A Typical Waltham Fields Pick-Up

We finally got around to taking a picture of our Waltham Fields CSA weekly share!

Our haul, clockwise from top left: carrots, Verrill Farm corn, collards, in the colander - Genovese basil, Thai basil and parsley, tomatillos, several kinds of hot peppers, cucumbers, red onions, zucchini, and watermelon. In the middle are globe eggplants and summer squash (including a pattypan squash).

We've also picked our own green, yellow and purple beans, husk cherries, raspberries this week, and strawberries. We've gotten a couple tomatoes saved before late blight got to it, kale, chard, sweet yellow onions, shallots, green bell peppers, kohlrabi, green garlic, potatoes, and beets. I'm sure I'm missing other items, but overall we've been very happy with our CSA (and having a place to put our weekly compost, too, even though our compost bucket is incredibly funky smelling now).

Local Meat CSAs

Our most recent Chestnut Farms meat CSA pick-up is pictured above.

What's a meat CSA? Like our winter share CSA with Belmont Farms, it's an upfront commitment to a local farm -- in exchange for $X, you will receive a share of the farm's output. It seems that the economics of meat CSAs play out differently from fruit and vegetable CSAs -- you get a set amount of meat depending on your share amount -- but the concept remains the same. The local farmer benefits from running a CSA because he or she gets direct financial support from the surrounding community in the form of committed buyers. There's a litany of benefits for the consumer as well:

* a connection to the animals through the farmer;
* knowing that the meat you are eating comes from animals that have been treated with care and respect, given a good life, and humanely raised and slaughtered;
* supporting local farmers and getting to know your food suppliers (who KNOWS Frank Perdue?);
* reducing the carbon footprint - my meat did not travel thousands of miles from farm to table; and
* IT TASTES GOOD!

I understand that there are inconsistencies to my position about meat. I would eliminate carbon footprints related to meat entirely if I chose to forgo all meat. I know that even one happy cow chilling in a green pasture emits a substantial amount of methane into the atmosphere (but from reading Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, I also understand that cows and other farm animals, including chickens and pigs, have key roles in the cycle of life and death, growth and decay). It would be nice to live my life in a "Do No Harm" kind of way. But with my food dollars, I can show my support for farms that practice agriculture with humane, open-pasture techniques. However, it also means that occasionally, I will buy a chicken at Whole Foods named Rosie, raised in Petaluma, California, and trucked 3,000 miles to Massachusetts in a freezer. It also means that I will eat industrial meat at times (roast pork and soy sauce chicken from Chinatown, carnitas burritos from Anna's Taqueria, indeterminate pork bits chopped up into delicious stuffing for soup dumplings). And, it also means that even at fancy restaurants, I will order some prissy dish with meat or seafood that has been raised in Colorado or caught in the Pacific. I could eat at restaurants that are truly, 100% committed to local food (off the top of my head, in the Boston area, that includes T.W. Food, Craigie on Main, Garden at the Cellar) but then, my choices would be limited and I'd spend a lot dining out.

So where does that leave me? Once every month, I buy 10 pounds of meat from Chestnut Farms, located in Hardwick, Massachusetts. The farmers -- Kim and Rich -- send monthly emails reminding us about our meat pick-up and sharing stories about their daily lives as farmers. We get to share in their sorrow when half of their herd of baby goats mysteriously die, and share in their joy when one of their heifers gives birth. I have yet to visit the farm (they encourage their members to visit during open houses) but am looking forward to an excursion when it gets warmer. At our most recent pick-up, we connected with Rich about the seasonal effects on egg-laying hens, and for the first time ever, I thought about the amazing amount of energy that a hen must dedicate to laying an egg every day. One egg has so much protein (and vitamins and minerals), I'm shocked that a hen doesn't just collapse for a week after laying an egg. Instead, hens continue to lay approximately one egg a day, give or take, although their productivity declines after their first year. Chickens are really remarkable creatures.

Back to the meat CSA - the whole point of this post. Beginning December 2008, we became members of the Chestnut Farms CSA. Once a month, we get 10 pounds of their local and humanely raised chicken, beef, pork, and lamb. Half of the share will be in high end cuts, like steaks and chops, and the other half will be lower end cuts, like ground meat, sausages, and stew cuts. In December, we received leg of lamb, pork chops, loose sweet italian sausage, cured ham steak, ground beef, ground lamb, and a whole bone-in chicken breast. January brought us a lamb shoulder, ground beef, ground lamb, a whole chicken, a ham steak, beef patties, and pork breakfast sausage patties. Our last pick-up, in February, brought us garlic and cheese pork sausages, leg of lamb, chicken legs, one beef loin T-bone steak, one beef loin porterhouse steak, ground beef, and lamb stewing meat.

So far, the quality of the meat has been impressive. We've also enjoyed the odd cuts of meat that we had never cooked before. I've never been compelled to roast a leg of lamb or cook a ham steak before, but because those cuts were included in our meat CSA, we looked up recipes and learned how to roast, braise, and pan-fry different cuts of meat in ways we'd never imagined! Chestnut Farm's sweet italian sausage is delicious (we stuffed squash with it), and we had made an amazing roast chicken with one of their birds. We also fried up a delicious ham steak (and I ate all the fatty bits). Ben made yummy spicy lamb burgers with the ground lamb, and he also made a falling-off-the-bone braised lamb shoulder. I put together a bolognese sauce with some ground beef and lamb.

I encourage all of you to look into joining a meat CSA. Ben and I thought long and hard about whether to join (he thought 10 lbs. a month is a lot of meat for two people). We spent a fair amount of time researching meat CSAs. In the Boston area, another local farm -- Stillman's at the Turkey Farm -- also offers a meat CSA. You can try the local meat by buying only a small portion first. We bought some pork chops and bacon from Stillman's at the JP Farmer's Market, and loved the deeply porky taste of the chops. We also ordered our holiday turkey from Stillman's (see our Turkey Day post, below). We weren't able to try Chestnut Farm's meat before signing up for their CSA, but the rave reviews on our local Chowhound board (search for "CSA"), along with the convenient pick-up location at the site of our 2009 summer CSA, convinced us to join.

Recent adventures in the kitchen

Since Ben's chard adventure, it's been more exciting experiments in the A-B! A-B stands for Allston-Brighton, a part of Boston that's overrun with college students (and also where I grew up and where we live now). Last week Ben made the most amazing roasted beet and fennel salad, courtesy of Mark Bittman. I'm not sure what he dressed the salad with, but it was yummy! The beets and fennel came from our winter CSA share. After roasting, the beets tasted incredibly sweet - practically no "dirt" taste at all! (Oddly enough, I like the "dirt" taste, since that flavor is what makes beets so unique to me.) The fennel was raw - sliced thin and tossed with the roasted beet slices. Served on top of couscous, it was a yummy and complete meal. We probably should've taken a picture, but I was too lazy (and eager to start eating) to get the camera.

What else have we eaten from our CSA share? Ben's been making awesome and simple salads -- lettuce greens, empire apple slices, herbed goat cheese from the Vermont Butter & Cheese Co., and toasted pecans. The lettuces and empire apples came from the CSA - we've been lucky that our lettuce has remained fresh for over a week now. Our guess is that the lettuce lasts longer because it was picked fresh from a local farm and didn't have to travel in a refrigerated truck to a store and then to our house.

On Friday, we were lazy and ordered take out from our fave Thai place, Rod Dee near Coolidge Corner. We had yellow curry duck, shrimp pad thai, and Indonesian fried rice. Despite the scarcity of duck in the curry, the dish was delicious. I am not a huge fan of pineapple in curry, though -- it's just too sweet and the texture is weird!

On Saturday we went to K's place in Watertown for good food, good drinks and even better company. We celebrated D's 31st b-day and brought over a bottle of champagne so that the couple can celebrate in style upon moving into their new house. We had a great time and I'm glad we left when we did - otherwise I would have fallen asleep on K's uber-comfy sectional. At K's I tried a couple of rieslings (K's fave) and a rose wine, and all three were too sweet for my tastes. I'm a little worried that by the time I turn 40, I won't be able to drink anything sweeter than bourbon, which does NOT bode well!

Sunday, we duked it out with two hundred other shoppers at Russo's in Watertown. Ben and I had a huge shopping list - we're hosting an election party this Tuesday night - and the store was incredibly crowded. I'm so glad we found about about Russo's, but now we won't go anywhere else for cured meats. The selection isn't huge, but their prosciutto di parma is only $15/lb. and it's reliably delicious! The broccoli rabe looked great today, so I picked up two bunches and made our fave soup which includes broccoli rabe, white beans, potatoes and sausages. The potatoes were Yukon golds from our CSA; the sausages were De Pasquale's (via Russo's) sweet italian and the white beans 1/2 home cooked and 1/2 canned. Before starting the soup, I cooked some dried cannelini beans (local - I think - from Baer's in Mass) with a couple bay leaves. It took a few hours, but the result was sooooo much better than the canned stuff! I need two cups of beans for a rosemary-lemon zest-white bean dip for Tuesday's party, and had an extra cup or so of cooked beans that I tossed into the soup with a can of beans. The recipe is from Rachel Ray and the Food Network, but it's seriously one of my go-to soups now.

I probably spent 5 hours in the kitchen today (I also made a huge batch of pesto since we got two great-looking bunches of basil at Russo's), but hope all the prep work will pay off for Tuesday. Ben and I have a fun menu planned and it should be good times on Election Day.

Belmont Farms CSA and our first CSA haul

Here's a picture of part of our haul today!

This afternoon, Ben and I picked up our first winter share of veggies from Belmont CSA! CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and the concept for CSA shares is that in return for investing in a local farm through the purchase of a share, you get a portion of that farm's bounty throughout the growing season. Belmont CSA's winter share is a growing collective among three farms, and the Belmont CSA acts like the agent for the other two farms. There are lots of good reasons for supporting local farms and sustainable agriculture -- we'll probably post about that later on.

At the Belmont farm, we had a great time walking through the field - they are still growing lettuces, leafy greens like kale and collard greens, leeks, broccoli, cauliflower, and root crops like radishes.

Here's some pics of the farm.






It's amazing that you can still grow food in the Boston area in late October, when evening temperatures oftentimes dip into the late 30s. We sipped on apple cider and pondered which variety of apple to take home. Included in this pick-up was 10 lbs. of apples, and we chose Empire apples. We also picked up a pumpkin from Sergi Farms next door to the Belmont CSA -- Ben's going to carve the Obama campaign symbol into it. We'll post pictures once the pumpkin is carved!

Our bounty from the CSA is below. (We put everything on our kitchen floor to get everything in one frame!) Besides 10 lbs. of apples, included in our share today was 45 lbs. of produce -- swiss chard, escarole, lettuces, green and red peppers, napa cabbage, leeks, harukei turnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, beets, parsley, acorn squash, delicata squash, butternut, sugar pumpkin, spinach, carrots, daikon and fennel! We are storing the squash, onions, sweet potatoes and potatoes in our back stairwell and hope they won't go bad hanging out back there.