May 20, 2009 – This week’s featured fruits and vegetables are Spring onions, radishes, rhubarb, head lettuce, herb (mostly mint), collard or kale (kale is leafy, collard is flat), bunched spinach or salad mix.

Recipes

Eating seasonally brings new habits. Two of my new spring habits: greens and radishes!

I used to be overwhelmed by the amount of greens and radishes in my spring CSA box; now I look forward to them. Over at my blog, I have an old entry that mentions my very favorite thing to do with abundant greens: put them into a fantastic garden greens quiche. (It also mentions one of my favorite radish recipes.)

Another thing one can do with greens is blanch and freeze them for later use; pop over to the blog 24 boxes and view or print out their pdf on how to do it. While there, click on their graphic at the top of the web page to find their recent entries, where they have links to recipes for other seasonal vegetables, like asparagus and rhubarb.

For more ideas on what to do with seasonal vegetables, I’ll be posting my weekly menu plans over at my blog throughout the course of the CSA. For example, last week I made coconut curried shrimp with radish wedges, though I substituted marinated tofu for the shrimp. Tasty!

Food For Thought

Talk about bounty: here are two fun events about local food, happening (alas) the same day!

For moviegoers – a must-see!

On Tuesday, May 26th, at 8 pm, The Avalon Theatre in Washington, DC is hosting a movie screening and panel discussion of “FRESH!,” a documentary (and call to action!) about sustainable food. The panel will feature not only the director, Ana Sofia Joanes, and two of the farmers featured in the film, Will Allen of Growing Power and Joel Salatin of Polyface, Inc., but also some local and national faces in the sustainable food movement: Kathy Ozer of the National Family Farm Coalition, Bernie Prince of FRESHFARM Markets (our local farmer’s market network), and Nora Pouillon of Washington’s Restaurant Nora. Renee Catacalos, Editor in Chief of Edible Chesapeake, will moderate.

For new vegetable gardeners – a must-do!

On Tuesday, May 26, from 6-8 pm, the Twinbrook Library in Rockville will host a class for beginning vegetable gardeners. The free class is organized by the Grow It Eat It gardening network of Maryland Cooperative Extension; it’s organized by Montgomery County Master Gardeners, and will be taught by Master Gardener Sam Patsy. Contact Erica Smith (mc.growit_AT_gmail.com) for more information.

You may run into me at either event, attending the first half the class before rushing to the movie screening!