week 13!

This week's box had lots of great stuff in it. Tomatoes, kale, potatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, basil, garlic, and serrano peppers!

The month of August for me has been all about tomatoes. I think I've eaten more tomatoes in the last few weeks than in the previous 5 years combined. As a kid I never liked tomatoes all that much and its only been in recent years that I've begun to appreciate just how wonderful they are.

In my state of tomato euphoria I purchased a LOT of tomatoes at the Green City Market the day before we got this weeks CSA box which also had a LOT of tomatoes in it. Since we had so many of them I had to start getting creative. Luckily, after a trip last fall to Blue Hill at Stone Barns (a must visit for local food fans and foodies alike) which is just outside of NYC, I was inspired to try my hand at a chilled tomato soup. Their chilled heirloom tomato soup still stands out in my mind as one of the highlights of an all-around excellent meal there. I decided to head to Epicurious.com, of course, and found an easy recipe that I tried called Chilled Tomato, Roasted Garlic, and Basil Soup. The result was good, I think I might add a little chicken or vegetable stock to it to give it more of a soupy consistency. It was tasty, but my search is still on for the perfect chilled tomato soup recipe.

Next week I'm going to try the Chilled Golden Tomato Bisque recipe. It looks delicious and there is no cooking involved, perfect on a hot summer day!

Enjoy your Labor Day weekend, and safe travels!

week 12!

This week's box: broccoli, green peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, green beans, scallions, and parsley.

At the beginning of the summer, I assumed I would spend a lot of time looking for new recipes and inventing new curries. Instead, this summer I've found myself wanting to eat everything raw. Raw turned out to be the best way to taste the difference between waxed cucumbers (from the store—longer shelf life!) and those we get in the box. It's the best way to get all the earthy zing of the kohlrabi and the mild sweetness of yellow squash. And, of course, raw is also a great way to consume those nutrients that go missing by the time you're done with the boiling, baking, blanching, or grilling.

So, though I have tried a little stove-top magic (alliterative fennel comes to mind), I'm finding that the summer's heat and our weekly box have provided the perfect reason to go minimal in the kitchen with my favorite new food prep ritual: washing, chopping, and... eating!

If you're curious about raw food and people who love it, you can read more here.

week 11!

Week 11 brought us some amazing produce from Mike & Clare which included collard greens, potatoes, green beans, cucumbers, summer squash, tomatoes, and cippolini onions! wow!

We've really been enjoying the cucumbers and tomatoes. A simple salad of diced cucumbers and tomatoes with olive oil, a splash of red wine vinegar, crumbled feta cheese, and salt and pepper is a perfect summer treat!

Some of you have been wondering about additional online food-related resources so I'll share with you my personal favorites.

The best site, in my opinion, for recipes is Epicurious. All of the recipes on the site are taken from Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazine. The recipes are always delicious, beautiful, and crowd-pleasers. Plus, there isn't a fruit, vegetable, or cut of meat you can buy that they don't have a recipe for.

Another great place to get recipes accompanied by fun food writing is the Mark Bittman blog "Bitten". It's updated daily and almost always includes a recipe. I highly recommend it, I never miss a day.

If you want to find out more about organic food and organic farming then you should definitely check out a blog that I very recently found out about (thank you Ryan A.) called OrganicToBe. This blog includes a lot of interesting articles about the current state of organic/sustainable farming in the US as well tips for home gardeners, recipes etc.

If you'd like to keep up to speed on the local, sustainable, seasonal food scene in Chicago then a great place to look is Edible Chicago. It's a new magazine so there's limited content on the site at this point but the calendar of events section alone is reason enough to keep this site handy.

Anyway, those are some of my favorites. If you know of a great food site that the rest of us should be checking out let me know!

from the farmers

Hello CSA members. I've been reading over the blog posts here and I think the food is presented well. All that good cooking! Now I'm hungry.

Reading Dena's account of roasting a chicken for the first time reminded me of the first time I attempted the same thing. I too had to cook it for longer. Everyone's oven is different and you really have to figure out how your oven cooks things to know the right time and temperature. That chicken sure was good once I had it cooked long enough. I'm sold on pasture raised chicken. The Osmunds work with nature and it is proven out by the results.

We thought it'd be nice for us to give you some more background on us, why/how we got into this career and our viewpoint on being sustainable and eating locally.

Like everyone, we're concerned about the environment and how our food is being grown. As children we all had professions we dreamed of becoming. For both of us we realized early on we wanted to be farmers. Maybe we didn't quite understand what that meant, but there was something about farming that we found attractive. Neither of us grew up on a farm, so our options were limited. Clare got her education at summer camps where she got a chance to experience the wonder of the outdoors. Somewhere in there I managed to detassle corn for $3.35 an hour.That taught me more about farm labor than growing food.

Both of us got through our twenties and into our early thirties and we had each managed to build good careers. Clare worked her way to Education Director of a museum and I was a computer programmer for a nation-wide retailer. At this point we each had an ah-ha moment and decided it was time to pursue something that we really believed in.

As far as to why we farm like we do, it really comes down to our belief that all life is sacred and thatmodern industrial agriculture is doing great harm to life. We all know the great contribution Michael Pollen has recently made to the national awareness of our food production and the need to transform it. We agree with him that it needs to become sustainable. What does sustainable mean? Well, we're working through that ourselves andwelcome any feedback from members on this issue. For us we're starting with organic production, no-till and on-farm generated fertility. Conversations with other farmers, CSA members, food activists as well as active reading shape our thoughts on this complicated topic.

To have a sustainable planet we need to eat locally. When you know your farmer, then you can make sure the food you're eating is healthy. To grow healthy food year after year a farm needs to employ sustainable practices, else they have to rely on fossil fuel based fertilizers and herbicides. That's cheating and shows they don't understand soil fertility. Kind of like a do-over, or sweeping dirt under the rug. When you buy local from sustainable farmers you help nurture the knowledge and farming expertise we're going to need to get back to working with nature. In conclusion, I'd like to say once again how much we value our CSA members. We're honored that you participate in this with us. The season is long and farming can be a humbling experience. We're thankful for your support.

We look forward to meeting you again. It has been a while since the last potluck and I'm thinking we need to get the next one on the calendar!

[This post submitted by Mike]

an all-CSA meal

Week 10 of our share from Mike and Clare's farm included the full bounty of summer: swiss chard, fingerling potatoes, zucchini, kohlrabi, green beans, cucumber, and (more) garlic! And as much as I enjoyed the many varieties of greens we received in our first weeks' boxes, I am a sucker for squash and have discovered a love for the strange goodness that is kohlrabi (I think this may be due to Clare's very persuasive arguments for the wonderful vegetable!).

Spurred on by participation in the CSA and the completion of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" back in June, I recently decided to limit the amount of meat and poultry I consume. My new rule is to eat these meats only if I know where they came from and a little about how they were raised. Those of you who have seen me working the grill at post-softball BBQs feel free to hold me accountable here... no, I have not stuck by this new rule consistently! However, it is something to work toward, slowly. Thank God for the meat share from Cedar Valley!

So far I have only sampled the pork sausage and chicken. It would help if I got our gas grill working (no propane) for the steaks and ground beef - something I hope to do in the next few weeks. In this month's meat share we received a whole fryer chicken and two pre-cut halves. I split this share with the Phillip's, and ended up taking home the two half fryers. This week I decided to roast one of them, with this result:

It was a complete, all-CSA meal! I started with a bed of potatoes, small carrots, green onions, and garlic drizzled in olive oil. I added a handful of fresh herbs from our back patio garden - rosemary and thyme, I think - and then placed the half-fryer on top. I basted the poultry in a simple olive oil and black pepper mixture, and roasted it all in a 350 degree oven. I had never roasted a chicken like this before and was a little nervous about getting it cooked completely, so I purchased a simple meat thermometer and stuck it through the breast meat right before I threw it in the oven. After only 45 minutes the thermometer indicated the meat was ready, but I found that as I cut the chicken open there were quite a few parts that were not cooked all the way through (many of the potatoes and carrots were still hard as well). I don't know if I got the thermometer up against a bone, or if the addition of the vegetables somehow threw the temp off - either way, it all went back in the oven to finish cooking. 30 minutes later I savored this wonderful meal with a little white wine, and ended up with two lunches worth of leftovers. Needless to say, there was much envy among my co-workers this week!

[This post submitted by Dena]

week 9!

This week's bounty from Mike & Clare included some zucchini, green beans, potatoes (Red Dales & Kennebecs), kale, basil, and persian star garlic.

Also, this week was the second installment of our monthly meat share from Cedar Valley. We got a huge rack of pork ribs, burger patties, sirloin steaks, ground beef, italian sausage, whole chickens and a dozen eggs.

I chose to try out the recipe for parmesan-crusted zucchini that Clare sent along with her e-newsletter. It turned out great, I was in a bit of a rush though so I got a little "creative" (lazy) and combined a step or two. The end result was probably not ideal but delicious nonetheless.

I also made a figure it out as you go recipe involving things I had left in the fridge. It turned out really tasty and only the red onion is not from the CSA. My tip for this is to pre-cook the potatoes before you fry them. Either steam them in the microwave, as I did, or boil them first to avoid spending the next couple of hours by the stove. The fresh basil from Mike & Clare really made the dish look presentable and taste better too.

I hope you all are enjoying the CSA as much as I am as we near the halfway point. Happy cooking!

do just food

I've really been enjoying my participation in the CSA this year, the ability to eat local sustainable produce is a great option to have. However, I also realize that having easy access to fresh fruits and vegetables is not an option for a lot of people. This has led me to wrestle with two main questions. Should fresh produce, in this case local, sustainably grown produce, be made widely available to low or fixed income individuals? (There's actually a lively debate going on about that on various blogs.) And if yes, then how do we make that happen? Myself, and our church, felt that accessibility was important and our answer was to create a program called Just Food. This year we applied for a grant through our denomination's central conference to purchase additional shares that we could then give away for free. We've partnered with the Lakeview Food Pantry to identify families in our neighborhood who would most benefit from a free weekly supply of produce.

The recent news of LA's one-year ban on the opening of new fast food restaurants in the impoverished South LA neighborhood has once again gotten me thinking about disparities in class and access to healthy food. While I'm a little nervous about the government determining what we can and cannot eat (ahem, foie gras my fellow Chicagoans) I at least appreciate the fact that they are recognizing the somewhat predatory nature and long term health effects fast food companies are inflicting upon poorer neighborhoods. I also ran across this article, a few months back, which takes a very interesting look at the effects of rising food prices and the lack of quality food options on low income individuals.

For those of you who are interested in what that specifically looks like in Chicago here is an in-depth study I found which was done in 2005. It's not a light read, but it's really fascinating. I do think that Chicago has made some progress on this issue since the report came out. Several grocery stores have opened in the so-called "food deserts" and multiple farmers markets have opened throughout the Southside but there is still a lot of work to be done.

So what role, if any, should we play in this issue in the coming years? What do you think Just Food could/should become? I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas as we continue on this journey together.