Vegetable Boxes

One of the big changes of our cooking life this last year has been that we started to get a weekly vegetable box.

An idea that's been around since the 60s, but really came to American consciousness in the late 80s, is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). There are a lot of different models of CSA, but typically a group of people will become shareholders in a farm, contributing money and/or labor and then receiving some of the output of the farm. The benefits for the shareholder are a real sense of ownership and support of where your food comes from, and the food itself is most often organic and always fresh and seasonal. And both sides benefit because you've eliminated the middleman.

One problem with a direct CSA system is that you're subscribing to the output of one farm. And that means that even with a farm that practices polyculture that in the fall months you're going to get lots of turnips and rutabagas. Lots and lots.

So companies have stepped back in as middlemen in a CSA-esque system where they deal with multiple organic farms and deliver a variety of fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables. That's the kind of company we're dealing with, because we're lazy and like variety.

We're subscribers to Irv and Shelly's Fresh Picks (another Chicago choice is Farmer Tom's). For a set price, every week we get a box delivered to our house with a selection of whatever is in season. Well, during the spring, summer, and fall it's what's in season around here. They try to stay local, but in the winter they 'supplement' with food from outside the region.

Getting the box every week has really had an impact on our cooking life. The obvious benefit is that the vegetables are fresh. But just the fact that our fridge is always full of vegetables has kept us from going out as much as we used to--knowing that there's food waiting for us at home that will go to waste if we don't cook. And the fact that we don't get to choose* what's in the box has been great for getting us out of some of our cooking ruts. Getting, say, a bunch of sunchokes and having to figure out what to do with them. (Answer: roast them in plenty of olive oil!)

* We can add on extras--for example, we usually get a Red Hen Bakery baguette and we get blueberries when they're in season--and you can change your standing order on a few days notice.