Farm Sharing
Inspired by friends I’ve seen posting about their farm shares on Facebook, I recently decided to try one. Essentially, you sign up for a whole growing season to get a box of veggies & fruits from a local farm each week (or, sometimes, every other week). As they harvest the crops, they divvy them up amongst the shares, so you never know what you’re going to get from week to week, but it’s usually a good amount.
I’d always been interested, but didn’t really know where to start until my friend (and former book publishing co-worker) Melissa mentioned she’d signed up for one with Highland Orchards. Their setup is a lot cheaper than some others I’ve seen in Philly, and their drop-off points are super convenient—the Wednesday pickup is at a bakery 3 blocks away from my house, and several others are within 10 blocks. So, once I’d convinced John that not knowing what you were going to get each week was part of the fun, and that it would actually save us money, I signed us up for a half share (enough for 2 people.)
Today was the first pickup, and I was super excited. I couldn’t even wait until I got home before peeking inside the box. Here’s what we got:
A few apples, some red potatoes, red onions, carrots, baby spinach, a lovely head of red leaf lettuce, and a butternut squash, along with a bundle of herbs I have tentatively identified as spearmint thanks to the magic of Twitter. Not bad!
I’m planning to use most of the veggies as creatively as possible—I want this to be an experience that helps me expand my cooking abilities and challenge myself in the kitchen, just as the Joy of Love challenged my photography skills. So I’m not going to go the easy route and make butternut squash soup—especially since neither John nor I am much of a butternut squash or soup person. Instead, I’m planning to make a Pesto and Butternut Squash Pizza recipe I found in Cooking Light‘s archives and possibly some butternut squash fries with any leftover ingredients.
Tonight, however, I didn’t have a ton of time to plan before Spells tutoring, so I had to wing it a bit. After getting some ideas from my smartphone in the Whole Foods parking lot, I purchased some additional materials to create tonight’s dinner: a Baby Spinach and Leftover Mixed Green Salad with Grape Tomatoes and Red Onions. Serving it on a plate, I placed a Whole Foods Parmesan-crusted chicken breast on each salad portion, and added a side of whole grain pilaf. Here’s the salad, pre-serving:
Not super exciting, but the menu isn’t something I would have normally put together without specific instructions from a magazine, and several of the ingredients will figure into Friday’s meatless (for Lent) dinner in entirely different ways, so I think I get extra points for that. My future plans are a bit more outside of the box, so stay tuned….