{Note: If you’re wondering what happened to week 5, the answer is that we took the week off…}

If there’s one thing I LOVE about our local farm, it’s that they have the most amazing cherry tomatoes I’ve ever had in my entire life. These things are like candy, seriously. So when I saw that this week’s veggie box included not just a pint of cherry tomatoes but also some heirloom tomatoes, I swooned…and then promptly told dh that I was GETTING THIS VEGGIE BOX and we will FIGURE OUT how to get through them all before I leave for BlogHer’12. (I’m heading to NYC without the family, but since cherry tomatoes don’t last all that long in our house, this shouldn’t be a problem.)

This week’s list of goodies was a nice balance of “WTHMORECUCUMBERS?!” and “Ohhhh Tomatoes!”. We even got a pair of small purple potatoes, which promptly were turned into purple potato chips with the remnants from a prior week’s veggie’s box. In fact, thanks to our local farmstand (which has a fishmonger truck on Fridays only), our dinner Friday night was entirely local: sea scallops from Provincetown, corn from the farm and potato chips made from the farm’s purple potatoes. SO GOOD.

TOMATOES!! YEAY!!!

• Potatoes
• Green Peppers
• Cucumbers
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Corn
• Wax Beans
• Zucchini
• Heirloom Tomatoes

Now, lest you think we don’t have a plan for the heirlooms yet…guess again. DH has a basil plant at work (don’t judge – I think it’s wicked cool), and he brought home a container of freshly picked basil leaves to go with the heirlooms. And I will acquire some mozzarella. And then we shall have a caprese salad and ALL WILL BE RIGHT WITH THE WORLD. But lest anyone think I’ve gone crazy locavore and am planning to press my own olive oil…think again. Colavita is my friend. And it will still be awesome.

The peppers will likely be snack-time for the kiddos, who are complete pepper-heads, and the wax beans may just get steamed and eaten with dinner. That’s the funny thing about some of these summer veggies: they’re so wonderful that the best preparation is often next-to-no work. Just wash, dry and eat. Or maybe wash, steam and eat. Zucchini and other squash do well on the grill (especially if you sprinkle some spices and herbs on top, or a mixture like Penzeys Greek Seasoning – a fan favorite in our household). It’s not until you start to get to the fall and all those winter squash that more prep really needs to come into play.

So score one yet again for the veggie box – the simpler the preparation, the easier it is to incorporate into a busy schedule that leaves little time for elaborate dishes during the week. More on the value of the box in a later post…for now, I’m just going to enjoy making my (even brief) plans for all this lovely local veggie goodness.

After so long without a CSA, it’s actually fairly difficult getting back into the swing of things – making sure that we plan meals around what we got and building in the time needed to make the CSA worth its weight. We’ve had a minor amount of spoilage over the past few weeks, but we’ve tried to make things work as best as we can. The corn went the first night, and we have an idea for something to do with the turnips, beets and potatoes (the only downside being that it requires using the oven and it’s a KAJILLION DEGREES outside, so the last place I want more heat is INSIDE my air-conditioned house).

So, here’s how things shook out for this week:

All in all, it’s not a huge savings, and the odds are that we won’t have some massive shift that suddenly gets us in the black for the remainder of the CSA season. Still, that’s not the only point, so consider this only one variable in the overall equation.

Hopefully the summer CSA boxes will yield more recipes, too; guess I have some experimentation in the kitchen to get on about…