CSA- October and November

October and November have been busy (and exciting) months for us at Winona house! There was hardly a weekend when we didn’t do something exciting (see Margarite’s picture post for some). Now, as Thanksgiving rolls around, we’re preparing for a Minnesota winter. The first snowfall of the year was on Saturday, but thanks to our landlord nearly all of the windows in our bedrooms now have insulating plastic.

As part of our commitment to sustainability, in October and November we decided to buy a fall community supported agriculture (CSA) share through Big River Farms. The boxes come every two weeks with fresh vegetables straight from an organic farm that offers experiential teaching to new farmers. We never know what we’re going to get until we go get the box every two weeks, so opening the boxes is kind of like Christmas. So far there have been carrots, four kinds of winter squash, onions, garlic, beets, parsnips, potatoes, spinach, kale, broccoli, leeks… all super fresh and awesome tasting. We’ve also had to be somewhat creative in order to use some of the more obscure veggies- for example, Romanesco Broccoli- a green fractal pyramid shaped veggie that tastes like broccoli and Celeriac, or celery root- looks like a gross inedible bulb but actually tastes almost exactly like celery. Some favorite recipes so far have been:

Delicata Squash Wedges

Winter Veggies Pot Pie

Sauted Parsnips and Kale

Veggie Christmas!

Lindsay with the Romanesco Broccoli

We pick up our last box of the season today, and we’re going to miss the fresh veggies as winter sets in. We’re undecided whether or not we would want to continue this in the spring/ summer or go to farmer’s markets (we have a great one nearby, Midtown Farmer's Market that starts in May!).

-Sarah