Farm Fresh Adventure this Summer

Who would have thought a box of beets, salad greens, kale, spinach and radishes could be so exciting?

On June 14th, I picked up my first share of vegetables from Salute! Farm and Vineyard south of Woodstock on Pleasant Valley Road. Salute! operates a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm where individuals purchase shares of produce in advance of the growing season, and then collect their share of the farm’s bounty each week from late spring through early fall.

Buying into a CSA isn’t like going to the grocery store and picking out the veggies you want to purchase that week. It is more like growing your own vegetables, but without the work and with a greater diversity of produce throughout the summer.

Your CSA veggies are grown at a local farm, and each week you will find only those vegetables that are ripe for picking at that time. For instance, tomatoes and peppers don’t ripen in this area until at least July, so you won’t see them until then.

Each Wednesday for 20 weeks, I will claim a box of fresh produce, split the goods with a friend who is splitting the share with me, and over the seven days that follow, I will explore the many ways to prepare the vegetables of the week.

Week one brought an assortment of salad greens, beets, radishes, kale, spinach and a pound of cheese from Prairie Pure Cheese, LLC in Belvidere.

The beets were easy. Bake beets wrapped in foil (with one inch of stems and roots still attached) until they are soft, then immerse them in cold water and the thin skin will slide right off. Slice beets or section them and add to a salad. They are sweet and the color is magnificent. Be careful not to dye your fingers or clothes accidentally though. If you do, try lemon juice to remove the stain.

Radishes are always bitter to me, so I let my co-subscriber have them all. She ate them raw and thought they were tasty.

Kale--what to do with a bunch of kale and the beet greens? After scouring the cookbooks in my kitchen, I settled on sautéing the greens in some olive oil with plenty of garlic, and then using it on a pizza. It was like a spinach pizza, only more “earthy” in flavor due to the beet greens.

Spinach is good as a salad. I like to add a little balsamic vinaigrette, some red onion sliced thin and nuts (pine nuts work well).

At the end of week number one, the only “waste” generated from the produce were the stems from the greens, the skin and roots from the beets and the radish tops.

I like the idea of eating locally grown produce. There is the good feeling of eating something that was grown here in McHenry County, at a farm that I have been told by the owner to think of as my own.

I also enjoy the challenge of learning new recipes to cook the vegetables each week, especially the ones that I would be unlikely to buy in the store.

Anyone can embark on their own adventure with produce this summer. Whether they visit the Woodstock Farmer’s Market on Tuesday or Saturday mornings or sign up with a local CSA, there is a whole new world of taste, health and fun waiting to be discovered.