Beautiful Orach
Isn’t this orach beautiful? And delicious, too. It came in my box this week from Two Small Farms.
Back in the 90′s, a friend at work told me enthusiastically about her Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm subscription. I thought it sounded nice but with a young family, I had no bandwidth to spend on such a creative way to buy produce. But a few years ago, I started hearing more about it and decided to give it a try. I googled CSA and got a great result as the first hit, the CSA page on Local Harvest. Using their find-a-csa-by-zip service, I found that I had quite a few to choose from, here in the SF Bay Area. After a bit more research, I discovered that Two Small Farms had a four week intro package for $80. I gave it a try, and WOW. I loved it! My family even loved it! There was only another four weeks left before the season ended in November, 2007, so I continued to the end. The next year, 2008, I bought the annual subscription, and I did so again this year.
So what is a subscription exactly? Once a week I go to the front porch of a neighborhood house and pick up a large bag of produce straight from the farms (there are two of them working together). The produce is in a bag in a box, and I collapse the box and leave it there to be used again, taking only the produce in the bag. The pickup day for my site is Friday, which works well for me, but there are other sites nearby that have other pickup days.
I have no control over what is in the box, but there is a common “share” box where I can drop off items I don’t want, or trade it for one that I do want, which sometimes happens. Different people like different things. Also in the box is a paper copy of the newsletter, which I receive by email on Wednesdays, listing what is in the box and giving recipes and information about the contents. The weekly what’s-in-the-box and newsletter are also on the website, so you can click through an entire year and see what we got in our share each week.
One of the benefits of a CSA is how beautiful the produce is. I’ve often wanted to take a picture of it, but usually I think of this while preparing it for dinner and have no time. Usually the greens attached to the top of beets or turnips are so perfect you want to cook them and eat them immediately.
Another benefit is discovering new veggies to eat. The winners: Delicata squash, baby white turnips so tender you eat them skin-on, and the orach shown above. The only real loser so far: agretti (which I see is coming this Friday, I’ll put it in the share box). It sounds and looks good, but we just don’t like it. Some people love it though. Besides discovering new veggies, the main benefit is high quality, fresh produce we already know we like: berries, all sorts of (colorful) greens, leeks, cabbage, amazing carrots in all sizes and colors, broccoli, cauliflower (which we cut in bite size pieces, toss in olive oil, and roast), herbs, other roots (besides carrots), squashes, new peppers, apples, oranges, new mushrooms, etc.
The newsletter said to fix orach as you would spinach. The first time I made it, I washed it and tossed it into a pan of warm olive oil and garlic. Then I noticed the stems! I started trying to pick them out and clip them off, but it was not easy. Then I decided to eat one and it was delicious! So I left the rest in. I think that first time must have been younger orach than shown above because the stems were much thinner, I don’t see how I could have overlooked stems like those shown above.
This time I plan to make the Orach and Pasta recipe listed at the bottom of the orach recipe page. (I’m going to send them my picture of orach, which is much more appealing than the dusty picture they have on the recipe page!) It specifically calls for “orach leaves” so this time I will trim the stems off and leave them out. I’ll try a nibble raw though and see what it is like.
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