And so we begin again: a new cycle has started and now we’re in the Winter veggie box program. This one runs every other week, so these posts will be a little more spaced out. That’s okay – given the weather and all of the coordination/events around dd’s 5th birthday, I’m a little spaced out, too.

The fun of opening each box is in trying to figure out A) what’s in it and B) what you’re going to make with what’s in it. The difficulty of opening each box is much the same – a general exhale of “What on earth is THAT?!” and “Are those…{insert guessed fruit/veggie here}…?!” Between our cookbooks, the interwebs, and our grocery store, we typically can ID things before the week is out. Finding things to do with everything: now THAT’S a challenge. As it is, we currently have a glut of apples and winter squash in the fridge; this is mostly due to timing fiascos related to box arrival dates, apple picking, untimely nor’easters and other such shenanigans. At this point, I’m ready to start cutting things up and just throwing them into the crock pot wholesale, just to use up the boxes and see if any of the creations can work. I’m guessing they will, but I’d still like to be a tad bit more orderly about it if I can.

Welcome to Winter...

So, here’s what came in this week’s veggie box, our first of the winter share:

• Purple Kale
• Carrots
• Bok Choi
• Comice Pears
• Red Potatoes
• Parsnips
• Butternut Squash
• Yukon Gold Potatoes
• Macintosh Apples
• Yellow Onion

The bok choi already got partially used in Bok-os, and the pears, apples, carrots, and some of the potatoes are crock pot-bound this week. Some of the other items may end up going into crock pots or other dishes as part of next weekend’s continued birthday festivities. It’s always so hard for me to think of squash as “party food”, but I’m sure I can rally if rallying is what’s required.

I will continue price-checking with this CSA, as with the Fall box program. The price is still the same – $20 per box. So, that’s my baseline. I ended up getting 1 box pretty much for free out of the Fall CSA, so I wonder if I can get about half a box for free out of this four-box program? Given the more pedestrian contents, I’m guessing that won’t be the case, but I’d like to try to be optimistic.

First off, I have to apologize for the delay. I had planned to post this last week, and then NATURE happened in a big, bad way and that threw off just about everything. For, though it was only late October, Mother Nature decided that it was high time we had a nor’easter all up in this joint. We lost power, and with the power went the heat. We could have dealt easily without the power, but the heat was an issue when the temps were forecasted to dip into the teens (F) overnight. We managed a night in the house like that, and then the next night we spent at a friend’s house. Thankfully, our power was out for only 48hrs, but it was enough to throw everything into disarray and the rest of the week was all about trying to get things back on track.

Second, the winter CSA has begun. In what I think is a bit of a bungle in timing, the final Fall veggie box was delivered on a Friday (October 28) and the first Winter veggie box was delivered the following Tuesday (November 1). Given that the weekend was a complete mess from the storm, all the veggies from the first box were still in the house when the veggies from the second box arrived. AUGH!! Thankfully, the CSA-powers-that-be decided to make the Winter share an every-other-week deal, so we have a brief respite until we get inundated with produce again.

Third, the final tally (and the results for the final Fall veggie box) can be found below. We did come in under this week, and my guess is that this is partially due to the more mundane contents (carrots, garlic, etc.) and partially due to the inability to find a perfect comparable for the purple potatoes (which they just don’t carry in my store). I’d be surprised if they went for the same price as the red potatoes – the closest equivalent – but I don’t know that the price difference would make up the gap, either.

Some final thoughts about the Fall CSA:

1) It basically worked out to 8 veggie boxes for the price of 7. That’s not a bad deal. Since I went into this program to experiment with price, as well as variety/quality, this is an important thing for me to see.

2) We definitely branched out and tried new things; we also picked up some new favorites (like Bok-os). Again, this is hitting on one of my stated goals/desired outcomes.

3) There’s a downside to the CSA: what do you do when you get stuff you don’t like and/or stuff that you already have overflowing in your house? I’m still working on finding a new home for the parsnips, since it’s now fairly clear that I’m the only one who likes them (but they don’t appear to get along well with my stomach). On the other side of that coin, our fridge is overrun with apples, since we went apple picking AND we’ve gotten apples in every box throughout the entire run of the Fall CSA. I’d say that we could make apple crisp with them, but we’ve got leftover birthday cake in the house from dd’s kiddo party and we’re gearing up to make yet another cake because her family party is this coming weekend. I know, I know, first-world problem to be sure. BUT, a fridge full of apples is also one where you can’t store other things. Like more cake.

I already knew the upsides: getting us to eat more fresh produce, incorporating new foods, branching out our cooking…and all of that has happened. Would I do it again? Most definitely. I’m not yet sure about the Winter share; we’ll have to see how the next eight weeks goes. I predict I’ll be trying to find a lot of ways to use winter squash…