year I learned that pistachios and oranges are my *favorite snack ever*.
And I like salad, but not quite in the quantities that the farm likes to grace us with. Their salad mix is both scrumptious, and apparently successful. Certainly it's abundant.
The other category are problem vegetables. Vegetables that my household (of two, plus cats, who aren't big veggie fans) just doesn't like. Because Terra Firma's vegetables come from just one farm, it isn't practical to request that these not be included in our weekly haul. As I'm a flexible eater (and as the boy has apparently learned to trust my culinary skills), this isn't a problem on the macro scale.
Beets are an example of a problem vegetable. Cauliflower is another. Believe it or not, asparagus is a third. (Spring is no fun for me, I tell you.) We're also not fond of cilantro.
I used to give away all of my problem veggies, but as I've moved away from (or become estranged with, in one case) my usual recipients, this has become more of a challenge.
Too bad. I like being the Veggie Fairy.
I miss cooking so much for other people, too -- another good way to handle the excess. Must work on this. (Paradoxically, I feel like I have more regular friends that I see than I used to. Something is odd here...)
Cooking from the box has its challenges, even after all these years, as astute readers have noticed.
These days, those challenges tend to fall into two categories:
1. pervasive vegetables.
2. problem vegetables.
Pervasive vegetables are vegetables that show up in huge quantities, week after week, when they are in season. Terra Firma works really hard to provide variety in their boxes, so formerly-pervasive veggies like summer squash and broccoli are no longer quite the problem they used to be.
Nonetheless, during the summer, I get overwhelmed with corn on the cob and melon, and believe it or not, it can be hard to keep up with the tomatoes too. Sometimes cucumbers seem to accumulate as well.
And in the winter, it's butternut squash a go go. Often I find sweet potatoes and potatoes backing up as well. And I always have too many carrots.
Right now, I also have a lot more apples and Fuyu persimmons than I know what to do with. Oranges will soon come in quantity, but it's always easy to just juice them. Plus, last year I learned that pistachios and oranges are my *favorite snack ever*.
And I like salad, but not quite in the quantities that the farm likes to grace us with. Their salad mix is both scrumptious, and apparently successful. Certainly it's abundant.
The other category are problem vegetables. Vegetables that my household (of two, plus cats, who aren't big veggie fans) just doesn't like. Because Terra Firma's vegetables come from just one farm, it isn't practical to request that these not be included in our weekly haul. As I'm a flexible eater (and as the boy has apparently learned to trust my culinary skills), this isn't a problem on the macro scale.
Beets are an example of a problem vegetable. Cauliflower is another. Believe it or not, asparagus is a third. (Spring is no fun for me, I tell you.) We're also not fond of cilantro.
I used to give away all of my problem veggies, but as I've moved away from (or become estranged with, in one case) my usual recipients, this has become more of a challenge.
Too bad. I like being the Veggie Fairy.
I miss cooking so much for other people, too -- another good way to handle the excess. Must work on this. (Paradoxically, I feel like I have more regular friends that I see than I used to. Something is odd here...)
