This week's CSA

It's Thursday, therefore time for another edition of "what Melissa received in her CSA box". I can't go into too much detail, because the kind folks at Fifth Crow Farm did not send out an email this week telling us exactly what was in the box. Here we go:

Kohlrabi is back! 3 bulbs with leaves

Bag of spinach

A bunch of rainbow chard

A bunch of pink turnips? giant radishes? other edible roots?

A head of butter lettuce (and I just have to say, the silky texture of the leaves as I was moving it into the fridge made me figure out exactly why they call it butter lettuce)

6 assorted summer squash: three zucchini and three ridged squash I don't know the name of

2 baskets of strawberries

1 jar of strawberry jam

half dozen pastured-chicken eggs

With all this fresh produce in my fridge, what did I do for dinner last night? Not eat any of it. Silly. I'm still working my way through last week's vegetables. I was able to demolish one more head of baby lettuce and four radishes. I've been all out of olive oil for the past week at least, so all my salads have been dressed with sesame oil. I'll be buying more of the olive sort this weekend.

It was too hot in the house yesterday, so I enjoyed my dinner outside on my little back deck. (I do mean little--it's only about 4 feet wide.) I set up a stool with a board atop for a table, and sat cross-legged on a couple of rugs. Who needs fancy patio furniture?

Last night I finished the 3rd book in the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder: "On the Banks of Plum Creek". The Ingalls family has moved to Minnesota, where they first live in a dugout house before building a two-story home out of wooden planks, with "boughten" shingles, doors, hinges, and even glass windows. A plague of grasshoppers obliterates their first wheat crop and a winter blizzard nearly swallows up Pa, but the family comes through happily in the end. There is still food mentioned, but not as much as in the first two books, and definitely not as much as in "Farmer Boy". Because they live next to a creek, they eat a lot of fish for meat. Because the wheat harvest didn't come through, and they're rather poor, most of their meals are beans and cornbread, or bread and milk.

Of course, while I read, I am struck by their simple, what we would consider minimalist, life. As a girl of nearly 8 years old, Laura owns a couple of playthings: some paper dolls and a rag doll. She wears one dress every day but Sundays. Ma has a china shepherdess and Pa has a fiddle, and those are all the extraneous decorations mentioned in their house. All of the family possessions fit into a wagon. Could you fit even a third of your belongings in the back of a mini-van? Once again, I think I have way too much stuff.