Today is my alternate Thursday! Oh, heaven. See, I take from a CSA (community supported agriculture) farm called Full Circle Farm. They are in Seattle, and I am in Juneau and the way it works is they fly organic produce from their farm there to their warehouse here to be boxed and picked up on Thursdays. You can take a large box or a small one, weekly or an alternate weeks. Since I live alone, I take a small box on alternate weeks.
Produce is a problem in Alaska. If you garden (and, living on the side of a mountain, I have no space for a garden) you are set for veggies, and if you gather you can get berries, but otherwise! Oh, otherwise! Last week, having eaten all of the fruit from my FCF box (I always eat the fruit faster than the veggies), I picked up a pound of Bing cherries ($7, horror of horrors says the woman who used to live near an orchard and buy 21 pounds of doubles and spurs [look funny, taste great!] for $7) and a tiny watermelon ($7) at the local grocery store. Hell, I'll name it. At the A & P (stands for Alaskan and Proud and the produce department should be the A & A [Alaskan and Ashamed]). Got them home. The cherries were lovely to look at. Tasted like sawdust! And the watermelon! My grandfather used to grow (among other things) watermelon. Every year he saved the seeds from the best and planted them the next year. By the time I was born, Grandpa Herndon was growing melons to die for. Well, let me tell you, if he knew about this poor excuse for cattle fodder he would spin right out of his grave! No satisfying crack when I cut into it. And then, one bite! One bite! No taste and slick. Soft. I threw that sucker away! $14 worth of fruit (well, not really $14 worth of fruit. I paid $14 for the fruit, but as far as worth -- had they paid me to haul it away I could retire), and not one edible bite.
So you can see why I love Full Circle Farm! The produce is wonderful. Full of flavor. (Well, once I did get a spoiled strawberry.) But, it is heaven. And this week I am getting: orange honeydew, grapefruit, peaches, nectarines, pluotes, limes, carrots, snap peas, Roma tomatoes, green onions, Romaine lettuce, Cremini mushrooms, and mint. I feast! I absolutely feast! Fruit! Salad! Carrots to nibble! And it is tonight!
Today is my alternate Thursday!
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5 comments:
Yay Thursday! I miss the produce in the valley, to tell you the truth. We can get the good stuff here, at the farmer's market, but it's just as expensive as the grocery store, sometimes even more so. Sigh.
Thursday for me means yoga night. Love that.
YAY! Everyone support CSA's!
I usually say 'support your local CSA', but if they are going to fly it to you, support anyone you can support!
Very sadly, many of the SF Bay Area CSA's have already closed.
Being, originally, from the Central Valley in California, I was spoiled. I thought produce was supposed to taste like this. How nice to finely find it again.
Welcome to the blogosphere. I just found you through Robert Brady's Pureland Mountain. I'll be back for more. Drop by my place when you can:
nobodyasked.com
Granny,
Wow, I have the same experience with peaches. I grew up in Carolina where you could pick 'em off a tree and they were perfect and delicious and juicy.
Peaches at the grocer don't even seems like the same species as they used to! they don't taste, look, smell the same at all!!
And the price they charge for produce? UGH! it's like highway robbery!!
Granny, did you save any of those hierloom seeds from your grandfather? if so, it might be a good time to do a little plot or a container garden. It sad that little ones (like Maya, or my nephew Chase) will never get to relish some of the exquisite tastes of our youth.
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