CSA and Cooking

One of the fun things I am enjoying about being part of a CSA (community supported agriculture) program is the different kinds of vegetables we get for each installment. This week we received some staple items such as onions and potatoes, but we also got ones like brussels sprouts, parsnips and celeriac.

If I was at the store, I would not think to buy these veggies, let alone put them in a stir fry, like in the pad thai we made tonight, but we experimented and it came out great! In fact, we have been creating our weekly menu based on the CSA veggies rather than trying to fit them into our "regular" menu.

I enjoy cooking and I also like to learn new flavors and textures to put in my recipes. I am personally really good at spicing foods, so the rarer interplay of these vegetables compared to the spices I know allows me a new spectrum of subtlety and nuance in my cooking.

For Thanksgiving, we had three different kinds of squash: butternut, acorn and delicata. The acorn and delicata we got from the CSA and the mix came out great! On Monday, we got another butternut and delicata, each from the CSA and the medley came out wonderful. The delicata has a nice, sweet flavor which mixes well with the butternut and maple syrup.

In any event, I have really enjoyed cooking with these new foods recently and I think I am going to start adding new and strange fruits and veggies to my regular shopping, to see what I can get for flavors.