CSA

After attending last year's Bellevue Farmer's Market and loving the folks and food at the Growing Washington booth, we decided this year to participate in Growing Washington's CSA. Mostly based out of Alm Hill Gardens (and partnering with several other local farms, dairies and orchards), the program offers a wide variety of options. We loved how flexible the system was - you could choose a 20 or 25 week subscription, pay either all up front or in quarterly increments, have a "local choice" subscription (in which you can choose the individual items in your weekly delivery) or "farmer's choice" subscription (in which the farmers select your weekly items). There were four sizes to choose from - mini (6 weekly items), small (9 weekly items), large (12 weekly items) or family (15 weekly items). And there were lots of possible add-ons to your weekly delivery such as milk, eggs, butter, jam, cheese, sour cream, honey, yogurt, pasta, and coffee. After selecting all of your options, you can then find the closest volunteer to your home who serves as the weekly delivery point - the CSA delivers your box and your fellow neighbors' boxes to the volunteer's front porch and there is a several hour window once a week to come and pick up your box.

We wanted to expand our culinary horizons a bit and have a weekly surprise, so we went with the small Farmer's Choice box, and added on a weekly skim milk delivery. Here's the results of our first week's delivery:

The box included Pink Lady apples (stored from last year's harvest), garlic scapes, spring garlic, head lettuce, sweet spring onions, radishes, a spicy greens mix, baby spinach, strawberries, and non-fat milk from Twin Brook Creamery.

Matt devoured the radishes, and we had quite a few salads this week. We had never had garlic scapes before and found them to be absolutely delicious with a mild garlic taste. 

We added our ingredients to a few of our tried and true recipes: homemade pizza with dough from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (added lots of fresh garlic on top which roasted nicely), avocado basil bacon pasta (added fresh garlic), Matt's chili (we added more garlic, scapes, and onions here)

And we tried out a few new recipes to incorporate some of our bounty:

• Garlic Scape hummus (I halved the recipe and then added a bit more olive oil and water to make it the creamy texture I prefer in hummus).
• Garlic Scape Carbonara. This was the star recipe of the week, absolutely delicious! (We used penne, no red pepper flakes. Matt would have liked to have added a bit of cream to the sauce, but I liked it as is!)

Can't wait for this week's delivery!

Gas Works Park

Cowiche Canyon, Yakima

Two Magnificent Mountain Views in One Day

Wildflowers near Mount Saint Helens

Sunset on Mount Rainier

Of Dr. Seuss Flowers and the Space Needle

Alliums in bloom in South Lake Union

Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park

Petroglyphs

Columbia River

Old Vantage Highway

Opening Day of the Bellevue Farmer's Market (2013)

It's that time of year again! Since our CSA doesn't begin for a couple of weeks, I picked up some greenhouse-grown tomatoes from Kittitas Valley Greenhouse, some fresh kale for parmesan kale chips and rhubarb for Strawberry Rhubarb compote from Alm Hill Gardens (alas none of the farmers had any strawberries yet so that was a grocery store purchase!), lemon hummus from House of the Sun (I love this so much I really should look into a homemade recipe), and mozzarella cheese from Samish Bay Cheese for a little "Margo salad" (as mom calls it!). And hazelnuts from Holmquist Hazelnut Orchards for salads. Yum!

First sunset of 2013

Meydenbauer Bay