(no subject)

[madbaker]

bonacorsi and I picked up a Mystery Box last night. It's a great deal: for $25 we get a huge bag of seasonal produce - much more than $25 worth. This is why we don't usually get one during CSA season. Also, this time we split it with the upstairs neighbors.

What we got: Austrian Crescent Potatoes, Cauliflower, Baby Carrots, Lettuce, Parsnips, Watermelon Radishes, White Carrots, Castelfranco Radicchio (it looks like cranberry beans!), Sorrel, Radishes, Mizuna, Swiss Chard, Cutting Celery, and Rapini. Whew! We also bought a small tub of fresh sheep's milk ricotta, because Julia is an evil temptress. I'm thinking omelettes with radish greens and perhaps a bit of guanciale.

Usually we have dinner at the restaurant hosting the dropoff and we did so last night. Piccino is a corner cafe that opened a couple of years ago. They make thin-crust California/Neapolitan style pizza, often with Mariquita veg. They're very good. We ordered an appetizer of roasted Dungeness crab since we hadn't had any yet this season. Utterly faboo. Then we split a mushroom pizza which was also extremely tasty.

All in all, a good evening.

Comments

[kahnegabs.livejournal.com]

What farm do you use?

My drop isn't nearly so good. Your delivery would be much nicer than what came in mine! I wonder if your farm has an east bay route?

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

We buy from Mariquita Farm, but they currently have a waiting list for the CSA. However, the CSA is done for the year and we're buying the mystery boxes separately.

As far as I know they only have CSA dropoffs along the Peninsula and in SF though.

[kahnegabs.livejournal.com]

Too bad for me then. Your delivery sure sounds good!

Oh BTW: I wanted latkas today for whatever reason. I found I didn't have any white potatoes, so I made them with sweet potatoes. They were quite good!

[dame-cordelia.livejournal.com]

What's cutting celery?

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

Smallage, apparently. (http://www.mariquita.com/recipes/celery-cutting.html)

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a great deal. How many pounds of produce total, do you think?

I'm musing with some of the other local growers about the possibility of doing some kind of winter produce sales. Seems a shame not to, since it's so easy to grow excellent food here all winter, but the logistics make it daunting for such small operations.