The week of May 12, 2008, we got rhubarb, spinach, head lettuce, salad mix, spring garlic (they are not onions), herb (mint), radish and asparagus.

Hours and contact info:

Pick up IS ALWAYS ON MONDAYS regardless of holidays.

Sandy Spring
Hours of pick-up: 1PM to 7PM
Location: Meeting House Rd off 108 in the center of Sandy Spring. Park in front of the Community House (first, large white building) and go to the porch on the side of the building. There will be signage directing you to the porch.

Contacts: Meg Pease-Fye at meg.peasefye@fda.hhs.gov or 301-796-1130 to check that this is your site.

For Sandy Spring logistics questions, please contact Gene Klinger at 301-260-1635.

Rockville
Hours: 2PM to 7PM
Location: 2 blocks from the Rockville Metro at the corner of Maple & Reading
Contact: Vanessa Strunk at vandiva@comcast.net or 301-424-9142.

Kensington
Hours: 3PM to 7PM
Location: 9823 Haverhill Drive, Kensington, MD 20895 CORRECTED ZIP CODE Please Mapquest for exact directions.
Contact: Winnie Holbrooke at winniekh@aol.com or 301-509-8097.

This week Bernice sent along a Washington Post recipe link for rhubarb. In general, if you go to Epicurious and type in a mix of ingredients (kale, collards, mushrooms, onions, etc.), you will get many recipes. Epicurious has over 850 recipes for rhubarb alone. We also have some favorites on our website at Our CSA Recipes.

At this time of year, we get lots of greens. In general, you can wash and chop any combo of leafy greens (kale, spinach, collards, even radish and beet greens) and saute them in olive oil and garlic for just a couple minutes. Just long enough to wilt them. Then sprinkle them with balsamic vinegar or lemon. Takes five minutes and is a great vegetable dish. A reminder that eating cruciferous vegetables raw is a thyroid inhibitor. So if you have slow thyroid function, you should cook them first.
If you get more than you can eat in a week of something like greens, they store well. Either wash and spin them and store in the ‘fridge in a salad spinner where they will last a week for sure or clean them up and get excess water off and freeze. You can also steam them slightly and freeze them in bags. They are great added later to soups and casseroles.

Farmer Pam’s suggestion for using spring garlic. Use spring garlic like you would regular garlic. It’s juicier. Pam likes to saut‚ her garlic with asparagus and mushrooms. We will get mushrooms soon too. I personally steam my asparagus for a minute first before sauteeing.

More Food for Thought

The purpose of this section is to give you resources to connect the dots between the CSA experience and living in a local, more sustainable way.

Book recommendations include Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (2007) and any books by Michael Pollan, such as last year’s Omnivore’s Dilemma. Another good one is Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good, Clean and Fair, by Carlos Petrini, founder of the Slow Food movement.

Sometimes I will provide you with an opportunity to advocate on behalf of independent farmers like ours. Even though the number of independent farmers is decreasing (not good), the majority of new independent farmers are women, like our farmer, Pam Stegall Roberts. She puts her educational (anthropology) and conference planning background to great use in coordinating the volume of logistics and people (Amish) involved in her operation, along with ten years of organic growing experience.

In case you are interested, a good advocacy site for organic food is Organic Consumers. In fact, right now you can lend your voice regarding a moratorium on corporate incentives, promoting agrofuels as the fix for coal and petroleum fuel sources. Valuable forestlands are being cut to grow corn, soy and other fuel crops, using chemicals and lots of water. It is not a complete solution for reducing greenhouse gases, regardless of the spin. Agro fuels.

Get those fingers in the dirt! CSA members Karen and Scott took a group of kids from a housing project in Southeast Washington to Calvert Farm in April. These are kids who rarely have an opportunity to explore the outdoors, much less an organic farm. According to Pam, the kids planted, cleaned and ate some raw veggies, freshly picked. They seemed to really enjoy it. Karen reports the day in more detail at her website Test Drive Kitchen. Karen plans to focus some of her cooking blog on recipes for the contents of her weekly CSA box.

Glad to be meeting many of you today.

Erin