We got our first harvest from Town Farm Organics, the CSA we joined this year, on Tuesday. (You can read more about it here.) This is what was in our bag:

Note to self: next time try taking picture of green things in front of a non-green background

1. Lavender plant
2. Sage plant
3. Zinnia plants
4. Snapdragon plants
5. Summer savory
6. Cut sage
7. Beet tops
8. Sprouted lentils and mung beans

And the great big bag in the middle is two different kind of lettuce (red leaf and something else).

It’s early enough in the season that my half-share was the same as a full share (in the future I will get more variety each week but less of each thing). The potted plants were a super nice surprise – now I have fresh sage any time I want it – I plan to try a potato, sage and rosemary pizza (recipe) and grilled tomatoes stuffed with goat cheese and sage (recipe) – and I planted the zinnias and snapdragons in my garden. I have no idea what to do with the lavender, besides make those little satchels that are supposed to make your underwear smell nice – AS IF THAT IS AN ACTUAL CONCERN OF ACTUAL PEOPLE – so suggestions are welcome.

So far I’ve eaten about half the lettuce in salads and sandwiches and used the savory and sage when I cooked a chicken. (Which I am sure would have been delicious had it actually cooked all the way through. The recipe was for a whole chicken cooked on the grill, but even at 2x as long as the recipe called for it was still raw in the middle. I’m blaming the grill. We had burgers instead.) I plan to saute the beet tops with a little butter and Parmesan for dinner tomorrow but I am totally at a loss as to what to do with “sprouted” mung beans and lentils.  Google tells me HOW to sprout them and that they’re SUPER nutritious and an GREAT IDEA…but all their serving suggestions involve just tossing them in a salad and I don’t think I’ll be able to trick anyone in my family into eating them that way.

Obviously this one bag of produce doesn’t cover the full cost of the CSA for summer but even if we only got this much stuff each week between now and October we’ll have saved over $300 on fresh, local, organic food. That’s money I can spend on other stuff, like chocolate or electricity to power these air conditioners or a plane ticket to San Diego. Thanks CSA!