Because the Poughkeepsie Farm Project does outreach for the community, as well as having a Tuesday pick-up (for some strange reason, the day I start to want veggies for the week) and because someone I know there is an assistant manager, the Accidental Locavore chose it as my first “official” CSA (Community Sponsored Agriculture).
What I didn’t realize was a couple of really great perks come along with membership. First, is that you get to decide what you’re bringing home. For my small share, we get to choose a pre-determined amount of five things every week. Then there’s the pick-it-yourself option, where you can go and pick, say, a pint of strawberries as part of the deal. And then there are the guests. A couple of weeks ago, there was a woman selling freshly-killed, pasture-raised chickens. I didn’t get one, only because we weren’t going to be around much for dinner and I didn’t want to freeze it (more like no room in the freezer). Hopefully, she’ll be back soon.
What’s great about the opportunity to choose your vegetables is that seeing something will spark an idea for building a meal around it. Kind of like a version of Chopped, where you have a say.
Seeing all the Asian veggies the other day gave me an idea for a version of my favorite Thai mint fried rice, so bok choy, scallions and Chinese cabbage went into the bags. This week, I’ll possibly do a riff on cole slaw with several different members of the cabbage family. And definitely another Thai-inspired dish, using cilantro and some beautiful Boston lettuce to make a pork salad in lettuce cups.
We were excited to see frisée, as salade frisée lardons (bacon) is one of our favorites. My husband decided it was time to make poached eggs the classic way, where you slide an egg into simmering water, while I watched, bemused, from the sidelines. I know from experience how easy it looks on TV, and how hard it is, having messed up a lot of eggs! The other night, I used some more frisée to make a simple salad with a sherry vinegar and black truffle oil dressing.* It went beautifully with some steak tartare, proving once again that all you need are a few perfectly fresh ingredients to make something wonderful!
*Dressing: 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar, 1 tablespoon black truffle oil, 3 tablespoons very good olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Mix well and toss with frisée.
it’s thrilling (and honest!) to call it a simple salad, but I never knew that we had black truffle oil in the USA — where can I buy it? and huge thanks for the Poughkeepsie Farm Project!